Bay Area Adoption Services is privileged to be among the agencies recognized by the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) to do international adoptions from China. Since 1991, Bay Area Adoption Services has helped over 860 Chinese orphans find homes in the Bay Area.
The following are some facts about the China adoption program:

TYPES OF CHILDREN

Almost all of the children who are available for international adoption in China have been orphaned or abandoned and reside in the social welfare institutions. There will be little to no information regarding medical background or family history.
The CCAA, located in Beijing, is the governmental agency that coordinates adoptions from China and this agency makes the referrals of all children who may be adopted by foreign families. Adoptive parents can make a request to the CCAA that the child they wish to adopt be of a certain age or from a certain province, or with no known special needs. They also may request to adopt a boy. However, the final decision rests with the CCAA who assigns all children to the adoptive parents. Infants over 8 months old are available. The China authorities will not "guarantee" that all requests will be honored.

CHINA WAITING CHILDREN PROGRAM:
Bay Area Adoption Services is one of the agencies approved by the CCAA to seek adoptive families for children with special needs and older children over 6 years of age. The wait time for referral, once your paperwork is received in China, is much shorter than most programs (average 5 months.) For more information on this program, click here or contact our China program coordinator Xiaoqing Cai at xqcai@comcast.net.

REQUIREMENTS

• Must live within the BAAS licensing area of northern California. Please read additional Legal Requirements.
• Married couples only. No singles.
• Married couples must be married over 2 years if there are no previous
  marriages. If there are previous marriages then the present marriage
  must be over 5 years. However, no more than two previous marriages will be allowed.
• Each parent must be 30 to 50 years old. No parent can be outside of this
  range. Upper limit can be 55 for a family in the waiting child program.
• The CCAA wants healthy parents - no infectious disease, no mental disease
  (including depression or anxiety), no blindness, and no serious disease or
  disability. No blindness of deafness, unless the applicant is applying to adopt a special needs child with this specific disability.
• Both parents must have a BMI under 40.
• At least one parent must have a stable job. Income requirement is $10,000
  per family member including the child to be adopted. * Family’s net
  assets must be over $80,000
• Each parent must have a high school education or higher.
• No more than five children in the home including the child to be adopted.
  The youngest child in the home must be over 1 year old. Exceptions will be
  considered for the waiting child program.
• No criminal record. The CCAA states: “Adoption applications will be given consideration on a case by case basis when either the husband or wife has less that three criminal records of slight severity with no severe outcomes” and it has happened at least 10 years ago. Also, the applicant must have less than five traffic law violations with no severe outcomes.
• The CCAA fees are $1500, which includes service and translation fee.  The orphanage fee is $5100.

BAY AREA ADOPTION SERVICES

(BAAS) will assist families in all the necessary steps for completing a China adoption. This includes: assisting with procedures, conducting the homestudy (which is mandatory both for CIS/USCIS and the Chinese government), putting you in contact with an experienced China program coordinator and with other adoptive families of Chinese children, and conducting post placement visits when you return home with your child.

The BAAS China Program Coordinator will be your link to the CCAA which oversees all adoptions. The coordinator will forward your dossier to CCAA and monitor the referral progress. Once your dossier arrives at CCAA, it will be reviewed, approved and a child will be assigned to you. Once your dossier is logged in at CCAA, the waiting time to get a referral is currently 36 to 48 months (24 to 25 months for Chinese American expedited process). The program coordinator will coordinate your trip to China to complete your adoption.

IN CHINA

Your trip in China is arranged by China Women’s Travel Service which provides hotel, inter-country travel and escorting services. You will have two travel destinations in China:

• 1) The capital city of the province where your child’s social welfare institute is located
• 2) Guangzhou where you will apply a US visa for your child at the American consulate

TIME INVOLVED

At present, the entire adoption process is taking approximately 38 to 48 months. The first 6 months of the process involves completing the homestudy and receiving NBC approval. After the China dossier is completed and sent to CCAA, the referral time frame is currently about 36-45 months and 24 months for Chinese American families. Once a child has been assigned, the family is expected to travel to China approximately 6 to 8 weeks later. The stay in China is about two weeks.

FEES INVOLVED

All adoptions are finalized in China -- that means they are "adopt-abroad" adoptions. The following is a general estimate of the costs involved:

• BAAS fee: ($4,600 - $5,400)
  Includes registration, pre-adopt class, homestudy, paperwork assistance, CIS support, overseas program consultation, 2 post placement visits, assistance in obtaining a California birth certificate for the child and all post-adoption paperwork. The higher fee applies if only one parent of a two parent couple travels.
• China adoption fee: ($15,000 approximately)
  Includes state certification, authentication and translation of documents, China government fees, orphanage donation fee of $5,000, visa and passport fee, coordination fee including communication with CCAA.

Internal China travel

$1,400 - $1,600 (approximately, per person for stay in China) Includes hotels, inter-country travel and escorting services. Airfare to China is additional.
Airfare to China: (varies)
Generally speaking, the entire cost of completing a China adoption is approximately $22,000, including the BAAS fee, all adoption processing in China and travel.

• Please note that this information is subject to change without notice as changes occur in government/country regulations and/or adoption procedures. For the latest information, please call BAAS directly.