NAVI MUMBAI: The Raigad district women and child development officer has lodged a complaint at the Kharghar police station against those running a children's orphanage in Kharghar for allegedly illegally adopting nine minor girls and providing them foster care, without obtaining the mandatory certificate from the concerned government department.

Subsequently, the Kharghar Police on Thursday registered an FIR against the authorised person, of the orphanage, who has been booked under Section 41 (adoption) and 42 (foster care) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000.

As per the FIR by complainant Vinit Mhatre, Raigad District Women and Child Development officer at Alibaug office, in October last year, the child welfare committee had submitted a report on the Kharghar based orphanage stating that it was illegally accommodating orphan children.

Hence, on October 29, 2021, Mhatre along with officials of the child welfare committee and a lady constable of Kharghar police station reached the orphanage for inspection.

The team found 24 girls were accommodated and taken care of at the orphanage premises. They were also being sent to the school.

When Robert Joseph Taylor was a young child, he had a familial relationship with a child his aunt had taken in as her own. The child’s name was Pat. A friend had put Pat in the care of Taylor’s aunt because she wasn’t able to raise her herself.

Taylor grew up referring to Pat as his cousin, though they weren’t blood-related. And they shared all of the things families share together: vacations, meals, family ceremonies. It wasn’t until very recently that Taylor discovered the whole story.

“I [had] a cousin that I knew all my life was my cousin but turns out she’s really [wasn’t]. She was more of a play-cousin,” Taylor said.

“Pat passed away recently in her late 70s,” he said, “and it’s only a few years ago [that I asked] Pat how we are related. And then she explained it.”

Taylor is the Harold R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan, and for years he’s studied informal social support networks among African Americans. According to data Taylor reviewed from the National Survey of American Life, the vast majority of African Americans reported having at least one fictive kin relationship — that is, a relationship with at least one individual who was unrelated by blood or marriage but was regarded as a relative. Taylor said fictive kinship networks have been shown to be key sources of social and economic capital for many African Americans.

Wang Chen-wei and Chen Chun-ju sign papers after ruling allows Chen to register as parent alongside Wang

Helen Davidson in Taipei

@heldavidson

Thu 13 Jan 2022 13.17 GMT

A married same-sex couple have become the first in Taiwan to legally adopt a child neither of them are related to, after they challenged local laws in court.

The High Court has formally approved the adoption of a non-national teenager to the woman who had cared for the child for many years after the teen’s birth mother died.

The adoption approval was granted by Mr Justice Max Barrett who in a written judgement said while case arose from sad and tragic beginning it was “one of those life-affirming cases” which sometimes crop before the courts that suggest that goodness and happiness were still abundant in the world.

The judge said he was making the order without the child’s father having being consulted about the proposed adoption. This was because the despite extensive efforts the identity of the teen’s father remains unknown, and was therefore not possible to contact them.

The child cannot be identified for legal purposes.

The court heard that the teen, when very young, came to Ireland with the child’s non-national mother over a decade ago. However shortly after their arrival in Ireland, the minor’s mother died after giving birth to another child. Tragically, the newborn infant also died, the court also noted.

The newly created National Authority for Child Care (NACC) will soon take over the handling of all government matters related to childcare and adoption.

This after Duterte finally signed Republic Act (RA) 11642, or the Domestic Administrative Adoption and Alternative Child Care Act last week, which created the new quasi-judicial agency.

In the House of Representatives, Northern Samar Rep. Paul R. Daza, principal author of the bill, said about 1.8 million Filipino children, who are waiting for loving homes, will benefit from the signing of the new law. The new legislation, he added, finally resolves the problem on abandoned and neglected children who are waiting to be adopted.

“I’m calling on prospective adoptive parents; I enjoin you to give a life-changing chance for children who have long been waiting for the fulfillment of their dreams to have families!” Daza said.

The NACC will take over the previous function of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB) relating to alternative childcare and adoption.

President Rodrigo Duterte has signed the law on Domestic Administrative Adoption and Alternative Child Care, Malacañang announced Thursday.

The new law, numbered Republic Act 11642, creates the National Authority for Child Care, which will have original and exclusive jurisdiction over all matters pertaining to alternative child care, including declaring a child legally available for adoption; domestic administrative adoption; adult adoption; foster care under Republic Act No. 10165 or the Foster Care Act of 2012; adoptions under Republic Act No. 11222 or Simulated Birth Rectification Act; and inter-country adoption under Republic Act No. 8043 or the Inter­ Country Adoption Act of 1995.

Likewise, the NACC, which will be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, will also have the authority to impose penalties in case of any violation of the new law.

"The NACC should ensure that the petitions, and all other matters involving alternative child care, including the issuance of Certification Declaring a Child Legally Available for Adoption (CDCLAA) and the process of domestic and inter-country adoption, foster care, kinship care, family-like care, or residential care are simple, expeditious, and inexpensive, and will redound to the best interest of the child involved," the law, signed by the President last January 6 but only released on January 13, stated.

"Towards this end, the NACC Council will act as the policy-making body and when convened as such, as an en banc appeals committee for contested denials of petitions issued by the Executive Director or the Deputy Director for Services," it added.

New legislation guarantees adopted people the right to obtain their birth certificates

Joan McDermott, who grew up in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, fought for 16 years to track down her firstborn son, to whom she had given birth at the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork when she was just 17.

The two finally met in 2015 when he was 47 years old.

“I will never forget it. Within an hour of meeting him he said: ‘How old am I really?’” McDermott, who now lives in Midleton, told The Irish Times.

Expressing “elation” at the legislation to guarantee adopted people the right to their birth certificates, she said her son had told her that he had spent a decade unsuccessfully trying to track her down.

A woman in Japan is giving up her baby and suing her sperm donor after discovering he lied about his ethnicity and educational background.

The woman, identified as a married 30-year-old from Tokyo, has sued the sperm donor after finding out he was Chinese, not Japanese. She has asked for 330 million yen ($2.86 million) in compensation for emotional distress, VICE reported.

The woman has also alleged that the man lied about his education and had not graduated from Kyoto University, and was married, not single as he claimed, according to Tokyo Shimbun.

The woman had decided to seek out a sperm donor after finding out that her husband carried a hereditary disorder that could be passed on to his offspring.

After hooking up with the donor via social media in March 2019, they had sex 10 times before the woman, who was not identified, successfully got pregnant three months later.

A Japanese woman is giving up her child and suing her sperm donor after she learned he lied about his ethnicity and educational background.

The woman, a Tokyo resident in her 30s, shares a child with her husband and was seeking to have a second child. But after learning her partner had a hereditary disease, the woman decided to find a sperm donor on social media. The donor she chose claimed he was Japanese and a graduate from the prestigious Kyoto University, and they had sex 10 times to get pregnant, Japanese newspaper Tokyo Shimbun reported.

But after getting pregnant in June 2019, the woman discovered that the donor was actually Chinese. He also went to a different university and hid the fact he was married. By the time she knew of his true identity, it was too late to abort the baby, and she has since given up the child for adoption. The woman filed a lawsuit against the sperm donor last month for 330 million yen ($2.86 million) for emotional distress.

In Japan, sperm donations are practically unregulated.

The entire country of 126 million has just one commercial sperm bank, which was only founded in June. Artificial insemination by donor—a procedure that involves inserting sperm into a person’s uterus—is limited to married couples, thereby excluding single women and LGBTQ couples. Even for those eligible, a mere 12 hospitals in the entire country conduct such fertility treatment.

'Can you quickly reform a system that has turned out to be rotten for decades,' asks Renate Van Geel on the eve of the hearings on the theme that will be organized in the Flemish parliament this week. 'Why do the adoptees themselves and the parents from the sending countries have so little to say?'

At the beginning of December, the new decision framework for intercountry adoption, intended to strengthen ties with the sending countries, was approved by the Flemish government. This framework can provide a slightly hopeful starting point for the reform of intercountry adoption. Everything will depend on how this policy framework is further specified and implemented. The success of this policy framework can only be measured by its effects at the micro level, namely in the opportunities it brings for children and their families in the sending countries, in respecting their rights and whether they perceive this reform as an added value. Something to which intercountry adoption has contributed nothing in the past 60 years.

Hearing days are still scheduled for January in the Committee on Welfare, Public Health and Family. So-called stakeholders (and stakeholders?) can share their experience and vision with the committee members. Each group could invite those involved to do so. Although we have read and heard rumbling statements in recent months about the interest of the child and the interest of the adoptee, I note that there are exactly two adoptees who are given speaking space. Adoption services, adoptive parents and candidate adopters do get, as is 'good' custom, a podium in the form of several people to defend their 'interests'. They even looked across the border to give a Dutch adoptive mother the floor.

Intercountry adoption reform: when will the government dare to look into its own pockets?

It would be interesting to ask the young respondents from that study again about their experience in 10 to 20 years' time. What irks me even more, if anything, is the fact that no parent (originally) has even been nominated and there is therefore no one to represent them in an important political forum where input is given on the future of intercountry adoption in Flanders.