Crouching Tiger star goes into battle for million hidden orphans

Jane Macartney in Chengdu



The screen goddess stooped to give ten-year-old Li Hubin a teddy bear and a hug. The room fell silent as Zhang Ziyi, the star of Memoirs of a Geisha and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, listened to the chatter of the child who made history by becoming the first orphan to be handed to foster parents in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

For a disabled orphan in China, the chances of finding a loving home were once slim. But Zhang has teamed up with a British social worker to make sure that more abandoned children are given the chance of a family life.

Care for Children, a British-founded charity, has pioneered the concept of foster care in China.

“There are so many in China who do not have my good fortune. I want to give something back to society and since I love children this seemed like a way for me to make a difference,” Zhang, the charity’s patron, said. Such words from a screen idol could actually make a difference in a country where charity work is in its infancy.

When Robert Glover, the founder of the charity, arrived in Shanghai a decade ago there was no word for foster care in the Chinese language. With British government backing and a Chinese go-ahead, he advised the Shanghai state orphanage with the goal of founding a foster-care programme and childcare training. Today the charity has moved into a new headquarters in Beijing and Mr Glover has big ambitions for a programme that operates under the full aegis of the Chinese civil affairs programme.

“I say we have a vision for a million children in foster care. If I said 10,000 then we might only achieve 10,000, so why not say a million and see just how many children we can help?” he said.

The number has already climbed into the tens of thousands, from zero when he started. The families that offer homes to orphans linked to Care for Children and its Chinese parent organisation are effectively taking a child for life. They receive a small financial subsidy. This has enabled many poorer couples, and those who already have a child under the strict one-couple, one-child family planning policy, to take an orphan into their home. “They don’t make money, but they don’t lose,” Mr Glover said.

The transformation wrought by moving children, many of them disabled, into a loving family home can verge on the miraculous. He cites a failure rate of 7 per cent in China compared with about 25 per cent in the West. “China does family very well. You’ll find the entire village gets behind a family,” Mr Glover said. The progress of Hubin has astonished even Mr Glover, who remembers first seeing him as a year-old baby lying motionless in an orphanage, almost paralysed by cerebral palsy. When the boy was handed at the age of 3 to foster parents he could do nothing for himself. “We didn’t think he could ever use his fingers to hold a pen or to write so we tried to teach him the piano to exercise his fingers,” his mother said. He now plays fluently. “My favourite tune is Safeguarding the Yellow River,” he said, pouring milk into a glass and taking a gulp. He is hoping to have a try at Beethoven soon. He can also read and write.

Zhang offered to autograph his teddy bear and showed him what she had written. Hubin read out loud: “Study hard!”

Tens of thousands more such children still await foster parents but Mr Glover is confident that the foster programme he helped to set up is now deeply embedded in China. It is expanding at such a pace that he has long since stopped trying to keep count of the numbers.

Fostering ties

- The Hawaiian practice of hanai allowed parents to chose others to bring up a child if they believed that this was in its best interest. Parents could never reclaim their child but were expected to maintain contact through regular visits

- A study of fostering in Iran in the 1990s documented fostering based on “milk kinship”. Children wet-nursed by another woman became her milk children and she and her husband could foster them if their own parents were unable to care for them

- The US has a system of kinship foster care in which a family, in consultation with a social worker, may choose to give a child to the care of relatives, often grandparents, for a set period. A court can also insist that a child is placed with kin if necessary

- In Burkino Faso, children are often fostered by other families for a relatively short period, spending on average just under three years away from home. It is thought this developed to address imbalances in the age, number and sex of children in different households

Source: Universities of Kent, Yale and Hawaii, Hilo; Pediatric Nursing Magazine

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3060253.ece






China-Babies Research

U.S. Joins Overseas Adoption Overhaul Plan

By JANE GROSS, New York Times
Published: December 11, 2007

The United States, the world leader in international adoptions, will join more than 70 nations committed to standardizing policies, procedures and safeguards to reduce corruption in the largely unregulated adoption marketplace.

International Adoptions When the United States ratifies the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption tomorrow in the Netherlands, it will establish federal oversight of adoption policies and policies overseas.

The multilateral treaty is designed to protect children, birth parents and adoptive parents from shady practices, including hidden fees and child abduction.

Each nation names a central authority — here, the State Department — to establish ethical practices, require accreditation for the agencies handling the adoptions, maintain a registry to track complaints and create a system for decertifying agencies that do not meet the standards.

In addition, once the treaty is fully put in place in April, parents seeking a visa for an overseas adoption must demonstrate to the State Department that a child has been properly cleared for adoption, that a local placement had been considered, and that the birth parents were counseled on their decision and have signed consent forms. Prospective adoptive parents also must show they are properly trained for what could be a rocky transition.

“Americans adopt more foreign-born children than all other countries in the world combined,” said Maura Harty, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs. “As a Hague Convention country we can — we must — require reform and transparency in some countries or adoptions to the U.S. will stop.”

A sharp departure from current practice, the provisions of the treaty could slow the process and frustrate prospective parents. But many more may be spared the broken promises and broken hearts of the current system, which includes no federal oversight of agencies working overseas. The system also has no sanctions against agencies that lure families with photos of unavailable children and encourage them to bribe foreign bureaucrats to expedite an adoption.

“Who can anticipate?” said Regina Robb, the Guatemala program director for World Links, an agency in Scranton, Pa., that has applied for accreditation. “At the end of the day, having a system in place will help, but it will largely depend on how ready a country is to assume the rules of the Hague.”

Ms. Robb predicted the worst problems for adoptions from Guatemala, which has ratified the treaty but has not developed legislation to enact it. The United States has threatened to suspend adoptions from there because of accusations of corruption. Agencies working in countries that have ratified the treaty must be accredited, a process under way in the United States.

More than 300 applications have already been filed and others will be accepted until Feb. 15, 2008, when approvals and rejections will be announced. Among the criteria are the size and qualifications of the staff, the agency’s financial resources and its policies, which must include a transparent fee structure and mandatory training for parents about the physical and emotional condition of orphans.

With a federal registry of approved agencies, families will have access to information that is currently unavailable. In the last seven years, Americans adopted almost 120,000 children from overseas, according to the State Department, which recently released preliminary data for 2007 showing a decline for the third year in a row.

Adoptions dropped from a peak in 2004, with 22,884, to 19,292 in 2007. Experts attribute the decline to more stringent eligibility in China, the most popular place for intercountry adoptions by Americans, and to on-and-off suspension of the international adoption program in Russia.

China sent 5,453 children to American families in 2007, down from 7,906 in 2005. Russia’s total dropped to 2,207, from 3,706 in 2006. Adoptions increased from Guatemala (to 4,728 from 4,135 in 2006), Ethiopia ( to 1,255 from 732) and Vietnam (up to 626 from 163). China has ratified the treaty; neither Ethiopia nor Vietnam has signed it; and Russia has signed but not ratified it.

The United States will continue to process adoptions from countries not party to the convention. But prospective parents will know if an American agency is not accredited, a potential red flag.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/washington/11hague.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=world&adxnnlx=1197382109-reOqcrRjD6izmwewxkmW+g






China-Babies Research

For all the waiting children

Anne Hart | Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 12:30 am

The McNally family is waiting for Jun, a special needs child from China, to be ready for adoption.

Dear JT,

You don't know them yet, but your future mom and dad already call you their son.

They can't wait to meet you.

A photo of you holding a cookie sits in their den among other treasured McNally family photos. It's in a frame next to their son, Aiden, 4, and daughter, Ireland, 6, your future brother and sister.

Your mom, Monica, plans to travel to China to get you as soon as all the authorities involved in the adoption say it's OK. She and your dad, John, wait every day to receive notice that you can come home.

Monica and John completed a mountain of paperwork in order to bring you into their family. They started in April and hoped to have you here by Christmas.

But chances are you won't be home until this spring, perhaps around your third birthday.


Extraordinary parents

You won't realize this until you're much older, but your parents are extraordinary.

All parents who adopt children with special needs are.

After having two children, Monica and John wanted another child.

They know the world is full of children in need of parents. Monica sometimes went to bed with swollen eyes from crying over all the faces she saw on Internet adoption sites. All those children waiting for parents broke her heart.

She wanted to help at least one "waiting child."

Monica fell in love with you when she saw your photo on one of those sites.

She and John learned about your intestinal problems that will require one surgery, maybe two, maybe more. They don't know for certain. The medical records are vague.

Adopting a child with special needs and an unknown medical future might have stopped some couples. Not your parents. They already loved you.

They decided to take a leap of faith.


An important place

When your parents began looking into adoption, they knew they didn't want to take a healthy child away from a couple who couldn't have kids. Instead, your parents wanted to adopt "a waiting child," one who might never find parents.

Monica and John think about you so much each day. They've never touched you, smelled you or held you, but they miss you. They worry about you.

They wonder what you're doing in the orphanage, if you're cold, if your crib is comfortable, if you're getting enough hugs.

You were brought to that orphanage when you were only a few days old. It's the only home you've known after being abandoned at a police station.

Whoever left you at that police station wanted to make sure you were in a safe place where you would be found and cared for. That's what Monica says, rather than think badly of your birth mom. See what I mean about your adoptive parents being special?

Monica and John know the orphanage will always be an important place in your life. Monica sent a blanket there already, to soak up the scent. She plans to bring it back here when she comes to get you. So you will have something in your new home with the familiar scent of your first home.

She'll also take photos of the orphanage and the Henan province where you're from. Your parents don't want you to forget your roots.

Your given name, Jun, means army military, Monica says. Which means you'll fit in fine at the McNally house. Monica and John met in flight school. Both were military pilots. Today, John is a U.S. Army pilot.

Before having kids, Monica and John were stationed in South Korea for two years. They fell in love with children who lived below them. That's where the seed for adopting an Asian child was planted.

Sharing your story


Your brother and sister talk about you a lot. Ireland said she can't wait to sing you a lullaby. They make drawings for you. When a shirt is too small, Ireland says "Save it for JT." Aiden promises to share his room - and bunk beds. Clothes are already hanging in your closet for you.

Your new name, JT, stands for your given name and for John, after your father. The T is for Theodore, your future grandfather. You were born on his birthday.

Friends and relatives know how strongly your new family feels about you. They're doing what they can to help John and Monica come up with the remaining $6,000 they need out of the roughly $20,000 it costs to adopt a child from China.

Folks at St. Frances Cabrini, where Aiden and Ireland go to school, are throwing fundraisers.

Monica and friends also have wrapped presents and sold baked goods outside of OshKosh, where Monica's working to help cover the costs in a small way.

Your parents want to share your story with as many people as possible.

They hope it will encourage other parents to take that leap of faith and adopt a special-needs child.

Because every waiting child deserves a home.

http://www.savannahnow.com/node/411914






China-Babies Research

Change 4 Orphans

Alex's Notes: This is an excerpt from the website of a young lady who is taking an active role in making the world a little bit of a better place. I encourage you to take a look at her website, and if you feel so inclined, send her a donation to help her accomplish her mission. Website link at the bottom of the post.

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Hi my name is Leah. I live in Colorado. I am 13 and I am in 8th grade. I started this project to help children in Ethiopia. There are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia alone. Many of them live in crowded orphanages, with neighbors, relatives or on the street because their parents are poor, sick, or have died. Some have family but they have no money to feed them or put them in school so they are brought to the orphanages. I decided that I want to start a penny drive and donate the money to help the people. My goal is to get one penny for every orphan in Ethiopia. The orphanages need supplies and medicine and the children have no toys. My family adopted my sister from Ethiopia and that is what helped me with the idea. I have been collecting donations since March 2007.



This is me giving donated $ to the manager Geday at HFTA

We personally delivered the money donated so far to Ethiopia in November 2007. There was $2084.00 collected by the time we traveled to Addis Ababa, ET. Just over $1000.00 went towards putting in a playground at The Hope For The Abandoned Children and Orphan Care Association (HFTA) where my sister lived. They will have red ash placed down to cut down the mud and a merry-go-round for the children to play on. $170 is going towards training an adult orphan to learn how to start a business and support herself. We also purchased basic supplies like diapers and bottles along with medicines and 3 large storage containers to hold clothing. We delivered 6 large duffel bags of donated clothing, shoes, notebooks and crayons directly to the orphanage.

$800.00 went towards community sponsorship of 4 children for a year to attend school, receive a school uniform, school supplies and a meal. These children live with family and I will post their information as soon as I get it. This sponsorship is handled by the Sele Enat Orphanage.

I would like to continue collecting excess change to donate to these places. You can be sure that the money is going directly to help the children. You can check back here for updates.

So, if you have any pennies in your pocket, just think about this:

The reason I chose pennies is because most people when they see a penny on the ground they just walk by it, like they didn't even see it. Most of the world is doing the same thing to the Orphans of Ethiopia. Please don't just walk by them. Make a difference.

PLEASE DONATE YOUR PENNIES TO A GOOD CAUSE!

http://www.change4orphans.com/






China-Babies Research

Strict rules stunt adoptions from China

December 5, 2007
By Lucy Gotell

Chinese adoptions are expected to decline as a result of stricter guidelines that are making it harder for British Columbians to qualify as prospective parents.
British Columbians finding it harder to adopt Chinese Children
Cathy Lopston, spokesperson for Family Services of Greater Vancouver, said the number of applications for China’s international adoption program has decreased since the China Centre of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) implemented new guidelines in May.

“I would say most adoption agencies in British Columbia – and there are six of us – most of us have seen a decline,” she said.

The CCAA implemented the guidelines, which exclude singles, people over 50 and others from the program, in response to a soaring number of applications in recent years.

“The new rules will help shorten the waiting time for qualified foreigners and speed up the process for children,” said CCAA director Lu Ying.

Singled out

Eileen Power, mother of an adopted daughter from China, said the impact of being excluded from the program would be “heartbreaking” for those who no longer qualify.

“People that really want a baby that cannot have a baby, it’s very, very difficult,” she said. “I particularly think single parents - for a single woman - to adopt a little girl, and raise that little girl, that is a very special thing.”

Although several people have been ousted from the program, Lobson said single women have been hit the hardest.

“I think the families that were really affected were single women in particular, and definitely couples that have had some health issues.”

Predictability a plus

There are several other countries where prospective parents can go for international adoption, but China’s program has an exceptionally strong reputation. Eamon Duffy, an adoptive father in Vancouver, said he was impressed throughout his experience with China’s program.
Family Services Adopton Agency
“The reason that we had looked at China was that it was a proven model in terms of how adoptions work,” he said.

Another factor in China’s popularity is Vancouver’s multicultural environment, which is thought to be ideal for raising an Asian child.

“Vancouver is a wonderful place to bring up an Asian child if you’re not an Asian family,” Power said. “And just having so many Asian people in the communities really, really does help (the child) see themselves reflected in the community.”

Lobson agrees, and said much of China’s notoriety is due to the fact that Vancouver has such a high population of Chinese families.

“Families I think felt it was a really good place to adopt from because the children that they would adopt would still be connected to their culture.”

Where do we go from here?

Despite the attraction to Chinese adoptions, people’s willingness to go with another program may depend on their determination to become parents.

“Some people feel more comfortable with one culture or another culture…it just depends,” said Power. “But usually people, if they really, really want a child, they will try (to) at least approach some of the other areas. And it may be that if they’re too difficult for them for whatever reason, they may just say, ‘well, I have to look at life differently.’”

Lobson said that some families have given up already.

“I think they felt pretty defeated, pretty deflated,” she said. “I think that some families do look at other options…and then we’ve also had families who’ve given up and just said ‘well, that’s it…I’m not going to be able to adopt.’ Because they’ve really had their heart set on adopting a child from China.”

Last year in B.C., adoptions from China accounted for 80 of a total of 263 international adoptions.

http://thethunderbird.ca/blog/2007/12/05/strict-rules-stunt-adoptions-from-china/





China-Babies Research

Road to adoption frustrating, rewarding

'I feel very close to him; I couldn't ask for anything more'

By Patti Zarling
pzarling@greenbaypressgazette.com


Mason Bowers is a smiley, happy 3-month-old baby who doesn't want much more than cuddles, kisses and a warm bottle.


Melissa and Shawn Bowers' road to Mason's adoption has been a long one.


And they are not alone. The 2000 U.S. Census, the first to collect data on adoption, counted 2.1 million adopted children in the U.S. About 1.6 million were younger than the age of 18, representing about 2.5 percent of the total 64.6 million children in the group. In Wisconsin, 30,583 of 1.278 million children younger than age 18 were adopted, about 2.4 percent, according to the census.


The Bowers, of Green Bay, have a 5-year-old son and tried for about three years to have a second child, but couldn't, even with the help of treatments, Melissa said. That's when they considered adoption.


They worked with a pregnant woman who was interested in giving her child to the Bowers, and they paid about six months' worth of doctor bills, rent and other expenses before the woman eventually decided to keep the baby.


"I was done," Melissa said. "It was really devastating. But we just continued … I'm glad we didn't give up."


But they connected with Mason's mom, a 25-year-old woman in Texas, when she was about four months along and kept in touch with frequent phone calls, Melissa said. Mason was born in August, and the couple brought him home about a week later.


His biological mother "knows me, she knows my family, we took her out for lunch," Melissa said. "I still send her pictures. But they say it slows down … I hope for his sake some communication continues."


Melissa said she worried how she would bond with Mason.


"We had a birth child," she said. "And I knew how close I was with Maxwell. … I wondered, 'Am I going to have the same feelings? Will I bond with the baby?'


"But it was almost a lot of wasted energy. I feel very close to him. I couldn't ask for anything more."


And Maxwell is proving to be a proud big brother.


"He plays with him all the time," Melissa said. "He says 'Go to Texas and get your own baby.' He just laughs whenever he sees him."


The average adoption takes about a year and costs between $18,000 and $25,000, according to Kim Garner, president of Wisconsin-based Community Adoption Center Inc. Expenses vary depending on the medical and personal costs adoptive parents may need to pay for the birth mother and travel expenses.


A low-end independent adoption might cost $10,000, Garner said, while international adoptions can range from $20,000 to $40,000.


Melissa said the Bowers considered adopting a foreign baby, but she wanted a newborn. They also worried about difficulties bringing home a foreign baby and traveling overseas with a small child at home.


Overall, foreign adoptions have fallen about 15 percent in the last two years, according to State Department figures for fiscal 2007.


While foreign adoptions may be on a downturn in the U.S., experts say domestic adoptions are going strong.


Although adoptions from countries such as China and Guatemala might be dipping, those from other nations, like Ethiopia, are on the rise, Garner said. Her organization handles all sorts of adoptions: independent, in which parents already know the birth mother, domestic, international and special needs.


In Wisconsin, birth mothers lose their rights in two to three weeks; one of the reasons the Bowers chose San Antonio is because in Texas the mother loses those rights within 48 to 72 hours.


"I think there's always a fear of the unknown and also a fear of the birth mother changing her mind," Garner said.


Once a family brings home the baby, Garner's agency remains the guardian of the child for six months.


After at least three home visits, the adoption is finalized in court.


Garner encourages families to be open-minded and flexible when adopting.


"There's more mixed race babies than healthy Caucasian babies," she said. "But there are still quite a few babies out there."


The Bowers plan to be open with Mason about his adoption.


"Obviously, he doesn't look like us," she said about her Hispanic son. "We'll tell him, 'You didn't grow in my tummy, but in my heart.'"

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071206/GPG0101/712060647/1206/GPGnews






China-Babies Research

Visiting Xiao-Ling's former orphanage in China

Alex's Notes: Interesting blog entry from a couple on the ground in China. They have some great pictures at the original entry, link at the bottom of the post.

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Visiting the Orphanage

At breakfast this morning and driving around Sanya, we became well aware that this is not just a resort town for Chinese nationals, but for Russians as well. Half the signs around our hotel are in Cyrillic, as well as a lot of signs in town. We saw Russians everywhere, and the most complicated Russian word I know is "мороженое" - ice cream. Not very useful. So we may not be the only Caucasians in town, but it's probably be a safe bet that we're the only Americans.

But today's big event is that we visited Xiao-Ling's former orphanage this morning, where she spent much of her early life. Meeting some of her friends and the "aunties" who cared for her, the visit was bittersweet to say the least.

As we went from room to room, meeting kids our daughter's age to younger kids to infants, I was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. Sadness that anyone should have to go to an orphanage in the first place got all mixed up with relief that it was a good place as orphanages go, as well as a million other feelings. Looking at the kids abandoned for a whole slew of reasons, I found myself sobbing with a loving desire to adopt every single one of them, and sobbing with the realization that we can't. My head knew perfectly well what we could and could not realistically do, but my heart still had a ways to go.

After Jacquie mopped me up and my heart caught up with my head, the orphanage staff took us to lunch at a restaurant in Sanya. This was most definitely not the sort of restaurant frequented by tourists who play it safe from a culinary sense. No, this was real Sanya cuisine, and we were made aware of that fact right out front.


Yes, those are real fish in real fish tanks, which diners pick out individually. Our hosts selected a red snapper, which was cooked and brought to our table thusly:


On the one hand, the fish was delicious. On the other hand, it wouldn't stop looking at me. I swear it had a reproachful look on its face, telling us, "Why me? I have a wife and guppies at home."

The rest of lunch was face-free and ranged from a papaya soup to a tasty green vegetable to a rich beef-with-peppers mix, not to mention several other dishes. It was only when we were stuffed like geese that the meal ended.

We made a good impression on the staff - they see clearly that we love our daughter very much and would help all the children there if we could. I like to think we helped the cause of Chinese adoption today.

And finally - Happy Chanukah from China!

http://bringingxiaolinghome.blogspot.com/2007/12/visiting-orphanage.html






China-Babies Research

Foreign Adoptions in U.S. Drop

By DAVID CRARY

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of foreign children adopted by Americans has dropped for the third year in a row, a consequence of tougher policies in the two countries — China and Russia — that over the past decade have supplied the most children to U.S. families.

Figures for the 2007 fiscal year, provided by the State Department on Friday, showed that adoptions from abroad have fallen to 19,411, down about 15 percent in just the past two years.

It's a dramatic change. The number of foreign adoptions had more than tripled since the early 1990s, reaching a peak of 22,884 in 2004 before dipping slightly in 2005, then falling to 20,679 in 2006.

"A drop in international adoptions is sad for children," said Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption. "National boundaries and national pride shouldn't get in the way of children having families."

Adoptions from China, the No. 1 source country since 2000, fell to 5,453. That's down by 1,040 from last year and well off the peak of 7,906 in 2005. Two main factors lie behind this: an increase in domestic adoptions as China prospers and tighter restrictions on foreign adoptions that give priority to stable married couples between 30 and 50 and exclude single people, the obese and others with financial or health problems.

One consequence, adoption agencies say, is that the waiting time to complete an adoption from China has more than doubled to 24 months or more.

Adoptions from Russia also dropped sharply over the past year — from 3,706 to 2,310. Russian authorities suspended the operations of all foreign adoption agencies for several months earlier this year and have been reaccrediting them only gradually. Like China, Russia has been trying to boost the number of domestic adoptions.

U.S. adoptions from South Korea and Haiti also declined significantly, although the overall drop was partially offset by large increases in adoptions from Guatemala (up from 4,135 to 4,728), Ethiopia (732 to 1,255) and Vietnam (163 to 626).

Tom DeFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, said adoptions from Guatemala could decline over the coming year as its government — under intense international pressure — tries to impose tough new regulations on an adoption industry that was widely viewed as susceptible to fraud and extortion.

The State Department has advised Americans not to initiate adoption applications for Guatemala while that overhaul is under way. The proposed reforms are required under an international adoption treaty, the Hague Convention, which both Guatemala and the United States have agreed to adhere to starting next year.

Overall, DeFilipo — whose council represents many international adoption agencies — found reason for optimism in the new statistics.

"What you're seeing is fewer countries sending very large numbers of children and a broader range of countries participating," he said. "Over the long term, I think this is a healthy trend."

He mentioned Kenya, Peru and Brazil as countries not now among the major sources of children, but which might increase international adoptions in coming years.

Michele Bond, deputy assistant secretary of state for overseas citizen services, also viewed the new figures positively.

"Interest in intercountry adoption remains very strong," she said in a telephone interview. "People are increasingly well-informed. They're more likely to look at new countries instead of always looking at the same small number of countries."

By contrast, another adoption expert, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, depicted the new numbers as "totally depressing."

She said China and Russia reflected a trend in which countries opened themselves up to international adoption, then scaled back. She attributed this in part to UNICEF and other international organizations encouraging countries to care for children within their homeland, even when domestic programs such as foster care might be inadequate.

"UNICEF is a major force," Bartholet said. "They've played a major role in jumping on any country sending large number of kids abroad, identifying it as a problem rather than a good thing."

UNICEF's child protection spokesman, Geoffrey Keele, said the U.N. agency does believe it is preferable to care for orphaned or abandoned children in their own countries if good homes could be found for them.

"The best interests of the child must be the guiding principle," he said. "We don't go about discouraging international adoption. We just want to be sure it's done properly."

Thomas Atwood, of the National Council for Adoption, said there should be no competition between domestic and international adoption. With an estimated 143 million orphans worldwide, he said, there was enough need to go around.

For U.S.-based adoption agencies, the biggest impact has been on those specializing in placing children from China.

The president of one of the largest such groups, Joshua Zhong of Colorado-based Chinese Children Adoption International, said the agency had placed about 620 children this year, down from about 1,200 in 2005, while average waiting times had increased from nine months to two years.

Some clients are so committed to adopting a Chinese child that they are willing to wait, Zhong said. "Others say forget about it."

For the second straight year, no Romanian children were adopted by Americans. The Eastern European country, which provided 1,119 children to U.S. families in 2000, has banned adoptions by foreigners, except for relatives.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpcgfbD11-q-IduwC31ZJH6O0FrgD8T884SO0





China-Babies Research

Cute Story and Pictures at Meng Zi Orphanage

This entry was posted over at Oriental Observations blog. There are a ton of cute pictures you can find at the original blog, there is a link at the bottom of this post.

Meng Zi Orphanage



Last year, when Katie and I visited the Rices, we were able to spend some time at the orphanage in Meng Zi. When we got to the Rices house this year, we were excited to be able to go back to the orphanage. Several of the babies and toddlers that we played with last year have been adopted and Victoria has been able to be in touch with the adoptive parents. It's so amazing to see how the lives of those orphans were revolutionized by adoption. From a run-down, poor orphanage in southern China to a comfortable life in America with closets full of clothes and shoes and loving parents. I think this is such a wonderful picture of what our true Father does for us. Lots of the children we played with last year are still there and they seem to have quite a few more babies there now than they did when we were there before. Brian and Victoria told us that their family planned to go to the orphanage on Friday and help decorate a Christmas tree for the kids. Brian's mom had sent boxes of hand-made toys and ornaments for us to pass out and use at the orphanage. What a fun and rewarding experience.


Pictures and Blog Link





China-Babies Research

She reminds me of the most important thing

Jan Risher

Five years ago this weekend, my husband and I were in China meeting the newest member of our family. In adoption circles, our Saturday anniversary is called Gotcha Day. In honor of little Piper, our resident 5-year-old, we planned a party, invited friends and loved ones to celebrate with us.
Though we had nothing to do with the appropriateness of Piper's Gotcha Day, November happens to be Adoption Awareness Month. As an adoptive parent, I'll readily admit that I've learned a lot since expanding our family through the miracle of adoption.


I've learned from our daughter. I've learned from other adoptive parents. And, I've learned from other adopted children. But there's another essential and obvious, though often unrecognized, link in the adoption circle of love - the birth mother. In our case, she is the link we know the least about.

As her daughter, and mine, continues to grow into the amazing little human she is, I wonder and admire more and more about this woman - this mystery, I will never understand or know, but to whom I will always be grateful.
Piper wonders about her too.

She readily tells us that she misses her birth mother. She often talks about how she would like to visit her hometown and see her birth mother.

Strangely enough, a movie seems to have given Piper more peace about her situation than anything I've been able to tell her or explain. The movie is Prince of Egypt. It's the story of Moses. She had heard the Bible story long ago, but it's the movie and its music that resonate most with this little girl.

I began to recognize its impact on Piper after her repeated references to "my people."

Then came the questions - the questions she used to connect the dots between her story and Moses' story.

"Why did they put him in the basket, Mom?" she would ask.

"His mother knew he could have a better life with them, didn't she, Mom?" she would continue.

Moses' story has given Piper more consolation than I ever could on my own. She and I chatted about my writing this column. I asked her if there was anything she thought people ought to know about adoption.

"Babies are more important than other things," she said. "I just think you should love all your babies the most."

Then she did what she does best.

She said, "But I think you need to write about happy things in The Daily Advertiser."

And with that, she got off my lap and started singing a song she had composed on the spot.

Which led to dancing.

Which led to a full-blown performance and show, complete with bows and flourishes.

In short, she reminded me that although she and other internationally and domestically adopted children are representative of some of the world's major political, economic and social dilemmas, she is - first and foremost - just a kid.

A kid I happen to love with all my heart.

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China-Babies Research