Children's House International is delighted to announce that they have been entrusted by the CCAA to place special needs and waiting older healthy children. This will now be referred to as our Waiting Child Program. The CCAA will send our agency medicals, growth reports, photos, and when possible videos of waiting children. Families will be able to review this information and apply to adopt a specific child who has a special need that they feel most comfortable and prepared to deal with. We are extremely excited about the opportunities this will open for the families and especially those sweet children who wait for someone to help them achieve their full potentials. As the coordinator of this program and the mother of a special needs child from China and four special needs children from the Marshall Islands, I am thrilled to think of the joy families will have a chance to experience as they are blessed to know the incredible spirit of their special needs child.

The Waiting Child Program will give children with special needs to opportunity to be "Green Lighted" or expedited so that they can join their families as quickly as possible. Families will have an opportunity to additionally prepare and educate themselves about parenting a child with a specific special need while they are waiting for the CCAA to give final approval. This will give families more time to arrange for insurance coverage, medical care, and educational intervention before the child comes home. Families will be better ready emotionally and financially to meet this wonderful challenge, which in turn benefits everyone.

The CCAA has spent considerable time and focus on establishing the basic requirements for adoptive families in the Waiting Child Program. The following are the basic family requirements as set forth by the CCAA:

1. Adopters are loving and caring, mentally qualified and prepared to nurture children of special needs.

2. Adopters have experience and skill to care for children of special needs.

3. Adopters have medical rehabilitation and nurturing plans specially worked out for children of special needs.

4. Adopters are in good economic positions and their annual incomes are higher than that of average adopters.

5. Adopters are physically and mentally healthy, free from contagious diseases, AIDS, cancers, psychosis or other diseases which might affect their ability to nurse and nurture children of special needs.

6. Adopters are of good conduct and have no criminal records.

7. Adopters promise to not give up adoptive relations and medical care to their adopted child.

For additional information on how to participate in this extraordinary program and to see personal information on the children currently in our Waiting Child Program, please contact Stefani directly at stefani@infowest.com or 435-867-5255.

Please read on to learn how one very special little girl changes the lives of all those around her.