Although many would-be parents are waiting longer and longer to adopt children from China (due to changes in the Chinese adoption procedures), there are many parents who have realized their dream of adopting a child from China in about a year or so! There are many children, babies as well as older children, who are readily available for adoption – these children are identified as children with special needs. In many other countries, these children would not even carry the label of “special needs” because such medical conditions are often minor and/or very treatable. Adoptive parents who find that they can be flexible regarding such medical conditions, let their placement agencies know which specific conditions they feel that they can handle. There are many adoption agencies in the United States with strong China adoption programs that are able to refer a child who is identified as having “special needs” to a prospective adoptive family. Unlike the traditional “healthy child” referrals that are made by the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA), referrals of special needs children are made by the adoption agency here in the U.S. Families have the opportunity to have a medical doctor with expertise in international adoption medicine review the child’s medical reports before deciding on whether or not they feel comfortable parenting the child. This way, parents can identify what types of medical services the child will need to address his/her special needs and assure that such resources are available. Some of the families who have been already waiting as many as three to four years for the referral of a healthy child have decided to “switch over” to the special needs program, and have completed an adoption long before a healthy child referral would have been made. Here are the stories of four typical families: [more...]