Hi all,
My wife and I applied for a mainland adoption, but are dismayed that the wait time suddenly jumped to 3+ years right after our dossier filed with the CCAA.
In two months we will be eligible to apply for local adoption in HK. I am white and my wife is Japanese. We have no children. The HK adoption unit told me that they have an (explicitly racist) policy of placing babies with Chinese couples first. She told me since we are not Chinese we might have to wait years and years.
Is this what other people experience? We are willing to take on a child with very minor special needs, but as this is our first child, we will struggle just learning to become parents so any non-correctable special need or child who is very old would be very difficult to take on.
Can anyone share any insight into realistically how long matching us with a child would take?
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Thanks for that. I was so annoyed after talking to the government worker today. I need some encouragement. Our efforts to start a family always seem to take one step forward and two steps back. Exzema I can deal with. Hell even I have that.
My agency in the US handling our mainland adoption asked us to take on a 2-year old with no right hand. We struggled with this for a few days and spoke to our parents about it but decided that out here on our own with no support it would be more than we could handle.
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My husband and have been in HK for two years now and we want to adopt as well but from what I can see online you have to have been married at least 3 years. Is this the case or will they consider the length of your relationship as a factor. We have been together for 7 years but only decided to marry in July 06 after school was all finished and we were sure we would make it together. It seems unfair to wait because we made a responsible decision!!?? Any info would be useful. Good luck klausmathes!
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Thanks cara. I have some time at Easter and may try to round up "supporting documents" and give it a try. Was your experience through Mother's Choice or ISS or SWD?
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788
17 yrs ago
Hi klausmathes,
I am assuming the HK adoption unit belonged to CCAA not to HKIS. Would it be of any use to you to go with HKIS? They do china adoptions as well. Perhaps the agencies might be different and more suited to your needs. My husband and I had had a meeting with 2 HKIS officers (the ones focused on India) and they were really nice but straightforward, explained the process without judgements. I am sorry you are being put in this really frustrating position. Its really not fair of them to offer you a child with such serious disability specially for a first time adoptive parent who would be nervous (atleast I have been, through whatever little processing we did with our situation) if not more.
I am playing the devil's advocate here- but I wonder if your agency is wondering why you are not adopting from Japan or any other asian country. And if your wife's being japanese plays any remote part in the chinese psyche.
Most countries do give preference to their own people and culture first. Its not racist but common sense in their opinion where the child could assimilate better. In Africa, where the war ravages are high, they still prefer the child is taken care by extended family first. In india, the child has to be rejected twice(which I find very sad cos it normally happens due to racism- the child is too dark etc) by Indian parents living in India, then Indian parents living abroad. And it gets more complicated as the combinations get more complex with different nationalities, religion, etc.
Nadine, marriage is a bit of a sticky issue here. You cannot even do IVF if you are not married for some min. period- why I don't understand. Why don't you talk to a social worker at Mother's Choice or HKIS or any other agency and ask his/her opinion specifically for your case?
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I was debating just going in and talking to them because adoption wasn't a difficult decision for us. My husband was adopted from Korea as well as his sister some 30 years ago. We have a niece and a nephew from there as well and one niece from China. Adoption is just part of our family. I think I'll go in over my Easter holiday and talk to someone. I suppose it can't hurt and maybe I'll get a better sense of the process. Thanks!
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Japan adoption is not an option. It is a cultural taboo in Japan and people don't adopt outside of extended family relationships. We are also seeking donor eggs and would love to get them in Japan but again Japanese society won't permit this sort of thing unless the donor is a sister, which my wife doesn't have. Basically there is nothing in Japan that could help us.
Our effort to adopt from mainland China is not connected to any agency in HK. It is a seperate issue. I think my agency, which is based in Oklahoma, grossly understated the foreseeable wait time for a referral. I am glad someone agrees with me that my agency has not been fair. I think people who don't have any children whatsoever and who have been trying for years to have *some* kind of family are in a vastly different situation than experienced parents who could take on a child with a severe disability.
Now I put on my lawyer hat. Common sense is nothing more than someone's private opinion. If someone can present some scientific or statistical evidence that an adopted child would be better off by virtue of the skin-color of the adoptive parents that would be one thing. Absent any such compelling evidence however, any government policy that discriminates on the basis of race is morally reprehensible. If the HK government actually delays our application for local adoption for in favor of a Chinese couple who applied later than we did, it is a racist policy - especially if the same agency places a Chinese baby with us in the end. It becomes a matter not of whether a Chinese baby would thrive under our care, but which couple should get a baby first. I work hard and pay taxes just as anyone else in Hong Kong does, so I resent the government telling me others will get special treatment because I am not the right color.
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KAT8
17 yrs ago
I don't know if the adoption procedure has changed since the handover but we adopted a 3 months old baby boy in early 1997. I am Nepalese and my husband is English. The only query they had was that we were so young to adopt ( I was 29, husband was 27). However the adoption procedure was very quick, we handed in our application in June 1996 and the baby was "chosen" for us by March 1997. They told us that of course Chinese couple who were waiting for a baby after approval would have first priority, which we thought was fine. One of the reason we got our son so quick was that we were not fussy regarding gender, his background etc. Our social worker told us that some Chinese couple wanted babies that were born at a particular time therefore making the waiting time for them very long.
I think the adoption procedure in HK is very good and fast.
Good luck with your journey! My son is now 11!!!!!!! Goodness how times does really fly!
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Thank you for this useful information. Can someone please tell me what HKIS stands for? What about CCAA? THank you very much in advance!
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Klausmathes
The Hong Kong Social Welfare Dept is not being racist in discriminating in favour of HK Chinese parents. They are following the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (not all countries abide by this) which recommends that consideration be made of a childs ethnic background, religion / culture / race when placing him/her for adoption. A Chinese child in a Caucasion family will inevitably face more questions about their identiy than if they were placed with a family of their own race. The adoption unit is all about the needs of the child - not the needs of the prospective parents. So yes its only right that a Chinese couple adopt a Chinese baby, even if a non-Chinese couple have been waiting longer. Infact the adoption unit does not operate a waiting list, it matches each child to the best suited parents, and that means following United Nations Convention
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Hi MayC. We find each other again. I hope you are doing well. Can you give me some info on this support group? I would love to join.
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OOOOhhh! yes I will email her now! Thanks!
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The HK adoption unit IS racist. The UN Convention on the Rights of a Child mandates that "due regard shall be paid to the desirability of continuity in a child's upbringing and to the child's ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background."
"[D]ue regard" is not a mandate for systematic placement of ethnic non-Chinese adoptive parents in a queue behind Chinese. If the HK government judges that ethnic non-Chinese parents are sufficiently fit to raise a Chinese baby in the first place, then it is a racist policy to mandate such adoptive parents must wait longer because of an accident of their own birth gave them the wrong skin-color.
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I guess you put me in my place. Thanks Cara.
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aemom
17 yrs ago
My husband and I adopted our two children in Hong Kong.
He's Chinese (from the mainland) and I'm caucasian, so we were in the second tier (after Chinese couples, before non-Chinese couples). We said we would accept any healthy child between 0 and 2 years. The first adoption match (our son) was made within 9 months of our decision to adopt. The second match (our daughter) occured a few days after our home study was finished because our children are biological siblings.
The adoption process has changed in the last few years to include seminars as well as the initial meetings, applications, and home study. Adoption requirements and procedures require patience and tolerance of bureaucratic rubbish. (eg. on my medical examination report, the doctor neglected to fill in the prognosis for the tonsillectomy I had when I was 4 years old, so the form was returned to us!). But the final result is fantastic!
There are lots of rules, but the matches are made on a case-by-case basis. If you keep your eye on the goal and jump through the hoops, it all happens quickly.
With regard to adoption from China, I think an additional hurdle would be getting a one-way permit for the child to live with you in HK.
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Thanks for the support aemom!
We're very low priority for adoption / matching because we are causcasions and already have a child. But one thing is sure, I don't want to adopt a child illegally or unethically, how could I ever explain that to my adopted child in the future? Or even live with myself? But I remain patient and ever hopeful that next month a child might be matched with us, after all there is no queue, so you never know when a suitable child might be found.
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The first thing you want to do is to sign up for their information sesssion. They only take 10 couples in each session and they are held once per month, I believe. There, they'll give you a short application screening form. Once that's approved, you'll get a very long and detailed app to fill out. Then, there is the homescreening (3 months), two workshops and finally the matching panel. We , like Julie2, are low priority b/c we are caucasian and have two children. However, we would like an older child, so perhaps that will help. I do know of several people here who have successfully adopted and found the process straightforward. Also, the information about the child's history is known, whereas there is a lot of blackmarket activity going on in China and one may not ever know the real history of where the child came from. Good luck to you!
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Don't worry. My friend is also white and also had a japanese wife, and waited for about a year or so to adopt a baby girl from mother's choice. My other friend is American Chinese and his wife is white, also waited for about a year to adopt a beautiful boy from Mother's Choice. They say Mother's Choice sometimes have loads of babies and sometimes just have none. But they are both happy with the process.
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I just went to our second workshop at the Social Services and they said that right now there are around 70 adoptive families on the matching panel per month. And, from what I remember from the graph they showed us, it looked like around 6-8 newborns/month.
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