From the CCAA:

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Now, as to the interpretation of it. My interpretation, my best attempt at moving it from translated legalese to regular English:

The children who wait longer than two months on the shared list become Special Focus Children. A few requirements will be relaxed for these children.

• Families now have 6 months instead of 3 to get a dossier together and to the CCAA after matching.
• An agency can request to have a “Special Focus” child assigned to them so that they can actively search for a family for that particular child. The agency will then have that child’s file for three months. I assume this means the child will be removed from the shared list for those three months. I do not know what the agency will be allowed to do in order to “recruit” a family for this child.
• I don’t believe this makes changes to the Journey of Hope program, but it is noted that the children in this program will be classified as “Special Focus” children. The biggest benefit that this classification will give is probably the ability to be able to adopt children closer than a year apart.
• Families who adopt a Special Focus Child are allowed to adopt two children at the same time. The other child can be healthy, special needs, or special focus. They can adopt them at the same time, or they can do so within a year of each other, which is normally not allowed.
• Agencies are tasked with making sure the family is prepared to parent the child, with closely monitoring things, and with providing better post placement services to protect the interests of the children.

I think this is a positive step to work towards helping the harder to place children find families. Agencies have argued that it is hard for them to focus on finding parents for a particular child because if another agency is doing so as well then by the time they find a family the child may no longer be available. They’ve argued that it is a better use of resources for agencies to not focus on the same hard to place children, that it would be better for each agency to focus their efforts on different children, as that gives a larger number of children a chance at a family. It appears the CCAA is responding to this, and I’m impressed.

There have also been the complaints that families in the NSN program often see a child they would be interested in adopting, but can’t be sure it will be a year before they get their referral. It will probably be a year, but who knows for sure? This will allow some of those families a little more leeway, and that is also a good thing. As a general rule the “wait at least a year before you adopt again” rule is a good idea, but to put it in place with no exceptions…. not so much. Especially when there are so many unknowns, timewise, in the program as it stands now.

I am very happy to see the last point, tasking the agencies with making sure the family is prepared to parent this child, and then keeping an eye on things, and offering more post placement services in general. I have a feeling that at some point we’ll see some official changes in this regards that will affect all adoptions, but for now I’m happy to see that this is on their mind.

If you are expecting a referral in this batch, or if you are in another program and would like to share your news, please list blog name and blog URL in the comments to this post.

The following blogs have pictures!

The following families have their referral but no pictures yet:

The following families are expecting their referral in this batch:

The following families in other programs would like to share their news:

The following sites have music and are not work safe:

Congrats to all of the families included in this batch, and congrats to everyone else with good news to share!!!!

If I could have help with that last category, please. I’ve disabled all of my computers from automatically playing (most) music on websites. It seems to be impossible to disable all types of music. But, since I think I’ve finally got most of it disabled, it’s hard for me to know if a site plays music. I know that many people want to check the blogs from work, and I’d like to be able to keep the site safe for them to do so.

I have my first report of a phone call, coming from Europe. Wooo HOOOOO!!!!

Their LID is well before the 15th, so it doesn’t tell us anything about a possible cut off date.

If you’d like your blog listed in this months Babies!!! post then please list blog name and blog url in the comments to this post.

Two agencies (a North American and a European) are now reporting a cut off of the 15th, and one agency (European) a cut off of the 16th.

I’m still at an R3. I don’t think there is enough information just yet to jump to an R4.

A European agency has posted to their website that the cut-off is the 16th.

A North American agency has been very clear that they do have some families who will be in this month, but that their families with LID’s of the 16th are not in.

Ordinarily, with this agency posting to their public web site, I’d be very close to an R4 this morning, but with the conflicting rumors coming in, I’m keeping everything at an R3 for now.

It took me a while to work through some of the racial “stuff” — to step outside of my own box and view the world a bit differently. I thought I had done that well before we adopted, but around the time we traveled to get GlitterGirl I had help from a few people, to help me truly step outside of the box instead of just poking holes in my box that I could look through. Talk about an eye opening experience. It was, and it wasn’t pleasant. But it was necessary, and I’m thankful for the help, even though I got a bit upset with them during the process.

So, I’m going to try to do the same thing for some of you. Except it is obvious that many of you need more than just my explanations. So, a page of links.

• From PACT: Building Racial Identity: Choosing a School
• From PACT: The Issue of Race for Private-School Students of Color
• A Newsweek article about how kids see race.
• From PBS: Activities that Promote Racial and Cultural Awareness. I was especially interested in the ages that kids develop certain ideas about race.
• Perspectives: Racial Identity Confuses the Issue of Entitlements — An article about racial identity, entitlement, and the age that white people think about racial identity vs the age that people of color think about racial identity.
• Racial Identity in Balance – an article written by a multi-racial mom that includes some thoughts from her middle and high school kids.
• The Gathering of the First Generation of Adult Korean Adoptees: Adoptees’ Perceptions of International Adoption. From September 9-12, 1999, nearly 400 adult Korean adoptees, adopted between the years 1955 and 1985, gathered in Washington, D.C. They represented over thirty states in the United States and several European countries.
• If you’re looking for something a bit more scholarly: The Benefits of Diversity in Education for Democratic Citizenship from the University of Michigan’s website.
• The Teaching Tolerance website has a ton of information. Just poke around and explore. There is even a page entitled Identity: Race, ethnicity, and culture.

I don’t know if any of this will help or not. There appear to be many of you who are trying to cling tightly to the “race doesn’t matter” philosophy. In a perfect world, it would not. But in the country I’ve brought my daughters into, only white people have the luxury of thinking that race doesn’t matter. If we have children who are not white then we owe it to our children to try step outside of our own comfort level to try to help them form a healthy identity – and that includes race and culture.

For those of you who understand the point I’m trying to get across, is there something you read that was a big “aha” moment for you? Or perhaps an experience you’d like to share? I don’t remember what finally broke through to me. I remember the feeling, but can’t nail down specifically what finally got the concepts through to give me that feeling. Like I said in an earlier blog post — the things you don’t know, that you don’t know that you don’t know. My big “aha” moment was when that whole world of what I didn’t know opened up to me, became something that I suddenly realized existed. It was not a good feeling, but it’s something that had to happen if I am to successfully help my girls to navigate this world that I adopted them into.