China adoption for HK expats - any experience with ISSHK?

Hi all, sorry to make a new post about adoption, but I have browsed through all the previous threads and cannot find the answer I am looking for.


My wife and I are both US citizens, and we are relocating to HK from Michigan in May. We want to adopt a Chinese baby as soon as possible, so we don't want to wait for the 18 months to pass to be eligible for a HK adoption.


Has anyone had experience using ISSHK? Can they recommend an adoption agency that is not afraid to deal with expats? If not, has anyone been through this process that can tell me which agency they used? Thanks.

Thanks for that, but actually I am not worried about the expense. I just really want to know what ISSHK can do for me, and what US agency I can use. Can anyone help?

I'm quite sure that ISSHK is ONLY concerned with international placements of HK babies/children. These are invariably more challenging placements as they first try to place all children with HK residents. You could call, or possibly e-mail them to see if they could also advise you.


As US citizens, as Cara said above, you will need to work with a US adoption agency. There's an organization in HK called "Half the Sky Foundation" (or something quite close to that) that raises money in support of a number of Chinese orphanages. They might be helpful in helping you source a reputable US agency. Nice if someone on this site had a personal referral though.


Good luck. There are many many many heartwarming stories of families being completed through adoption from China. And welcome to HK, you're in for a neat adventure :-)

Klaus - my husband and I are Americans who adopted our Chinese daughter while living in Hong Kong. I have sent you a PM with some information.

May I also suggest IAR. It is run by an American lady who used to live in Hong Kong and adopted a girl from China. She currently lives in California.


http://internationaladoptionresources.org/about_us.html

Holt has an office and representatives in Guangzhou, and it is one of the oldest and most reputable of the international agencies. There are e-mail lists for adoptive parents, I suggest you lurk on some of those for awhile. By lurking on a list devoted to say, "China Adoption," you will get an idea of the differences between agencies and over time you probably will hear about some that people are not happy about for one reason or another. If you don't want to use a HK agency (and I don't know if you can or not, have no expertise in this), I also suggest you discuss with whatever agency you choose about the costs and benefits of starting the wheels rolling before you leave the USA, for two reasons. One, any documents and personal interviews required there will be easier while you are in USA, and two, part of the home study assessment will be reviewing things that indicate your mental and physical stability -- and the move to HK even if happy may result in some disruption. There are just some logistical issues involved in trying to conduct serious business from half a world away. I agree with another poster, though who said basically that 18 months is nothing. I have a friend who was approved for her adoption about 18 months ago and has been waiting for about that long just for word about when to travel. Rules about China adoptions have tightened recently, too, so just be aware that this will not be an overnight process.

I am a little bit worried about adopting in HK, because from what I gather they want you to adopt a "special needs" child. I am not sure what that means? Does it mean they only offer Downs Syndrome children, or does it mean the children have minor problems that will abate over time?


One reason why I prefer adoption from Mainland China is they have a reputation for being very healthy babies.


My wife and I could handle a baby that required for example, extra health care and medicines. What we would not be able to handle is a baby that has serious problems that require 24/7 attention for its whole life. Can anyone comment on what we could expect from a HK local adoption?

Just FYI, this is what ISSHK had to say:


"For adopting a Chinese child, you may go through the local adoption system to adopt a child from Hong Kong or a separate system to adopt a child from Mainland China, both of which require residence in Hong Kong for at least a year. Local system is handled by the Adoption Unit of the Social Welfare Department (e-mail: auenq@swd.gov.hk). For adopting a child from Mainland China, our agency can conduct the home study and the application can be sent to China Center of Adoption Affairs (located in Beijing, www.china-ccaa.org) via Lifelink."


So if I go through them, I would have to wait an additional year before I could even apply for a baby from Mainland China. :(

from what I know of HK adoption (good friend of mine went through the system) there is a wide range of what you can ask for. You can be as specific as you want in terms of gender, age, health (special needs or not), or you can be as broad as you would like. Of course the broader you are, the more likely you will be matched - and the more narrow your selection, the harder to match.


I'm sure you read the thread that was posted original by "my thoughts" a while ago, which discussed quite in detail those people going through HK adoptions. One of the posters, got matched to an older baby - 17 months I think - and is over the moon with her adoption. She had quite a broad selectivity from what I understand and got matched. It's worth a look to see what is out there.

Klaus, internatinal adoptions from HK invariably involve more difficult to place children (the Downs Syndrome babies are generally placed by the international unit) but that's because the more straightforward matches are with local and resident families.


Social Welfare does a very, very good job matching children with what parents have indicated they are interested in. However, as nonethnic chinese (which I'm assuming you are by your name), you will have to wait much longer than a local family would if you are only in a completely healthy baby girl as local HK chinese have priority in the matchings and that's what they're most interested in. That being said, as Cara said, excema, birthmarks and asthema can make a child more difficult to place with a local family, as would depression in a grandparent. One advantage about adopting in HK is that you really can know a lot about a child's medical and family backround.


We spent some time with our pediatrician when we were completing the medical questionaire, which was quite useful as there were many things we were initially hesitant about but it turns out there was no medical foundation for our concerns.


One thing about the timing for a HK adoption--you know you need to be resident of HK for 18 mo before beginning the approval process (I think you can participate in the workshops before then, but your written application will be held until you've been resident for 18 months) THEN your application is approved (usually 4-6 mo or so) and THEN you wait for a match, which for some people is quite quick but for others months and months and months. I suspect the quick matches mentioned above were to ethnic chinese families, I haven't heard of any qweilo families being matched that quickly. Although a nonethnic chinese baby would match quickly with a qweilo family, but most of the babies are ethnic chinese. THEN once you're matched, you still need to reside in HK for another 6 months for the adoption to be completed in the courts, afterwhich you will be able to get a passport for your child. So, add up the time and make sure you won't run into a problem on the back end (as we did).


Sorry for the wrong information on ISS--I'd tried to get our file transferred to ISS when we learned we were relocating, or to have them help us with a China adoption (we'd been approved in HK, after all), but ISS didn't deal with situations like ours. So I guess I misunderstood what they actually DO do. Anyway, you've found out.

I can back up what Cara said. My husband and I are both Americans and have adopted three children in Hong Kong. They are all healthy although considered "special needs" due to various reasons which did not necessarily effect their health. The longest we waited after approval was 3 months (in 2002). In October we were approved and matched in only two weeks with our son. By the way, they changed the rules and you can get babies even younger than 3 months now. He was 7 weeks when we met him. He did have a complicated background which was a factor in us getting matched so quickly. So it really depends on your preferences. I also know two other families (Americans) that adopted here and were matched very quickly. The process is very straightforward here with much less red tape and changing of the rules like you would see with a China adoption.

All, just for the record, I am sharing with you all the official answer I got from the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department. Evidently, I can apply after 12 month in HK and not 18:


In Hong Kong, the Adoption Unit of Social Welfare Department is the sole authority to proceed with local adoption arrangement. Our Adoption Program is a legal process by which parental rights and responsibilities over a particular child, who is under 18 years old and unmarried, are transferred from the birth parents/guardians to the adoptive parents. The aim of adoption service is to find permanent and stable homes for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to take care of them until they reach adulthood.





Persons, including local residents and expatriates, who wish to lawfully adopt a child in Hong Kong shall observe the following requirements:





i. Age - The applicants should be at least 25 years old;


ii. Marital status - The couple should marry for 3 years or more with stable marriage;


iii. Education - The applicants should reach at least primary 6 standard in order to provide necessary guidance to the child;


iv. Financial - The applicants should have stable job and income and have sufficient financial resources to maintain reasonable living standard;


v. Residency - Applicants should reside in Hong Kong previously for12 months or above so as to familiar with social environment and community resources, and stay in Hong Kong continuously for the coming 12 months after launching adoption application;


vi. Health condition - Applicants should be in good physical and mental health without serious illness and thus be able to raise a child to independence. Comprehensive medical health reports on both applicants are required.





For further details on the overall adoption process, you are most welcome to attend our English Briefing Session to be held once a month. After you have attended the Briefing Session and are considered qualified to the above requirements, you would be given an Adoption Application Form and Medical Reports for completion. You would also be given a “Child Preference List” to indicate your child preference. Within the list, you may indicate your acceptance to children with various background e.g. abandonment, unknown paternity, etc, and/or complicated family background e.g. birth parents with drug addiction, etc. As you may expect, the stricter the child preference, the longer the time for your family to get matched with a child; vice versa, the more relaxed your acceptance to our children, the shorter the matching time will be.

I know it's been years, but I just thought I'd post a reply with what I know based on my recent experience. I am also a U.S. citizen living in HK and adopting from China. We met with ISSHK and they said they could help us with adopting from China. But when I learned they only do around 5 adoptions for families adopting from China per year, and when they couldn't answer some very basic questions that should have been easy for them to answer, I knew I wanted a more experienced (with China) agency helping us. We are using the U.S. agency CCAI, and are getting really close to sending our dossier to China. They have been really great to work with and are very experienced with expat adoptions. The process has gone very smoothly with them. The downside is that we have to fly the social worker in from Malaysia for the home study and follow up visits. But there are others in in HK and Guangdong Province using her too, so at some point I figure we can share the expense of getting her here with another family. And we should be able to have one or more of our followup visits with a social worker in the U.S. when we are there visiting.... And maybe we'll take a vacation to Malaysia and have a visit while we're there. It's worth it with how easy the process is compared with the experience we would have had with ISSHK or another agency in the U.S. that isn't as familiar with expat adoptions....

PS-I'm curious, klausmathes, what you ended up doing.

Also, although they say "you can't adopt until you've lived in HK a year", what they don't tell you is that the application process can easily take a year (or at least 6 months), and you can start it right away. You don't have to wait a year to get started. We waited 8 or 9 months after moving to HK to get started on our application, but I wish we would have started months earlier so I could have taken my time more.