Seven thousand Chinese children were adopted last year by families overseas. Some watchers of China's orphanages fear that this may distract officials from seeking local solutions to the problem of child abandonment. But international adoptions are also giving rise to a new associational phenomenon - networks of adopting parents who are determined both to respect their children's cross-cultural identity, and to channel support to their little sisters left behind. Jim Weldon reports.

The number of international adoptions from China has risen steeply over the last decade. The government agency in charge, the China Centre for Adoption Affairs (CCAA), does not release figures, but in 2000 the United States issued more than 5,000 visas to children adopted from China, up from just 61 in 1991¹. China is now the main source of international adoptions into the US; and the US is the most common destination for adopted Chinese children. But Canadian, British, Danish and Norwegian families are also adopting out of China, and adoption support agencies estimate that a total of around 7,000 Chinese children were adopted last year.

It takes at least a year to process an adoption from China to the United States and costs prospective parents between USD 15,000 to 20,000. This includes assessment procedures in both countries, the trip to China to collect the new family member, and a fee of USD 3,000 to 7,000 to the orphanage concerned.

In October 2001, CCAA imposed a ceiling on the total number of international adoptions (although the actual number has not been disclosed), ostensibly to deal with the backlog of applications building up at the CCAA. At the same time it was announced that a maximum of five per cent of applications would be accepted from single parent families. Previously, according to adoption groups, some thirty per cent of adoptions came from single parents, and many of these were in fact gay couples. China specifically forbids adoption by gay people - the documentation process requires singles to provide an affidavit to assert their heterosexuality - and the quota is seen by many as aimed at curbing this. The CCAA website states that homosexuality is considered a mental illness by the China Medical Association, although in fact the Association changed its position over two years ago.

Meanwhile, many of the overseas families with a new connection to China are forging new networks and associations. These not only provide mutual support for adopting parents and communities for their children, but often also seek ways to improve the environment for children still in the care of China's children's homes.

Our Chinese Daughters Foundation (OCDF) was established by Dr. Jane Liedtke in 1995. She had adopted a daughter in 1994. A past and current resident of China, Dr. Liedtke felt that other adoptive families she met didn't necessarily understand the country or its culture. OCDF began by running weekend 'culture programmes' in the US but has now developed to include a range of cultural and educational tours in China, from Yangtze cruises to two-week language and culture courses. Dr. Liedtke sees this as a way of both broadening the parents' understanding of their child's heritage, while also equipping the children to respond to the issues they will face growing up in a new culture. OCDF has a special focus on supporting single parents.

Families with Children from China (FCC) and Children Adopted from China (CACH) are mutual support networks of adoptive families. FCC is a federation of independent local chapters, mainly in the US but also in Scandinavia, Spain, Australia, Ireland, Canada and the UK. As well as maintaining a website with information on the adoption process, individual chapters arrange regular meetings and cultural events. FCC also advocates for adoptive families in their home countries and for children in care in China. Many chapters raise funds to support charitable initiatives in Chinese orphanages. In 1996 FCC chapters founded the Foundation for Chinese Orphanages which, along with the Orphanage Assistance Program run by FCC's New York chapter, benefit from national charitable appeals. They have channelled money to orphanages in 14 Chinese provinces (over USD 300,000 from FCC as of the end of 2001) through the Ministry of Civil Affairs, helping pay for refurbishments, scholarships for orphans, medical care and foster programmes.

Children Adopted from China is a UK parents' group with close ties to FCC and a similar supportive role. The group channels financial support through the UK charity, One World Orphanage Trust. As well as donating through Civil Affairs Bureaus to individual orphanages, the Trust has sponsored projects by the US-based Philip Hayden Foundation to provide corrective surgery for children with cleft palates in Guizhou. It has also paid school fees for a Tibetan orphan's school, in conjunction with UK charity Rokpa Trust.

Another recent initiative is the Homeland Children's Foundation, founded in the US last year by Pamela Thomas, Nancy Robson and Dr. Hong Haiyang ( ). Dr. Hong says the Foundation will focus on assisting children with special needs, initially concentrating on support for education. Dr. Hong has personal links with Jiangsu province, so the Foundation began by supporting the improvement of facilities in two local orphanages, and also spent USD 2,000 on Chinese New Year gifts. They have now begun a scholarship programme to send the orphans to primary school. They are currently sponsoring 52 such children, and hope to expand to supporting 100 by the end of the year, gradually enlarging the programme as resources allow.

Those resources include donations from adoptive families in the US, but Dr. Hong has also succeeded in soliciting aid in cash and kind from Chinese well-wishers. The Foundation is now in the process of establishing a Chinese board of directors and preparing to apply for official status.

The Half the Sky Foundation, also based in the US, concentrates on improving child-care methodology and training of Chinese orphanage staff, in the belief that this is a more fundamental problem than lack of financial resources.

Founded in 1998 by adopting families, the Foundation followed up a year of fundraising and research with a baseline study of a sample group of children in 2000, and provided training to a first group of 'nannies' and teachers for pilot projects in Hefei (Anhui) and Changzhou (Jiangsu). Follow-up testing of the children involved in these pilots showed not just that they were happier and more engaged but also revealed marked improvements in cognitive ability and a reduction of behaviour associated with institutional living.

The Foundation seeks to adapt to the Chinese context the 'Reggio approach,' an early childhood development model created in post-war Italy that emphasises environmental factors in early childhood development and the importance of documentation in assessing a child's progress. The pilot schemes have developed two main projects - an Infant Nurture Programme that trains and pays older women to come to children's homes to give care and attention to babies aged 0 to 18 months, and a Pre-school Programme concentrating on care for 2 to 7 year olds.

Teachers for the latter programme are given two to four weeks training in the Reggio style of child-centred education. The Foundation reports that the approach vastly improves the children's development and that teachers also achieve greater job satisfaction and personal enrichment.

Half the Sky also arranges for US parents to provide 'sweat equity' labour, coming to China to personally participate in renovating facilities at children's homes.

Half the Sky this June opened a sixth child care centre, in Shanghai, joining those already established in Anhui, Jiangsu, Chongqing and Sichuan. The schemes are intended to serve as models for other state run homes in the same provinces.

The Foundation, which has worked in partnership with the China Population Welfare Fund, is also building links with China's social work networks.

Granted that all of these efforts are motivated by good will, how effective are they likely to be?

Long-term commitment, of the kind that Half the Sky appears to be making, is essential to achieving sustainable improvements, in the view of Sheila Purves, China Programme Coordinator of the Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation. A major provider of medical rehabilitation services in Hong Kong since 1959, the Society has for seven years also worked extensively in orphanages throughout China, promoting improved care and training models for disabled children, especially those with cerebral palsy.

Ms. Purves believes that the greatest need is for community- and family-oriented programmes and community support networks for children with disability, behavioural and social problems.

"None of these are easy to do in the short term or in-and-out visits," she says. "They require long-term commitment and a recognition that local people need to do it their way in their time, if it is going to continue." She notes a "tendency to think that volunteers to 'fix' things are always great - but sometimes it creates quite a burden on the receiving centre. From our point of view, it's worth it for the outcome; but I'm not sure that the local people see it that way."

Recognition is also due for "all the local people working in their own way to improve things. There is not much visibility for them, and maybe they want it that way. But it means that when we foreigners come in, we think we are the only ones doing anything. It's easy to get official support when you come from overseas with possible money and status; but it is not so easy to work under the conditions, expectations and pressures that the local people do."

Contacts

Half the Sky Foundation
Zhang Zhirong, China Representative,
+86 1390 130 1870 zhirongz@hotmail.com

Our Chinese Daughters Foundation
Dr. Jane Liedtke janeliedtke@yahoo.com
www.ocdf.org

Homeland Children's Foundation
Dr Hong Haiyang +86 1300 256 7777

Children Adopted from China
www.cach.org.uk

Families with Children from China
www.fwcc.org

Foundation for Chinese Orphanages
www.thefco.org

Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation
spurves@rehabsociety.org.hk

¹. As reported by the US Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs (http://travel.state.gov/orphan_numbers.html). The annual figures refer to visas issued in a US fiscal year, which runs September to September. The number of visas issued to children from China dipped slightly in 2002, to 4,681. From 1991 to 2001 the total number of international adoptions to the US (from all sources) rose from 9,050 to 19,237.