The Department of Health (DOH) have received notification from the Chinese Centre of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) that they are not going to impose a quota on adoption applications for the period 1 December 2002 to 31 November 2003, according to the DOH website.

The ban is to be lifted as China's desired goal of shortening the matching time and reducing their backlog has been met by imposing the quota in 2001-2002 and that they do not feel it is necessary to continue the quota for a further year.

The CCAA has stressed however, that all applications being sent to them must fully meet their criteria, and must all be of a high quality. They will turn down any application not meeting their requirements or if documents are found to be missing.

The CCAA has also informed the DOH that they will not accept applications for single adopters aged 50 or above or applications from single adopters who are homosexual.