On the occasion of the opening of China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA), in order to promote inter-country work and expand child welfare cause, deepen the cooperation with adoption agencies and enhance communication and exchange, CCCWA held a briefing conference on inter-country adoption on March 28, 2011 in Beijing.

Facilitators from 76 adoption agencies attended the meeting, and four directors in charge came from afar to be present at the meeting. Director-General Mr. Zhang Shifeng, Deputy Directors-General Ms. Chu Xiaoying and Gan Weiwei made briefings respectively on the work in general of CCCWA and future developments, new measures to guarantee the rights and interests of adopted children, and assessment results of the performance of adoption agencies in 2010. Later, nine adoption agencies from US, Spain, France, the Netherland and Sweden introduced their experiences in aspects such as placement of special focus children, older children and severe special needs children, organization of “Trip of Hope” and One-to-One Assistance program, and practices on how to prepare home study reports and screen families, psychological assessment and post-placement reporting, etc.

The speech by Mr. Zhang Shifeng covered topics such as retrospection on the past work and expectations on future developments. From the perspective of system construction, expedition and streamlining of adoption procedure, adjustment of requirements on adoptive applicants, domestic adoption and protection of children’s rights and interests, Mr. Zhang made a summarization of last year’s work, and emphasized that in the future we will continue to stick to the principle of putting children’s interest as priority, and advance the inter-country adoption work, expand the scope of child welfare and integrate adoption and child welfare, inter-country adoption and domestic adoption, inter-country adoption and post-placement feedback. Mr. Zhang also touched upon questions and issues of great interest and concern to many adoption agencies, and responded to issues concerning future developments of inter-country adoption, waiting time for adoption referrals, relationship between inter-country adoption and child welfare, international cooperation in child welfare, ways to apply for participation in “Trip of Hope” and One-to-One Assistance program, involvement of social workers, updates of special needs children’s files, etc.

Deputy Director-General Ms. Chu Xiaoying elaborated on the significance of the Notice on Guarantee of Adopted Children’s Rights and Interests by Intensive Protection Measures from three aspects, i.e. improvement of home study reporting, improvement on post-placement service, full play of the role by government departments and adoption agencies. She also explained in details the requirements on reference letters in adoption applications, psychological assessment reports for adoption applicants in certain circumstances and adoption training, and further interpreted the importance of post-placement services for protection of adopted children and extension of the length and increase of frequency for post-reporting feedback.
Deputy Director-General Ms. Gan Weiwei notified about the assessment results of adoption agency performance in 2010. She gave high commendation of the twenty adoption agencies which show excellent performance in 2010, as well as agencies which did a good job in aspects such as adoptive family screening and home study reporting, placement of special needs, special focus and older children, donation to child care and the Tomorrow Plan, welfare program cooperation, post-placement reporting, researching and suggestions, etc. She also pointed out some problems of the agencies’ work and hoped that agencies would improve on their job.

This meeting is a very important one after the change of name of CCCWA. It not only gave briefings on basic information, exchanged experiences, solved questions and doubts, but also announced the significance of the change of name and pictured the future development for inter-country adoption and child welfare. It was very encouraging and effective and was well received by those who attended the meeting.