Update on the Adoption

This is an update of information given to us by our agency. The information provided is an update of changes that were made to the Taiwan C program...and are changes within Chung Yi orphanage (not our agency). This information will obviously change things with our wait time (if we are still allowed to adopt from Chung Yi), as well as other things with the adoption. Please keep in mind that I got the go ahead to post about this on a couple groups from our agency. Please keep in mind that this is all I can post of the email that was received by our agency yesterday...if you would like to know more about this particular orphanage, you may have to ask your agency about this as well. This is word for word what we were told... again, this ONLY pertains to the "rumors" about Chung Yi's policies changing.
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Here is an abstract on those rumors, followed by Chung Yi's corresponding clarification.

1) "Chung Yi said that the Taiwan government now expects that healthy birth parents will place their children for adoption within Taiwan."

Response from Chung Yi - "Chung Yi has been serving children and teenagers in need for 58 years, and all our services have been based on the needs of the children. Therefore, the objective of our adoption service is to find a suitable family for the children, more than to find a child for the family.

Taiwan government does expect the children to stay within the country as priority. Generally speaking, healthy* babies will try domestic adoption first, and if no suitable families can be found in around 3-6 months, the children will then be up for inter-country adoptions. Some governmental referring units will assess the child's age and physical and mental conditions, and if the child is older or has special needs physically or mentally and may have little chance in domestic, adoptions, they will refer the children for inter-country adoption directly. And for the guardians in non-government cases (i.e. birth families), we will inform the
guardians what they have to deal with in domestic and inter-country adoptions
respectively (such as races, identification, notification of birth family's
information etc.) for guardians' references and consideration, and we will respect their decision."

2) All healthy babies are going to Sweden because a- they give moms 406 paid days of leave and b- Sweden pays for college of the adopted child.

Response from Chung Yi - "At our foundation, whether it's domestic or inter-country adoption, we respect the decision of the guardians or the referral's caseworker at the city/county government, and the social workers at our foundation will not designate a particular country or cooperative agency."

3) You cannot have ever been divorced.

Response from Chung Yi - "We wish that the adopters do not have more than 3 marriages (that is, it is ok that the adopters are in their 2nd marriage now.) The reason for this is that learning from our experiences working with the guardians/birth families or governmental referring units, adopters who have more than 3 marriages are not easily chosen by the adoptive child's guardians. Therefore, we list this requirement because we do not want theapplying adoptive family to be continuously not chosen by the guardians and wait too long."

4) They are only working with parents in their 30s.

Response from Chung Yi - We are open for applications from adopters at the age of 25-50. For special needs cases, we are open for adopters up to 55 years old. However, from our work experience, if the adoptive child is younger, the guardian of the child usually chooses the adoptive parents below 40 years old, because the guardian will take the adopters' age and physical strength into consideration as to whether the younger child can be taken care of properly.

. *"Healthy" generally means without known health issues. In Taiwan, Hep-B and Hep
C is not considered special needs
. *Children coming from orphanages and institutions, even though described as
healthy, usually have certain degree of developmental delays.

5) You cannot have more than 1 child.

Response from Chung Yi - We wish the number of children in the adoptive family does not exceed 4 (including the adoptive children the family is adopting.) The reason for this is that in Taiwan most families are small families with less than 3 children. Guardians will consider the family from the guardians' own life experience, and they are concerned that when there are too many children in the family, the adoptive child will not be taken good care of. Therefore, the guardians usually do not choose an adoptive family with relatively more children.

6) You cannot have any medical issues.

Response from Chung Yi - Guardians in general expect the adopters to be physically and mentally healthy. If the adopters have cured their medical conditions, relevant proofs need to be provided. But based on our experience, adopters who have had mental illness or cancers are not easily chosen.


Again, this is information that I asked my
caseworker if I could post and it was ok'ed. Any other information was
agency specific and pertained to those signed with them.
Thanks for reading...
Gina