Advice foradoptive families

In October 1997, we sent an application for the adoption of child no. 2 to DanAdopt.

We were lucky enough to be interviewed in October. The county thought we were probably approved before Christmas. But no, the matter was not included in the consultation meeting until February.

By Helle and Flemming Knoth

The case was rejected because our boy, who was just over 3 1/2 years old at the time, had a support pedagogue. They even had a statement from the kindergarten. We were then referred to a child psychologist who we were to visit with our boy, and who was also on a home visit.

Two years of waiting

A FOUR-year old girl who had been informally given to a Sydney couple under a traditional Samoan adoption arrangement should return to her parents in Samoa, the Family Court has ruled.

The girl known as ''S'' had been promised to a childless great aunt and her husband before birth, but had lived with her parents and seven siblings in Samoa until she was nearly two years old.

Within days of delivering S to the couple in western Sydney in February 2009, the girl's mother decided she wanted to keep the child. But before she could leave Australia, the couple - known in court as Mr and Ms Tomas - had filed proceedings which stopped S from leaving.

Two years later, the court has ruled that it would be best for S - a happy and healthy child who related to both sets of parents - to return to Samoa.

But the case raised wider issues about the entry of children into Australia and highlighted tensions between federal immigration and state-based adoption laws, said Associate Professor Jennifer Burn from the faculty of law at UTS.

Over the past ten years, ten foreign adopted children have been refused just before or after arrival in their adoptive family. Three children from Portugal were sent back, one stayed with another, Dutch family.

More than ten children have had their adoption refused just before or after their arrival in the adoptive family in the past ten years. Of the eight children adopted from Portugal in 2019, one was rehomed in a Dutch family, after which it returned to Portugal. Two Portuguese children who were adopted together in the same year were also removed from their home and then, in consultation with the Portuguese central adoption service, returned to their country of birth. Two years later, another adoption of two children from Portugal was stopped, before the children came to our country, at the request of the adoptive family.

Four children from Ethiopia and three children from India, who had already been assigned to their adoptive families, were also refused. In 2018, one child from Bulgaria came to Flanders via intercountry adoption – that child was placed outside the home. This also happened in 2021 with a child from Thailand, who was rehomed with other candidates from the same adoption service.

It is not about large numbers, but in the past ten years fewer and fewer children were adopted from abroad. In 2008 there were 210, last year 21, or ten times less. And yet just as many children were refused or rehomed as in the first decade of the century.

“Tip of the iceberg”

By Antonia Giordano

An overseas Korean adoptee from Denmark has filed a lawsuit for information disclosure against the National Center for the Rights of the Child (NCRC) in order to receive information on her biological family. With the help of the Adoptees' Right to Know Legal Representatives (LAAR) and the Danish Korean Truth Finding Group (DKRG), a press conference was held for the plaintiff, who is currently in Denmark, at the Seoul Administrative Court in southern Seoul's Seocho District on July 12, before the initial court date.

The NCRC was originally established as part of the Ministry of Health and Welfare to ensure that policies and actions were aligned to protect children's welfare. This agency is responsible for adoption and post-adoption services for international and domestic adoptees. One of its key roles is to advocate for and ensure adoptees' right to know their self-identifying information, including about their birth family.

According to the lawsuit and the LAAR, an adoptee advocacy group, the plaintiff originally filed a request for the information in 2021 with Korea Social Service, the agency that handled her adoption. However, the only information the organization gave was the surname "Lee" and that the birth father had passed away. The information gave no help in resolving Lee's identity; there are over 7.3 million Lees in Korea, accounting for 14.7 percent of the entire population.

In 2022, Lee again filed a request for the information including birth family — this time, however, with the NCRC. Lee was dismayed to receive the same information as her previous search. The NCRC cannot go beyond certain privacy laws, and birth parents can refuse to disclose information.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains images of people who have died.

"If there's anything I've learnt in making this film, it's that I think the best thing anyone can do in their life is tell their story. Good, bad or indifferent," says Adrian Russell Wills.

Wills and his co-director and co-writer, Gillian Moody, have two powerful stories, but share one unique experience.

Moody, a Wodi Wodi woman, and Wills, a Wonnarua man, both grew up in white families.

As adopted Aboriginal children raised in affluent areas of Sydney's northern beaches in the late 1970s, they were both disconnected from Country and culture throughout their childhood.

NORTH TEXAS — The founder of a North Texas adoption agency has been arrested on allegations of paying pregnant female inmates in the Tarrant County Jail to put their unborn babies up for adoption. 

Jody Hall, head of Adoptions International Inc., posted a $50,000 bond after being booked into a Central Texas jail last week. She is an attorney and founder of an adoption agency promoted as a licensed nonprofit. 

Back in May, the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office said it began looking into what it calls unethical adoption practices involving Hall.

"During this investigation, information was discovered that Jody Hall was paying money to multiple, pregnant Tarrant County inmates for the purpose of placing their unborn children up for adoption with Hall's agency," the sheriff's office said in a statement. 

Two months later, sheriff's detectives served arrest warrants on Hall at her home in Kyle, Texas. 

Adoption, donor conception, out-of-home care, an absent parent — these are all reasons why someone might not know their birth parent.

But beyond the reason, the decision to search for a missing birth parent or family member is often difficult.   

Ask forty-year-old counsellor from Sydney Kimberley Lee if she would like to find her birth mother and she will admit that until recently the answer was almost always 'no'.

"I used to be like, 'Everything is good. I don't know this person, why would I?'" she says.

Kimberley was born in Busan, Korea but was relinquished at birth and adopted at four months old by a Sydney couple.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION WRIT PETITION NO. 6461 OF 2023

IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI % Reserved on: July 06, 2021 Pronounced on: July 26, 2021 + W.P. (C) 3187/2021, CM APPL.9662/2021 (by the petitioners u/S 151 CPC for ex parte ad interim orders) JS & ANR. .....Petitioners Through: Mr. Samar Bansal, Mr. Kartik Nagarkatti, Ms.Devahuti Pathak, Mr. Sachin Mishra, Mr. Aman Vishal, Ms.Harsheen Madan Palli, Advocates Versus CENTRAL ADOPTION RESOURCE AUTHORITY & ANR. .....Respondents Through: Ms. Biji Rajesh, Advocate for respondent No.1/CARA. Mr. Arnav Kumar, Senior Panel Counsel for respondent No.2/UOI CORAM: HON'BLE MS. JUSTICE ASHA MENON