"Special Needs" in China

robin ♦ August 4, 2005 ♦ Leave Your Comment

When a child has anything outside the norm-heart murmur, cleft lip or palate, cyst, or even birth mark-China considers them “special needs”. I mean really, what child doesn’t have special needs anyway. In China, they don’t even offer children with any kind of mental disability for adoption. But once every 6 weeks or so, they will send our agency a group of around 20 referrals for children with minor “special needs” and they usually have a limited amount of time to place them with families. If they aren’t placed then China may send them to another agency or may give up and leave them in an orphanage until they turn 16, at which time most are turned out on the streets to fend for themselves. Ella Grace came to our agency on this list on June 8, 2005. She was on this list because of her 2nd degree cleft palate which is still unrepaired. Because of her palate-which is unique in that there is no lip involvement just like our Katy-we knew this was the child God had for us. That was the “marker” God used to identify her for us. That was pretty special in our eyes.