Post Referral Survey
Here is where I am with the questions right now (don’t answer these, if you missed the January 20th post about this, we’re devising a survey that will be up permanently, for people to fill out once they have their NSN referral in hand, or once they have their SN TA in hand.)
Questions for everyone:
- LID
- Date of Referral for NSN, date informed of match or date found child for SN
- Age of child
- Age of child requested (a drop box for min age and another drop box for max age) (also need to include AYAP into the possible answer in some way)
- Gender of child
- Did you show preference for a boy, show preference for a girl, or not show preference for gender
- Province child is from
- I’m going to go ahead and ask for orphanage, but won’t make it mandatory to answer that question
- Is your child in the NSN or SN program
- Child listed as being in foster care or in the SWI (also include option for both, or for ambiguous information)
- Check boxes for SN’s (we’ll have to compile a list)
- Prospective parents are citizens of:
- If from the US then I600 or I800
Questions for SN families only:
- Was your dossier complete when you found your child?
- Switched from NSN to SN, or started in the SN program (not sure this one is necessary, so maybe not – we know LID date, and if they have an old LID then they switched… right?)
- Used original agency, or switched to another agency
- If you switched and received a new LID, what was the new LID
- Were you through review when you found your child? (Yes, No, Don’t Know)
- LOI
- LOA
- PA
- TA
This survey is going to be filled out before people travel. They will fill it out once they have their referral (for NSN) or once they have their TA (for SN). So there is no point in asking about actual SN’s vs what was on the paperwork, or how the child was developmentally, or any of that. The family won’t know that until they travel. If we ask people to wait until they are home before filling out the survey then it’s not going to be filled out by anywhere near as many people. At some point I can put together a one time survey that anyone who has adopted can fill out, and we can ask those things. But we’ll save that discussion for another post.
I need to start compiling a list of just about every SN possible. I’ll have them all listed, and people will be able to select multiple SN’s. Is there a list somewhere of these that we can use as a starting point?
Also, is there anything I’m missing that we should be asking on the survey?
As I said before, once I set the survey up, if we want to change it I have to close the one that’s up and create a new one. I’d really rather put some time into planning this so we can get it right the first time.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Regarding SWi or foster care….
maybe if there was a difference between what was originally reported and what was the actual situation?
I know that all 18 of the families in my travel group were original told in our that the babies were at the SWI. It was only through an update right before we left that we found out that they had all been in foster care since they were 2-3 months old.
M2I
http://www.MyChineseShamrock.blogspot.com
February 11th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Wow… maybe I should have prrofread that before hitting the submit comment button.
It should have said:
“I know that all 18 of the families in my travel group were originally told in our initial referral paperwork that the babies were at the SWI.”
February 11th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Unless I missed it above, you will want to ask the SN families for the date of their LOI. This allows you to run metrics on time between LID and LOI should you wish to test a theory that this affects how long families wait for LOA. Also, if you wish to run metrics on the average wait for LOA, you would want to use either the later of LID or LOI because the “wait” does not really begin until both of these pieces are in place.
Finally, since you are asking whether or not families have switched agencies to pursue their referral, you may want a second LID field just for transfer families to complete as once both the old and new agencies alert CCAA to the transfer, then it is my understanding that a NEW LID is issued and that is the point from which the wait for LOA begins. With a separate field to capture the new LID and by also asking for the date of LOI, you can then run metrics to see how long it is taking transfer families to be officially transferred and also keep your average wait for LOA data more “pure”- if that makes sense.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Molpugh,
Has some really interesting charts going right now in the SN area of the forum for anyone interested. They are related to SN waits and a number of factors. (Thank you Molpugh!)
Bloomer
February 11th, 2010 at 10:39 am
I agree you need an LOI column for SN and a date of referral column for NSN too.
You can start your SN list by using this website:
http://www.nohandsbutours.com
Check out their comprehensive list of needs, then click on the family stories and look to the left side to see actual SN their children have.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:47 am
I’ve made most of the changes suggested – look through it and make sure I did what you requested. I haven’t been through the SN process, so I’m depending on your help to get some of this right.
I agree that the charts in the SN room are well done. I won’t be replacing that out here, as we won’t gather information until a family has TA, so our information isn’t going to be as fresh as the information that is gathered as families progress through the system.
M2I – most people aren’t going to know that before TA, they will find out when they travel. It will be misleading to ask that, I think, as people will assume it is comprehensive, and it won’t be.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:16 am
So do you want those of us who have completed a SN adoption in the past (8 months) to answer, or only those who are going through the process now? And how do we answer, through a comment, or a message?
No Hands But Ours has a very large listing of all the special needs, and family stories from BTDT adoptive parents.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Are you planning on including past adoptions in your poll? We completed our adoptions in Oct 2007 and Dec 2009 and I think it would be VERY interesting to include people like us in the poll to see if we can spot any trends or to help predict what might happen in the future.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:23 am
doc33 – it will be a survey when we figure out what questions need to be asked. Don’t answer anything now, wait until it’s up as a survey. Anyone who has adopted from China will be able to respond, for each child they’ve adopted. Even if it was 10 years ago. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to use the old data, but I’m not going to put a restriction on which dates we’re interested in. We may or may not get enough past information to see changes in province numbers through the years. Everyone just needs to make sure they enter the dates right when they type their information into the survey.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:32 am
We didn’t request a min/max age at all, just asked for “as young as possible” – so I suggest putting “AYAP” on the requested age list(s).
Also, our information on referral said in the SWI but the update said in foster care. So possibly include a both option?
February 11th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
For our second adoption, we pursued a parallel track, submitting a NSN dossier and simultaneously enrolled in our agency’s waiting child program, so you may want to allow for that.
For some generic groupings of special needs plus research on them, try http://www.adoptspecialneeds.org/home
February 11th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
nanbwill – I think the current questions will cover that, won’t they? Is there something else we should be asking that I’m not aware of? You’ll still put in your LID and date you found your child (or were matched), right?
February 11th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Hi RQ,
Good idea this survey. You’ve been called a spreadsheet loving mum before. I myself loooove statistics too. And of course I’m interested in the information this survey will give us.
Looking forward to it.
Regards, Smiling Lady (LID 4/4/06; now with two beautiful girls)
February 11th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
what about shared list vs. designated list? This is one I’m really interested in with regard to LID.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Have you seen the discussion in the forum about designated lists for SN becoming a thing of the past? If it works out that way, then shared list vs. designated list is a moot point.
February 12th, 2010 at 12:07 am
One more thought: At one point the waiting for LOA chart gathered data about whether the PAP was through review and it seemed many people were not sure how to answer the question (granted, the qualifier “at the time of referral” was missing from the column heading so that may have added to the confusion). It has not been missed, to my knowledge. It did not seem to provide much more insight than knowing the length of time from LOI to LID. If the original LID came after the LOI of course they were not through review at the time of referral – which can explain some of why the wait is longer for those who are LOI before LID (by about 20 days on average); and if the original LID was much older then you can make an educated guess. I agree that as time passes, it becomes more difficult to know where the review process cut-off was back when those families submitted their LOI – but I am not sure what value there is in asking this; yes, not being through review extends the wait, but is that not really a symptom of being LOI before LID, or of being LOI within a couple months after LID, etc?
Including this question may put you in the position of having to validate whether the responses you get make sense in relation to the dates provided for LOI and LID and that may be more maintenance than there is value. I would be interested to know if others see value in this question. Thanks!
February 12th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Thanks Molpugh – I can see that there is interest in whether someone is through review at LOI, because that can make a big difference in timing, but you are correct that if someone doesn’t know how to answer the question it could throw things off. Perhaps I should have three options? Yes, No, and Don’t Know.