With final adoption orders stalled in Maharashtra from January 11, about 170 prospective parents have been hit. However, international prospective parents are the worst hit as they have no right to foster

The joy was palpable even over the telephone. A call from a Mumbai-based adoption centre to a city in Europe in September 2022 reduced a couple in their mid-30s into a bundle of hugs and tears of joy. After a painful wait of almost 2.5 years, they were finally going to be parents to a 10-month-old. Giddy with joy, they clicked on an email attachment containing their daughter’s photograph.

The adoption process moved fast after that. In the first week of January, a District Magistrate (DM) concluded the hearing in their case, the penultimate step to adoption. The excited parents-to-be started planning their trip to India but that wasn’t to be.

On January 11, the Bombay HC directed the Maharashtra government not to transfer pending adoption proceedings to DMs, as mandated under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2021. In July 2021, the Rajya Sabha (RS) had passed an Amendment that transferred the power to issue adoption orders from civil courts to the DMs. The Amendment — which aimed to “strengthen” child protection under the JJ (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, and ensure “faster” delivery of adoption cases — was passed despite protests and without any discussion in the RS.

VISAKHAPATNAM: The waiting period for adoption of a child has been increasing for the prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) with each passing year in Andhra Pradesh. It is taking more than three to four years even for the referrals. For instance, only 90 children were placed for adoption in 2022-23, while thousands of PAPs registered their names for adoption with the 14 specialised adoption agencies of AP. Among the 90 children, 11 were intercountry adoptions. According to officials, more girls are being adopted in recent years, indicating a change in the society.

Speaking to TOI, Andhra Pradesh State Commission for Protection of Child Rights member Gondu Sitaram said that the long waiting period of the PAPs can be attributed to the fact that there are more waiting parents in comparison to a lesser number of children available for adoption in the state. "However, there should be no scope for any illegal adoptions, which may put the children at risk. The guidelines and rules formulated by Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) should be strictly followed for adoptions. Back in 2022, I had reported an illegal adoption case in Visakhapatnam to the police," said Sitaram.

The district children protection officer Ramesh said that the child welfare committee is taking care of these children. "Even for the children surrendered by parents due to financial issues or other problems, there will be a one month waiting period before registering them with CARA for adoptions. The limited number of adoptable children is making the wait longer for the PAPs," said Ramesh.

As per the eligibility criteria for the PAPs set in by CARA, they shall be physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially capable.

They shall not have any life-threatening medical condition. They should not have been convicted in a criminal act of any nature or accused in any case of child rights violation. No child shall be given for adoption to a couple unless they have at least two years of stable marital relationship except in the cases of relative or step-parent adoption.

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The name Pankaja refers in Sanskrit to the Lotus flower, from which the Hindu god Brahma was born. The Lotus is a sacred symbol in Indian mythology and represents the development of an individual. This flourishes when the petals unfold one by one and the core (the inner source) becomes visible. Brahma is also the god of Creation, the creating.

According to a report by Bhilwara police in the court, the woman, a resident of the district, was 17 years old when she gave birth to a girl in August last year

odhpur: A nine-month-old baby was seized from her adoptive parents and returned to her biological mother on the directions of the Rajasthan high court, which observed that the infant was illegally given up for adoption by the woman’s father as he opposed her inter-faith relationship.

“When I gave birth to the child, I was not even told whether it was a boy or a girl. I was not even allowed to see her face. Now that I have got my daughter back, I cannot express my happiness in words,” the infant’s biological mother said.

According to a report by Bhilwara police in the court, the woman, a resident of the district, was 17 years old when she gave birth to a girl in August last year. She had eloped with her Muslim friend and realised she was pregnant after she returned home.

After the minor gave birth, her father, who was against the inter-faith relationship, handed over the infant to a former Child Welfare Committee (CWC) member who, in return, gave it to a childless couple in Mumbai.

Even the most sheltered among us have heard horror stories of foster care and adoption, but back before there were arms of government to protect wards of the state, there were orphanages. And before orphanages, there was baby farming.

“Baby farming” was a term coined during the Victorian Era to describe the practice of taking custody of unwanted children or those whose parents were unable to care for them, for a small fee. Essentially, a baby farm was a for-profit orphanage. The practice of baby farming was most widespread in urban areas of late-Victorian Era England, but it was also prevalent in North America and Oceania.

In an era when the most prevalent form of contraception was abortion, for working-class Victorian women who found themselves unable to care for a child, a less dangerous alternative was to surrender their newborn or, “put them out to nurse” at baby farms for a small weekly fee. Most women who chose this route assumed that their child would be properly cared for and receive a wet nurse, attention, room and board at the very least. After all, as referenced heavily in the writings of Jane Austen, wealthier women were also known to put their infants in the care of wet nurses – women who were not the childrens’ biological mothers, but who would breastfeed the children. The fictional character Grenouille of Perfume, as well as the titular character of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist were both residents of baby farms.

Holt Children’s Services will explain its decision to appeal a recent court ruling ordering the agency to compensate an adoptee for his botched adoption in a press conference on Thursday.

In a press release on Tuesday, the adoption agency said some media companies have been reporting malicious and one-sided assertions and that it would like to express its position based on objective facts. 

The Seoul Central District Court earlier this month ordered the Seoul-based agency to pay Adam Crapser, also known by his Korean name Shin Song-hyuk, 100 million won, or around 75-thousand U.S. dollars, in damages for a suit he had filed against Holt and the South Korean government in 2019.

The court said the agency had failed in its duty as the adoptee's guardian to confirm the acquisition of U.S. citizenship following his 1979 adoption, which eventually led to his deportation. It, however, did not recognize state responsibility.

While Crapser’s biological parents were alive prior to his adoption, his birth had not been registered, making it possible at the time for the agency to register him as an orphan and therefore eligible for international adoption.

Crapser was subsequently abandoned by two sets of adoptive parents following abuse and was unable to properly apply for citizenship, leading to his deportation back to South Korea in 2016.

Romania’s minister of family Gabriela Firea announced the Government’s intention to close all orphanages and move children to family-style homes, a project that is almost two decades in the making.

“Closing all placement centers, the so-called orphanages, in the country is our primordial interest, so that children left in the care of the state will have a better, warmer, friendlier life in [the care of] foundations or in family-style homes,” said Gabriela Firea, Romania’s minister of family, youth and equal opportunities. She added that there are currently nearly 47,000 children in orphanages throughout the country, out of which six thousand are up for adoption.

Romania has a dark past when it comes to orphanages. In the aftermath of the 1989 revolution that toppled the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, a series of pictures came out showing the squalid conditions in orphanages. Subsequent investigations estimated that between 1966 and 1989 there were up to 20,000 unnecessary deaths of children left in the care of the state. The vast majority of those who died were disabled.

“Roughly 70% of the registered deaths were from pneumonia. They were dying of external causes that were preventable and treatable,” said Florin Soare, an investigator, quoted by The Guardian.

Firea’s recently announced intention, however, has been part of the Government’s commitments for years.

When Nicole Koman is a few months old, she is adopted from a home. Although she ends up with loving foster parents, her adoption always plays a role. Sometimes in the foreground, then again in the background.

Nicole wrote a book about her adoption. The discovery of my other history has been in stores since this spring.

Nicole: 'Loving youth'

“There was never any secrecy about my adoption. My parents, as I prefer to call my adoptive parents, always talked about it openly.” But Nicole didn’t really know much about her biological father and mother. “Not much was known about it and I never really felt the need to know. I had my parents, family and friends. My childhood was very loving.” Nicole was therefore never ‘bothered’ by the fact that she was adopted. “People were sometimes surprised about my adoption. Many people think that it always concerns children from abroad. But Dutch children are also adopted.”

PART 1: CHANGES TO INSTITUTIONALIZATION IN EUROPE

In Bulgaria as with other European Union countries, there is a movement which has been funded by the European Union’s Structural and investment Funds (ESIF) since 2014 to close orphanages and institutions in eight EU Member States (Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania). The goal is to close all governmental institutions by 2022, including those for children with disabilities, by promoting the transition of youth from institutionalization to family-based care.  A pan-European campaign with Eurochild, the Opening Doors for Europe’s Children Campaign has played a key role in securing funding for such child protection reform across Europe and supporting economically disadvantaged families. The reforms will prevent the separation of children from their families and offer high quality alternatives where separation is in the child’s best interests. It is also expected to demonstrate an expenditure to the government that is equal to or less than the current cost of running institutions while providing improved overall outcomes for families and children.

Why is this important to you, a prospective adoptive parent?  Because change bubbling up in the institutionalized orphan population of Europe can mean eventual advantages for your adoptive child in experiencing a more home-like environment while in care, reducing the sometimes ill effects of institutionalization, allowing those children with disabilities more opportunities for social inclusion and focused development, and allowing economically disadvantaged children who should never have to be placed in an orphanage to begin with to reside with their biological parents who can begin to capably support them.

This particular funding is designed to address the plight of hundreds of thousands of children who are growing up in institutional care across Europe and runs through 2020.  Considered a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for these European nations, deinstitutionalization (DI) is considered “the core of building more inclusive, resilient societies.” [February 2015, Opening Doors for Europe’s Children] This EU focus on DI is also active in two Candidate Countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia) and two Neighbourhood Countries (Moldova and Ukraine). Additionally, also involved are 4 additional member states of the European Commission: Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Croatia who also assisted in adopting the EC Recommendation on Investing in Children in 2013.

The Dutch child protection system uses the term 'acceptable period'. This concerns the supervision order (Article 1:255 paragraph sub b BW: period in which work can be done on home placement after a supervision order) and the termination of parental authority (Article 1:266 BW: period before the authority of a parent can possibly be terminated). The 'acceptable period' is associated by some with intercountry adoption. It is claimed that this period has its origins in the UN Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children from 2009. These guidelines, which are not legally binding, are said to have been influenced by the international pro-adoption lobby, in order to stimulate the intercountry adoption of children.

The Guidelines for Alternative Care elaborate in particular, but not exclusively, the right to special protection and assistance for children in alternative forms of care as included in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 20). The starting point is that every effort should be made to have children grow up with their biological parents or caregivers, in their own environment and culture (see also Article 30). If this is not possible or not in the best interests of the child, stable and permanent solutions must be sought within an appropriate period (elsewhere in the guidelines referred to as a 'reasonable period'). The guidelines mention adoption and kafalah under Islamic law. If this is not possible, other long-term options, such as foster care, appropriate residential care or informal care ( extended family ), must be considered.

Those who link the 'acceptable period' to intercountry adoption believe that the emphasis in the guidelines on an 'appropriate period' and 'stable and definitive solutions' is the result of the international pro-adoption lobby. Whether and, if so, to what extent this lobby has influenced the text of the guidelines is unknown to us at Defence for Children Netherlands. It is important that the guidelines state that if (domestic or intercountry) adoption is not possible, other appropriate solutions must be considered. In doing so, Article 21 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child must be observed. According to this article, there are various reasons why adoption is not possible. For example, countries may not recognise and/or allow domestic and/or intercountry adoption. It is also possible that the subsidiarity principle included in Article 21(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is not being met (for more information about this concept, see the answer to the question 'What is the subsidiarity principle').

The guidelines do not state anything about the duration of the 'appropriate period'. However, the implementation guide 'Moving Forward' published in 2012 does state that sufficient time must be spent and every effort must be made to return the child and reunite him or her with his or her family. According to the guide, this process could take up to two years. The Dutch articles of law on supervision and termination of parental authority deliberately do not provide precise terms. This is stated in the explanatory memorandum to those articles dating from 2009. Since the introduction of the articles in 2015, guidelines from the Netherlands Youth Institute (NJi) and three professional associations have advised using terms of six months to one year. There is currently a lot of commotion about this. That is why these guidelines are now being examined.

The Guidelines for Alternative Care for Children do not interfere with the provisions of Article 21 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. They also do not elaborate on the concept of 'appropriate period'. As such, they do not form the basis for the interpretation of the Dutch legal term 'acceptable period'.