We are so excited to be able to have our family picnic again this year! We have missed all of our MAA families and hope to see many of you there. Details below!
Sunday, August 8th, 2021, 1-4 pm CST Rochester Community Park (pavilion by the playground right off of Wild Rose Lane) Rochester, Illinois
Please bring your own food and drinks. We will provide activities for children (water balloons, bubbles, etc.). Come celebrate your family and connect with other adoptive families! Contact Misty or Bailey with questions (217) 498-9700
Why MAA Has Temporarily Stopped Accepting Applications for the China Program
This week MAA made the painful decision to pause accepting applications from families hoping to adopt from China. Travel to China for adoptive parents has been on hold since January 2020, so you may question why now stop accepting applications? And what does this mean for the future of the program? At the start of the Covid19 pandemic, no one could foresee exactly what was coming. As things changed, we at MAA made the best decisions we could with the information we had at the time, and updated families in the program and those inquiring accordingly.
At first, the adoption process all the way up until travel continued to move forward, so we were transparent with inquiring families about the halt on travel, but still welcomed them to apply. By July 2020, the CCCWA stopped issuing Letter Seeking Confirmation (LOA) and stopped releasing newly prepared files of children eligible for international adoption. As this came to light we advised families of these facts. For families who wanted to wait for referral of a young child we encouraged them to consider other programs where there was more movement, when they were eligible, but for families who hoped to adopt a specific waiting child we accepted their application, knowing they could still get through a good portion of the process and be closer to bringing their child home when travel finally reopened.
Then in the early months of this year 2021, we saw a massive slowdown in translating and reviewing dossiers, and finally this week learned that the CCCWA will no longer issue pre-approval for families who submit Letter of Intent for a specific child. Knowing that now families can get through so little of the process, it no longer seems wise or fair to accept families’ money, time and energy, even for those who understand the difficulties or hope to adopt a waiting child. This was not an easy decision, knowing how many children sit on the shared list waiting for a family. We want every child to know the love of a permanent family, but while the child is our primary client, we also have responsibility to look out for the welfare of our families.
As a final note, we want to emphasize that we consider this a pause, not a stop, because we continue to have faith that adoption travel to China will reopen. Chinese officials have emphasized to the US Department of State that they see the value of international adoption for children who can’t find adoptive families in China, the delay in adoption processing is due to the pandemic, and that they fully intend to reopen when they feel it is safe for the children to travel. So we have faith that this pause is just for now, and continue to look forward with hope to the day that families who have waited so long will be united with their children and we reopen the program to new applicants.
Despite the pandemic, adoptions continue moving forward in all of MAA’s other programs, including Colombia, Bulgaria, Thailand, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines. If you are interested in adoption please complete our free Prospective Adoptive Parent form or email Lindseyg@madisonadoption.org to learn more.
