More Speculation

This is long. You know those puzzles where you are given three pieces of information and expected to figure out 14 pieces of information from those three? I'm great at those. If you don't want to follow along on my explanations, just hit the bold parts and then read on below the second bold. The rest is just the explanation of how I came to those points. ----------------------------- I kind of remember a statement back when quota's were instituted in 2001, that once things started expiring it caused a lot of extra work for the CCAA, and that they intended to get the wait below 10 months and keep it there. As I've said before, they obviously aren't as concerned about this anymore. After all, when the April/May/June dossiers arrived in huge numbers they were logged in, so the CCAA knew about them at the time. It's not like the matching room didn't know about them until they got to them. So, they've known for a while this was going to create a slowdown. One would think that if they were going to put another quota into place they'd have done it last fall. Most agencies are still saying that the wait is expected to go to 12 months. A few are warning of 18 month waits, but most of the big ones are sticking in the 12 to 14 month range. If it takes three months to get through June (and I'm seeing a lot of people who say that their agency says it is going to), then we're at 12 months at that point. Aren't we? Does that mean they have a plan for how to go back to whole months after June? According to our poll numbers, while June does look a good bit bigger than the following months.. it's not three times as big. If they are going to be able to do July in one month, then June should only take a month and a half to get through. But, I don't think any of us are counting on them getting through June in two batches. If it takes three months to get through June, then July will take right at two months. Want to see the math? 208 / 3 = 69.33 144 / 69.33 = 2.08 And before ya'll start saying "oh, they can do way more than 69 matches in a month". Please remember that we are talking about a percentage of the actual amount the CCAA has. I'll say it again, we are hoping that our poll gives an accurate cross section - the numbers don't matter, only the ratios matter. Don't get hung up no the numbers. (maybe I should make this a disclaimer that gets stuck onto any analysis I do?) Anyway, back to the point. And this is a big point. There are no months until you get to December that are close to being a third the size of June... and the odds are that December and later are not that small, but the people who are LID in those months aren't stalking a rumor blog like the people who are closer to their referral are. Do you understand the significance of this? Let me say it again. If it takes three months to get through June, then unless the CCAA has something up their sleeve, we are stuck at half months probably at least through December or January, maybe longer. (In other words, until we reach the point that dossiers do start diminishing, and I'm just now seeing a lot of people talking about jumping ship to another country... in the past week I personally know of almost a dozen people who were in the dossier process for China who are now deciding on a different country). That was point number one. Here is point number two: In late 2004 a family had the opportunity to spend a couple of days with someone who works in the matching room at the CCAA. He told them that on average he matched 175 to 200 families per month, and there were 8 people who worked in his department. Well, 8 times 175 is 1400 and 8 times 200 is 1600. That would put the yearly number at between 16,800 and 19,200. I have every reason to believe this person. She blogged about it at the time, it's not something she is just now coming up with. Are we to believe that they were matching that many in 2004 and now can only match 13,000? I know they are saying that they are getting less paperwork for babies, but that is a LOT less paperwork. Not only that, but in 2004 the U.S. adopted 7,044 babies from China. Are there 10,000 babies being adopted to other countries? That's huge. So, point number two is that it appears the CCAA is matching less people now than they were in 2004, in spite of the fact that more people are submitting dossiers. My guess is still that the CCAA is heading for one of these scenarios:

• They know they will soon have more babies available (from new orphanages maybe?) and will be able to keep the wait from extending past 12 to 14 months. (this goes against the Dutch statement, BTW)
• They are hoping that the increased wait times become their own "quota" and stop the massive influx of new dossiers. This would mean they have no problems with the wait from LID to referral approaching 2 years before the wait can start to go down again.

We have been told that they are working on bringing more orphanages into the international program. If we are to believe the Dutch statement (and I see no reason to not believe them), then for some reason this isn't happening and they don't expect to be able to bring anymore babies into the program than are already there. But, if they take 3 months to do June and 2 months to do subsequent months, then it looks like this (this is for referrals going out at the very end of the listed month): Referral Month...LID's Dated 2006 April.......June 2006 May.........June 2006 June........June 2006 July........July 2006 August......July 2006 September...August 2006 October.....August 2006 November....September 2006 December....September 2007 January.....October 2007 February....October 2007 March.......November 2007 April.......November 2007 May.........December 2007 June........December 2007 July........January 2007 August......January This would mean that the end of January people would wait 18 months. I am desperately hoping that they have some plan to keep this from happening. My biggest hope right now rests on the fact that most of the big agencies are still telling their people they expect the wait to stop somewhere in the 12 to 14 month range. With a September LID, at this point my biggest hope is that we are home before Christmas. That isn't looking so good.