It is with great disappointment that the NAS and ANW have taken note of the decision of the Minister of Justice and Security not to award the establishment of the new CBO for intercountry adoption to our initiative.

As new organizations, founded after the entry into force in 1998 of the Hague Adoption Convention in the Netherlands, ANW and the NAS represent the innovators in the adoption field. Unimpeded by the ballast from the period investigated by the Joustra Commission, we have been the pioneers and drivers of changes that have served the interests of children, based on our positively critical work attitude. In no way can our organizations be linked to the abuses of the last century. We regret that with our passion and high ethical standards we did not get the chance to establish the CBO. The minister awards the CBO to Wereldkinderen, a respected colleague but also part of the situations from the last century that prompted a review of the system.

With pain in our hearts we accept the decision regarding the CBO, especially because there is a fundamental difference of opinion with regard to the future of adoption and its importance for children. In the ANW and NAS plan, we stated that adoption should be maintained as an international child protection measure, regardless of where your cradle was. We believe that there are parents in the Netherlands now and in the future who can and want to play a role in providing a permanent family for children who cannot or are not allowed to grow up with their biological parents. In addition, in line with the Hague Convention, we believe that appropriate care does not mean that you grow up in a home or a system or in ever-changing foster care situations. The minister clearly makes different choices in this respect,

The minister has also made a choice for the countries with which cooperation will continue in the future and countries which will be divested. At the moment there are still active collaborations with 17 countries and children from all countries that meet the principles of the Hague Adoption Convention can be helped, provided that suitable parents are available. That will change drastically.

The US, Haiti, Peru, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are being phased out from the NAS and ANW's range of countries. Ongoing files in these countries may be processed, except in Haiti. This has to do with the security situation in the country. It is still allowed to adopt from our partner countries South Africa, Hungary and Lesotho. Whether the cooperation with Portugal (NAS) and Bulgaria (ANW) will be continued will be further assessed by the ministry. The other countries with which the Netherlands wants to maintain the adoption relationship are Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan.

EAU CLAIRE — Erika and Jeff Ehrhard were met with a smiling face almost a year ago when they first welcomed the young boy they would one day hope to adopt into their home.

“Hi, Jeff and Erika,” said Vanya, now 13 years old.

The couple had awaited his arrival for around three weeks by that point, nervous about the inevitable language barrier between them. They didn’t speak a word of Russian, and they were told Vanya knew very little English.

But they soon learned that gestures and Google Translate go a long way. Within weeks, the Ehrhards and their Ukrainian foster child spoke a language of their own. And within those same weeks, the Ehrhard Family soon realized they didn’t want Vanya to leave when the six-week foster period was up.

“I began to realize that, gosh, our family’s not going to be complete anymore,” Erika Ehrhard told the Leader-Telegram. “It’s like the piece that was missing that you never knew was missing until it got there.”

Children though brought up in an orphanage cannot be declared as 'orphans'

as defined under Section 2(42) of the Juvenile Justice Care and Act, 2015 if

their biological parents are alive, the Bombay High Court held.

"X and Y would not be termed as 'orphan' as defined under Section 2(42) of

the Act, 2015 in as much as their biological mothers are alive."

Between 1912 and 1968, thousands of children were sent to Australia from the United Kingdom and Malta under a child migration scheme. These children were usually placed in institutions and many of the children were falsely told they were orphans.

In recent years, growing recognition of the plight of former child migrants led to the establishment of travel funds to facilitate travel to their country of birth and reunions with family.

Between 2000-2006, ISS Australia administered the UK Government’s Child Migrant Support Fund and the Australian Government’s Australian Travel Fund.

As a result of this work, over 1000 former child migrants were assisted with financial, practical and emotional support to reunite with surviving family members or visit family gravesites.

Most of the former child migrants reported the reunions were life changing, giving them a sense of belonging and of closure with the past.

A cruel injustice was inflicted on thousands of Queensland women who found themselves young, unwed and “in trouble” at a time of strict social mores. JO CRANSTOUN investigates the enduring impact of forced adoption on the young mothers who are now grandmothers.

From the 1950s until the mid-1970s the babies of young mothers were forcibly removed at birth and adopted by married couples.

Those mothers are now broken-hearted seniors living with the trauma, some never speaking again of a stolen baby, others struggling to reconnect decades later with their estranged adult children.

These women consider their babies the “other stolen generation”.

Tireless campaigns for justice led to apologies from the Queensland government in 2012 and the federal government in 2013. Several churches and hospitals involved in forced adoptions have also apologised.

Sandra DeVries

Sandra De Vries

• 3.+

Manager Programs Kinship Questions and Adoption Services

3 Tage • Bearbeitet •

EXCLUSIVE: Woman given up for adoption in Australia by unwed mother who was sent Down Under to have her is reunited 60 years on with British family she never knew she had

Suzy Fraser, 64, was given up for adoption after her mother was sent to Australia

Her unwed mother Janet was packed off from Portsmouth to give birth in 1958

Janet had asked not to be contacted but Suzy did and found out she had siblings

Suzy has been reunited with her siblings Sharon, 57, Eileen, 54, and Steve, 61

The commission has asked the directorate of women and child development to ensure that specialised adoption agencies in Goa set up cradles to receive abandoned children

A child rights body in Goa on October 31 issued an advisory to various agencies of the State Government about the rise in cases of infants being abandoned at unsafe places, an official said.

The Goa State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has issued an advisory to the directorate of women and child welfare, health department and Goa police to help parents in distress to surrender their infants.

“The recent incidences of newborn abandonment in Goa, most of it in unsafe places recently, is very perturbing,” the commission stated in the advisory.

It noted that the State had recorded 11 such cases in five years (2017-2022), and four of these were registered this year alone.

With National Adoption Month quickly approaching, the adoptee and former foster youth side of the adoption community on social media have been diligently sharing content to help bring attention to the nuances of adoption.

And while the internet is a powerful tool, I can safely say that I never thought adoptees would be going toe to toe on TikTok with Rosie O’Donnell, a white adoptive mom and celebrity, who said she was sorry that “adoption didn’t work out” for some adoptees, but wants to know what should happen to children without families?

Like Rosie, I wanted to believe that adoption was a solution to the many children in need of homes, and when I stumbled into the online adoption community many years ago after discovering I was adopted, I remember feeling overwhelmed—and even defensive—about how negatively people were depicting something that helped so many.

Queer Kids Are Getting Blasted With Too Much Doom and Gloom

This is what I now refer to as toxic positivity and saviorism in the workshops I teach to parents and adoption professionals—because so many people are unaware of the dangers and ethical problems of adoption in the United States. Objectively speaking, adoption in the U.S. is often not child-centered, and the desires of adoptive parents and professionals are prioritized along with profit-margins.

While Supreme Court has voiced concerns over their increasing use to prove a case, women’s rights activists deem the technology an empowering tool

Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA tests occupy a grey area in the quest for justice, vacillating between the dangers of slipping into self-incrimination and encroachment of individual privacy and the ‘eminent need’ to unearth the truth, be in the form of evidence in a criminal case, a claim of marital infidelity or proving paternity.

More and more complainants are seeking DNA tests — a senior official associated with a government laboratory estimates such requests increasing by around 20% each year. DNA Forensics Laboratory Private Limited, one of the biggest centres which is accredited with the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), says it tests around 300-400 samples each month that are both private requests and court-mandated. The numbers were only around 30-40 till five years ago.