Unlike the traditional adoption program, in which the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) matches children to families based on a dossier, with the Waiting Child Program the CCAA will send information on children directly to adoption agencies like CCAI. Thus, it becomes the agency’s job to find families for these special children.

CCAI asks interested families to complete a Medical Conditions Checklist, which tells us what age, gender, and special needs your family would be open to. This Checklist also includes an area for your social worker’s signature. This is a wonderful opportunity to benefit from your social worker’s experience and knowledge about some of the special needs or age range you may be considering. After a discussion with your social worker about considering a child with special needs, please ask that he or she sign your Checklist and forward it on to CCAI’s Waiting Child Program staff.

If you have not yet submitted an application, we ask that you also complete and submit a Family Information Sheet to determine if your family qualifies for China adoption. As children come into the program, CCAI can refer to all our families’ Checklists to determine if a child matches what a family is looking for.

Please keep in mind that CCAI maintains nearly two hundred families’ Checklists, so it may be some months before CCAI can contact your family with a potential match.

On average, it takes approximately eight to ten months for CCAI to present a family with a potential match. This timeline will vary depending on an individual family's openness to gender, age, and special needs. We will appreciate your patience as we serve those families who have previously submitted a Checklist in hopes of being matched with a Waiting Child.

If a particular child matches what your family is open to, CCAI will contact you directly to introduce that specific child. Only one family is contacted about one child at a time. All the information provided to us by the CCAA, including pictures and medical/developmental information, will be translated and shared with you via email.

Once CCAI contacts you about a child, it is your job to determine if this child is right for your family. Share the child’s information with your pediatrician, medical specialist, and social worker to help you make this decision.

After you have made the happy decision to bring home a Waiting Child, CCAI will present to your family your child’s official Match Packet, containing your child’s original pictures and documents. Your family then completes a Letter of Intent, informing the CCAA of your decision to bring this child home.

Your family will also need to be approved by your social worker to bring this particular child home. If you are still working on your dossier, our Dossier Team will assist you to adjust your documents to reflect your specific Waiting Child. If your dossier has already been logged in at the CCAA, you will need to obtain a notarized home study addendum, specific to the child you have accepted, from your social worker.  (CCAI will provide you with guidelines for this addendum.)  You will also need a second original home study addendum to hand-carry to China.