From Australia – Official Information
This is not a rumor, this is officially from Australia. They do not have individual private agencies, their government relays all information that they get, and this comes from their government.
The statement basically says that they are aware that there were encouraging comments from the CCAA delegation about the wait times. However, they state that the CCAA advised their departments that the waiting time from LID until referral will now begin to extend beyond 12 months. The wait is expected to extend to 18 months over the coming year.
The email notes that it is terribly disappointing, but that they want their families to have a realistic assessment of waiting times.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:47 am
I’m saddened to read this of course, but it leads me to three thoughts:
1) If they continue at three months for each month of LIDs, then 18 months waiting will be a reality in March 07 for the mid-Sept 05 LIDs. Those babies will be being born right now. How can the CCAA predict the numbers?
2) They *could* predict if the real abandonment numbers were higher than they’re saying and the babies are being put into IA at a controlled rate.
3) They’re just telling us something ‘not too good,not too bad’.
It’s only Monday and I’m tired already!
July 17th, 2006 at 7:48 am
So some CCAA officials are flat-out lying to folks with a Novemeber LID? Someone needs to explain to them that in our culture it is not polite to do that- regardless of them not wanting to provide bad news to their hosts– Lying is worse. Or is the wait not extending out to 18 months by November?
Any idea of when exactly the wait is extending? With a LID of 12/20/06 does this mean I will not get my referral until THIS TIME NEXT YEAR?
July 17th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Am trying to look at the positives of summer hot travel vs winter cold travel…
LID Nov 05
July 17th, 2006 at 8:08 am
calamity4e:
We have the same LID as you. I want to know also, does this mean no referral untiil next summer?? Or will the wait creep up slowly like 13 months, 15, and go up and not reach 18 until ‘07?? It did say “coming year”. Maybe we have a chance of avoiding the 18 month range. I hope so. I can handle 15-16 months maybe, but the thought of next summer is just too much to handle, especially the thought of doing our home study not only a second time, but a third and I-171H, etc. THIS IS NOT A GOOD START TO THE WEEK!!!!
July 17th, 2006 at 8:21 am
I’m coming up with next summer also (Dec 05 LID). Hoping my daughter won’t miss the start of Kindergarden (starts 8/1/07), but I guess there isn’t anything I can do, except hope it moves up VERY slowly and that they mean 18 months for those just very recently LID, but I don’t see how, that would actually involve some major speeding up for it to take more than a few months of LID to hit the 18 mo mark. GUess you can tell, I’m not feeling very optimistic today.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:40 am
I can’t understand how there could be such a vast difference in the rumors we have been hearing!! I still believe that they will not get to the 18 months wait. I still think with a 12/14/05 referal, I am expecting an early 07 referal. I am not going to freak out about these rumors. Maybe Australia is giving their people the worst case senerio. Why would the CCAA tell Austialia and not the US? Or any other country? I find it hard to believe. I think I would believe the people working for the CCAA.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:46 am
My US multi country agency has been telling me for a few months now that my wait will be 18 months. Which puts me with a spring 2007 referral. The wait was SIX months when I got logged in.
I didn’t want to believe my agency. They rarely give any predictions and are very conservative with information. Now, however, I feel I have to believe them.
Buster.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Calamity4e
IMHO I believe that one cannot put too much weight on
comments made in a social setting; additionally you have to consider the language barrier; the wording used is also important contextually – to say you hope to keep the wait at a certain level is not a guarantee that it can be kept that way (it is diplomatic-speak, and technically it is not a lie if they do personally hope for it not to change); finally you also have the factor that people hear what they want to hear.
fu_fairy
July 17th, 2006 at 9:17 am
RQ- Do you know — Is this information coming from commonwealth government or from one particular state government? Thanks.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:34 am
The way I read it was to say that over the next year the wait will increase to 18 months.
Meaning that December 05 people will get their referral in June 07.
I think that does point to a bit of a speed up, but I don’t have time to run numbers right now, will try to do that later.
July 17th, 2006 at 10:29 am
RQ -
I know you are trying to be accurate with your “numbers”, and I am not trying to be harsh, (I enjoy your site and frequent it daily), but I don’t think you have the power either to predict when 12/05er’s will get their referral. To just come right out and say that 12/05 LID’s will get their referral in 6/07 is ridiculous. Yes, we all can do that math IF the wait does get to 18 months for the 12/05 LID’s. It does not sound that way quite yet. It could be 14, 15 or even more or less, but not necessiarly 18. Yes, it is going to increase for all of us, but to say that it will definitely be 18 months for a particular month of LID dates is like putting the cart before the horse.
Let’s face it, NO ONE KNOWS – all we can do is just pray and try to live through it.
July 17th, 2006 at 10:36 am
All I’m doing is saying what I understood this statement from the Australian government agency to be saying.
Emotions are running high right now, I know that, but don’t put words into my mouth.
July 17th, 2006 at 10:42 am
RQ -
Yes, emotions are running high, but I am not putting words in your mouth –
you just stated: meaning that “Dec. O5 people will get their referral in June 07″ – its 2 posts above
July 17th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Yes, I did, read the whole post.
“The way I read it was to say that over the next year the wait will increase to 18 months. Meaning that December 05 people will get their referral in June 07.”
Not sure how it can be any clearer.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:00 am
RQ -
We could go back and forth all day about this – your sarcasm is uncalled for I think – we are all in this “wait” together. It’s like you want to enforce the negative. No one is against another here. :) We are all in this boat together and I wish we could all just get to shore quicker than we want to.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:02 am
I read it as you meant it RQ. Maybe it’s just a different way of phrasing things. Perhaps “Meaning that December 05 would get their referral…”?
July 17th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Where is the post to read it? I obviously haven’t read the post yet, but to me “over the next year” doesn’t necessarily mean that by the end of 2006 it will be an 18 mos wait. To me, it means a gradual increase for the next year…summer 2007. Not to say that it won’t reach 18 mos sooner.
But again, I haven’t read the post and should.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Actually, if it ends up taking CCAA 3 or 4 months to do each month of LID’s–in order to get July done it will take this July, August, Sept, and maybe Oct—if you keep that pace it would be even later than June for December referrals. We will all have a much better idea of how long it will take for the wait to increase once we see this months and nexts referral dates and rates…. Keep hoping for the best everybody!!
July 17th, 2006 at 11:27 am
It makes sence to me what RQ posted. I totally expected that the CCAA would do up to at least the 18th or 19th this month and it doesn’t appear that this is going to happen even though our polls show that they could do it. The CCAA is rumored to only be sending out only 2 weeks this month instead of the 3 that they could do. So what’s stopping them from keeping the referrals at only 2 weeks each? If they keep with the 2 weeks then Dec ‘05 will get their referrals in June ‘07. When I first read it I didn’t believe it but I counted and lo and behold it came out to June ‘07.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:44 am
It appears that the 18-month statement is a milepost, rather than the end destination, in the wait journey.
I am currently reading a good book, “Freakonomics”, that contends numbers don’t lie. It shows examples of how information (true or false) is used to influence, manipulate, and coerce.
The numbers show that that the wait time will stabilize once the number of available children equals the number of dossiers to be matched. This changes through 1) more available children, 2) fewer submitted dossiers, 3) attrition of submitted dossiers, or 4) higher CCAA dossier rejections. Until they are equal, the wait will get longer.
Am I being influenced, manipulated, or coerced? At this point I don’t know. I think I will continue to wait and see.
K.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:50 am
The statement basically says that they are aware that there were encouraging comments from the CCAA delegation about the wait times. However, they state that the CCAA advised their departments that the waiting time from LID until referral will now begin to extend beyond 12 months. The wait is expected to extend to 18 months over the coming year.
I think I’m missing the encouraging comments??
July 17th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Where is this statement posted? Thanks.
July 17th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Statement: “The wait is expected to extend to 18 months over the coming year.”
QUESTION: Does “the coming year” mean:
A. over the rest of 2006
(meaning December ‘05 in June ‘07, as RQ said)
OR
B. over the next 12 months
(meaning between now and July 2007) ; thus July ‘07 LIDs would be referred in January 2009, but December ‘05 could be referred in fewer than 18 months. I think that’s what ‘wait4hannah’ may have been trying to explain.
I can’t believe I just typed ‘2009′, but I did.
A or B???? A or B????? any Aussies out there???????
July 17th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
A year from now the wait will be 18 months. Maybe some of the other Australians will speak up, but I saw (several) direct quotes and it seems pretty clear to me that this was what they meant.
So, one year from now, June or July of 2007, the people getting their referral will have waited 18 months. Subtract 18 months from June or July of 2007 and what do you get?
July 17th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I refuse to believe that the wait will be that long. I think 12 months is what it will shake out to be. I would like to know what Australian govt agency put out that stmt. RQ states that adoptions are run by one govt organization but that does not mesh with other info I have read. And I do not see any statemtents on their sites saying this. Was this a statement to individuals already in the process there???
Thanks,
July 17th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Actually, just noticed RQ said it was run by the gvt, which is correct but is seems there are several state gvts involved. Which one put out the statement, and how?
July 17th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
threebluesteps:
Thank you!! That is what I was trying to say :)
I was trying to say exactly what you said in point B :)
I was not trying to “shoot the messenger” as someone said earlier. Just trying to figure it all out !!!!
July 17th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
dadtobe, the wait is already at 13 months for some people. (Me.) Are you saying that you think the wait will actually go down? The CCAA would have to do some pretty huge referral batches to do that. I’m skeptical.
July 17th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Umm …. if I follow the projections here for the July 07 match minus 18 months, and then add the remaining months at 3 months of LIDs per month to get to my LID of 4/29/06, then I am looking at 24 months from LID to match. If that is truly the case, thinking 6 months when we started this process, and having it turn out to be 24 puts me into the “irate zone” pretty quickly, even with the disclaimers about changing wait times!
I think KACK’s reasoning about supply vs. demand is the greatest logic that I have seen so far. 18-24 months after dossier submission to match is likely to dissuade a whole lot of APs from Chinese adoption….
July 17th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
back online, NOvary: I know what you are saying. I just feel that it will level off at 12 mos. in the future. When that is exactly, who knows. They have some catching up to do of course, but I think that the hunan situation stirred up a lot of issues for them. One, it created a hold on some fronts. Second, I think it raised eyebrows in the upper ranks and made them reevalute the process. And 3, the CCAA is now doing the incountry adoptions as well. This is a lot more work for them. I just don’t think they want to be over 12 months.
Katydid: I feel what you are feeling. We are 4/6 LID and started the process being told the 6 month match time. Then it all changed while we were in the paperchase and did not realize until after DTC and had time to see what was going on in the APC world.
But I do not think it will go that far out. I think there is more to the story and things will get better.
I guess the next referral batch may tell us something but then again we have the move to factor in to all the mess…
July 17th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
dadtobe – I am waiting for the sense of humor (ok, some might call it sarcasm) that been essential for me to cope in the past 10 years … I can tell that virtually everyone that is in the current wait or paperchase cycle has arrived here after years of disappointments. I think we all deserve a HUGE break, but life isn’t about fairness, it’s just what it is. I really feel for all us in this process, because it is another example of a process over which we have no control.
I’m not really that intuitive of a person, but I agree completely with you that there is way more going on here than meets the eye. I wish that this was a process that involved more of what we think of as “respect” for APs (i.e. telling us the reality of what to expect), but I just don’t think the process works that way. I think it becomes very, very personal and emotional for all of us, but it is a job to everyone else, from INS to our agencies to CCAA. (Not implying that they don’t care, simply that nothing in it is personal to them). We are simply part of the formula and I firmly believe that China regulates the amount of children available based on other things besides the number of orphaned children. Right or wrong, based on our perspectives, it is probably a sad reality for everyone involved.
Ugh. Now I’m rambling and philosophizing … I need to get a life while waiting …
July 17th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Katydid: Its very hard to be optimistic and hopeful in this process. We started the actual paperchase in January and that is pretty much all that I thought about and worked on at the time (yes, my job was not a priority :) imagine that. We have been married 14 years and this will be our first child.
I did not even join any of the yahoo sites and such until after that was done in early April. Then the depression hit as I realized all that had changed. But the good news is that I have finally come out of the funk and do not let all of the bad news and rumors hit me like they used to. I do wish that people did let us know what was going on. Even bad news would help in that we could ‘get a life’ and work around what ever is in play. And, don’t worry, your sense of humor will come back out :)
July 17th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Dont know why my post was deleted to dadtobe but yes it does appear that there has been CCAA officials whilst here in Australia saying that the wait time could slowly increase up to 18mons BUT my theory of thought is that last Nov 2005 there was a NEWS FLASH on the the CCAA website saying the wait times were going to increase from 10-12mons, so WHY hasnt the CCAA website had a news flash this time. Until CCAA official come out and say the wait is increasing to 18mons dont believe it!
The Australian government & FCC ALWAYS give the WORST CASE SCENARIO!
July 17th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
dadtobe,
We do NOT have the luxury of private agencies in australia. We have to use our “state” government department agency as RQ said!
The statement you will NOT find on any of the state governement agencies websites, it was given to the Australian FCC group.
July 17th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
thanks momladybird. I also got this info just now on another RQ thread. Hard to follow the different threads :) I did not know how Australia was set up. Good education for the future. Just now getting answers from you all down under. I did not think about the time diff. thought someone else here might know the answer. Thanks to all for your answer on the 2 thread I am on.
July 17th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
momladybird, your post was NOT deleted, you placed it on another thread, you can read it there
July 17th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Thanks RQ,
sorry about that! it can be rather confusing reading all the different threads, AARRGGHH!
keep up the good work!
One question for you though, what will happen when you get your referral are you going to train some-one else to follow the rumours whilst you are getting your little one?
July 18th, 2006 at 3:51 am
The Australian Information came directly from a meeting between the CCAA delegation and representatives from all Australian States except for Western Australia. The information from this meeting was disseminated to the Australian FCC via the Department of Human Services (Victoria). This is not a case of the Department or FCC putting a negative “spin” on information – this is what was said by the CCAA. I have had this confirmed by the Queensland representative who was at this meeting last week. Sorry to burst your bubble momladybird…. The Qld Department are in the process of updating the information on their website – they expect this will be done in the next fortnight.
July 18th, 2006 at 6:09 am
Chinamama,
i am well aware of this information myself but until CCAA come out an officially announce that the wait has extended on their website, that is when i will believe it and not before.
Its rather strange that Australia is only privy to this information and no other country.
July 18th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Hmm, I think that after RQ gets her referral and finally gets to bring her little one home and settled into a new routine her time will become even more precious to her family. I wouldn’t think she’ll want to spend a great deal of time defending herself for something she decided to do for others. I’m not so sure if I were her I’d continue to provide a free service so open to attack from within once my adoption journey was over. My LID is 8/30. I for one am very greatful for all you do RQ. I know it takes hours of your day to run this board and it only takes minutes to attack all you do. I’ve not posted before, not sure I will again. Everyone has a right to freedom of speech(at least if they are lucky) and emotions can sometimes run high. I’m in it for eleven months now and expect to be for sometime more. Thank you for all you do, especially since you don’t have to do it in the first place and can decide to stop whenever you choose. Thank you again.
July 22nd, 2006 at 7:38 am
As an Australian who was given “encouraging news” during the afternoon tea with CCAA I’m a little concerned about the status of the “official government statement” talked about in these comments. The statement referred to was an email posted to a yahoo website in Australia by a member – it is not an “official statement by the government”. I understand that a clarification of what CCAA actually said is going to be issued by the lead government agency for China adoption in the next week or so. There are also some differences in opinion on what the CCAA actually said. In the meeting with Australian government agencies, CCAA was asked about the timeframe and they indicated that they were hoping to keep it at around 12 to 13 months. They also said this informally to families who met with them over afternoon tea. When one of the government agencies pressed them further about the timeframe, they said it was POSSIBLE that the timeframe could extend to up to 18 months over the next year. I have been advised by my agency that they did not say it WILL extend to that. I think we need to try not to be too concerned about these statements until we see something official coming out of CCAA. I know it’s hard and we all tend to clutch at any bits of information we can but, in the end, we need to stay sane while we’re going through this really stressful process.