Adopted children searching for their birth parents have a hard time finding answers. Growing up without knowing where you come from has a big impact on mental well-being. Shashitu Hitzerd is adopted herself and works at the Adoption Support Center: “Care providers are not very familiar with the complex reality of adoption.”

Impossible task?

I was adopted from Ethiopia and grew up in the Netherlands. I was abandoned as a baby and my birth parents were unknown. They supposedly could not take care of me. This made the search for my past an impossible task.

Where do you start looking if you don't know the names of your birth parents, the day or the place you were born? It seemed impossible and yet I kept asking myself: Do I look like my parents? Do I have any brothers and sisters? Why was I given up? Are my parents still alive? When no answers are forthcoming, as a child you form a fantasy image of your birth parents and your past.

'The search for my past was dismissed as an impossible task.'

In India, children who can be fostered have to be above the age of six years living in child care institutions and having “unfit guardians”.

Doing away with the rule that limited foster care to married couples, the Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry has now permitted single individuals — including those who are unmarried, widowed, divorced, or legally separated — aged 35 to 60 years, to foster a child and adopt after two years, according to the recently released revised Model Foster Care Guidelines. However, while a single woman can foster and eventually adopt a child of any gender, a man can only do so for male children. Previously, under the 2016 Model Foster Care Guidelines, only married couples, referred to as “both spouses” in old documents, were permitted to foster a child.

Fostering is an arrangement in which a child temporarily lives with either extended family or unrelated individuals. In India, children who can be fostered have to be above the age of six years living in child care institutions and having “unfit guardians”. Minors who are placed in the category of “hard to place or children having special needs” can also be fostered.

Apart from opening up fostering to any person “irrespective of their marital status (single/unmarried/widow/divorcee/legally separated)” and whether or not they “have biological son or daughter”, the revised guidelines have also allowed the foster parent to adopt a child after she has been in her foster care for minimum of two years, as opposed to five years earlier.

In case of married couples who want to foster, the new guidelines state that “no child shall be given in foster care to a couple/spouse” unless they have had a “stable marital relationship of two years”. Earlier, there was no such caveat for couples.

New State Department ruling makes inter-country adoption harder for prospective parents | Opinion

As an adoptee during China’s one-child policy, I’ve always understood and appreciated the value that international adoption can bring, especially as a response to child welfare crises and changing politics across the globe.

Unfortunately, new regulations from the Department of State on inter-country adoption impose significant burdens on parents trying to provide homes for vulnerable children overseas.

Opinion

This comes at an inopportune time when inter-country adoptions are already at an all-time low. International adoptions declined by 93% from 2004 to 2022. A 2023 State Department report showed that there were only 1,275 intercountry adoptions, down from 1,517 the year prior. Although many factors contribute to this drop, it is clear that the government is not establishing partnerships and pathways to facilitate adoption.

Police said, they got a tip-off about a gang of women visiting Jagtap dairy area for the sale of an infant

PUNE Wakad police have arrested six women in a child trafficking case in Kalewadi area of Pimpri Chinchwad city on Friday.
Accordingly, police laid that trap and questioned the women who stepped out from two auto rickshaws. As they failed to provide satisfactory answers they were detained. (REPRESENTATIVE PIC)

Police said, they got a tip-off about a gang of women visiting Jagtap dairy area for the sale of an infant.

The accused have been identified as Saida Bhimrao Kamble (35) from Shivajinagar; Supriya Sharad Waghmare (39) from Dhankawadi; Lalita Dattatreya Giri Gosavi (45) from Yerawada; Afarin Danesh Sheikh (25) from Hadapsar; Amrin Rahid Sayyad (32) from Yerawada and Asma Javed Sheikh (30) from Hadapsar.

During investigation police recovered conversations about the deal and they had also shared photos of the infants.

Mumbai: A sperm or egg donor has no legal right on the child and cannot claim to be its biological parent, the Bombay High Court held on Tuesday while allowing a 42-year-old woman visitation rights to her five-year-old twin daughters.
 

The woman, in her plea, said her daughters, born via surrogacy, were living with her husband and younger sister, who was the egg donor.

The petitioner's husband had claimed since his sister-in-law was the egg donor, she had a legitimate right to be called a biological parent of the twins and that his wife had no right over them.

A single bench of Justice Milind Jadhav, however, refused to accept this contention, citing that though the petitioner's younger sister was the egg donor, she has no legitimate right to claim that she is a biological parent of the twins.

The court said the role of the younger sister is that of an egg donor, rather, a voluntary donor, and at the most, she may qualify to be a genetic mother and nothing more.

Over 5000 case files stored in the basement of the old district court building in Sector 17 were damaged due to flooding

Around 5,000 to 6,000 High Court case files stored in the basement of the old district court building in Sector 17 were damaged due to flooding caused by heavy rainfall on Sunday. The downpour led to sewage backflow, resulting in extensive flooding in the basement.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court maintains two record rooms in this basement, which houses approximately 20 lakh files of decided cases. After the heavy rain, security guards inspected the basement, which also houses Chandigarh’s Arbitration Centre, and discovered that about a foot of water had accumulated, damaging thousands of files.

The flooding left stacks of case files, some decades old, soaked and susceptible to further damage. The waterlogged area was reportedly caused by an overflow of sewage and toilets in the basement.

Upon being informed, the security staff alerted High Court officials. Following this, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Sheel Nagu, along with Justice Deepak Sibal, who is also the Chairman of the Building Committee, and other High Court officials, personally visited the record room to assess the damage.

Former patients, staff and families welcome investigation into historical abuse allegations at Wolston Park Mental Hospital

Samarpan Programme for Adoption, Research Counselling and Consultancy. - ANNUAL REPORT 2016

Chandigarh: The Punjab govt is establishing adoption agencies in every district of the state to simplify the process of child adoption and creating 172 new posts to strengthen the infrastructure for the adoption.Social security, women and child development minister Dr Baljit Kaur has instructed all the additional deputy commissioners to ensure that child adoption applications received in the state are processed within the stipulated time. Kaur said the department is providing financial assistance of Rs 26 lakh per year to various non-governmental organisations involved in the adoption process. Over 300 destitute and orphaned children through the department's proper implementation of the child adoption process.

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The legislative history shows that restraint is appropriate in the case of adoption if there is opposition from one of the parents. In the context of a complex divorce, such as the case with the parents of an adult, even more restraint is appropriate when it comes to (step-parent) adoption. Moreover, the child has now reached the age of majority, which also requires restraint, since adoption is in principle intended as a child protection measure.

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