The Stormont executive has agreed to set up a public inquiry into institutions for unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland.

The proposal was one of a series of recommendations ministers were urged to adopt after a panel's report.

On Monday, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill told the assembly all steps would be put in place "as quickly as possible".

That will include setting up immediate redress payments to survivors.

'A momentous day'

THE GOVERNMENT HAS unveiled the details of an €800 million redress plan for 34,000 survivors of mother and baby homes and county homes.

The scheme will provide financial payments and a form of enhanced medical card to “defined groups in acknowledgement of suffering experienced while resident” in a mother and baby institution or county institution.

All mothers who spent time in a Mother and Baby Institution will be eligible for a payment, which will increase based on their length of stay.

All children who spent six months or more in an institution will also be eligible for payment based on their length of stay, as long as they did not receive redress for that institution under the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme (RIRS).

Many survivors have this evening criticised this specific time limit, saying the length of time a child spent in an institution does not equate to the impact it had on their lives.

THE CABINET IS due to sign off on a long-awaited redress plan for survivors of mother and baby homes and county homes today.

Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman is bringing the proposals to his Cabinet colleagues this morning ahead of an official announcement this afternoon.

Survivors are eagerly awaiting the details of the scheme after numerous delays. The plan was originally due to be finalised by the end of April.

The scheme is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of euro. O’Gorman has written to a number of religious orders involved in running the institutions, asking them to contribute to the fund.

In its final report in January, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes recommended that women should have spent at least six months in an institution prior to 1974 – when the Unmarried Mothers’ Allowance came into effect – in order to be eligible for redress.

Asking people who want kids why they don't "just adopt" is a common refrain but actual adoption in Australia isn't all that common.

Just 334 adoptions were finalised in 2019-20.

So why don't more adoptions happen and what's really involved in the process?

Why are there so few adoptions in Australia?

There are a few reasons for this and we have to look at the three types of adoption to understand why.

'CARA Extremely Callous In Complying With Court's Directions, Unnecessarily Harassing Adoptive Parents': Delhi HC Summons CEO, Member Secretary

The Delhi High Court has observed that the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA)

has been extremely callous in its approach towards compliance of a judicial order,

requiring the authority to frame guidelines for inter-country adoptions under Hindu

Adoptions & Maintenance Act (HAMA).

In 1992, Honduras suspended its international adoption program when it was uncovered that babies were kidnapped, taken to "fattening centers" and then placed for adoption once they made weight. One such center was run in the home of a top aide to US-backed Pres. Rafael Callejas.

10:21 PM · Nov 16, 2021

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ABSTRACT

Most academic studies and public debates about transnational adoption prioritise the experiences of adoptive parents and the voices of professionals, but the perspectives and voices of birth families are rarely heard. I address this shortcoming through a critical analysis of the transnational adoption system by exploring the narratives and experiences of Nepali birth families. Drawing on a 14-month ethnographic study, I explore how birth families’ search for their children illuminates the concept of ‘agency-in-waiting’ and opens up new possibilities for thinking critically about the politics of adoption and the experience of ‘waiting’. The invisibility of birth families in scholarship about adoption belies the fact that many birth families actively search for the children they lost to adoption. This research makes visible the power inequalities that shape family policy and opens new avenues for deconstructing hegemonic narratives that exist in transnational adoption by focusing on birth families’ narratives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the families who have opened their hearts to me and shared their painful experiences. Susan Frekko provided feedback on this manuscript and edited the English.

Disclosure Statement

The Tuam Babies Family Group is “sceptical” of Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s pledge that a mass exhumation will go ahead at the former Galway mother and baby home next year.

Members claim the children’s minister is being “opportunistic and reactive” as he made the pledge following the broadcast of The Missing Children documentary on RTÉ One last Tuesday.

Annette McKay, whose sister Mary Margaret died at the Tuam mother and baby home in Co Galway, said the minister was “out of touch” if he truly believed exhumation could go ahead next year.

“There are a number of issues with what Roderic O’Gorman said. First of all, who is in charge of the exhumation? Is it gardaí, a coroner? Legally, that has to be decided,” she said.

"There is an ongoing criminal investigation by gardaí. That must be considered. Has it been? Ideally, we would like to see a coroner appointed to oversee this next step. But all of this will take considerable time.

Swedish Yle reported (29.10) that serious errors in adoptions are examined in Sweden, and that irregularities can also occur in Finland. Patrik Lundberg, one of the journalists behind Dagens Nyheter's series of articles on Swedish international adoption activities, says that if it is a question of the same adoption countries, there is also great reason for Finland to review its adoptions. This is because the same orphanage has adopted children to several different countries in the western world, and because the same lawyers and corrupt people have been involved. According to Lundberg, control has been particularly poor in countries classified as dictatorships.

With reference to other countries' investigations of international adoptions, and given that Finland has in many cases used the same adoption contacts as, for example, Sweden, we demand that Finland also appoint its own independent inquiry. The issue of adoptions that have not gone right is not only limited to Sweden, whose government recently presented directives for an inquiry expected to be completed in the autumn of 2023, or the Netherlands, whose government earlier this year stopped all international adoptions after a comprehensive inquiry showed that children have been stolen or purchased from their biological parents.

We, who signed this submission, demand that the state of Finland investigate the international adoptions that have taken place to date, from all countries of origin from which Finland has adopted children. This also includes adoptions that took place after the Hague Convention was ratified. The inquiry shall be independent and autonomous and no members of the inquiry group may have any connection to the adoption mediation adoption organizations.

The inquiry should engage experts and research competencies in the field, such as lawyers, historians and researchers, so that the international adoption activities in Finland can be fully examined. The investigation must be given sufficient resources, both personnel, financially and in terms of time. In addition to adoptions mediated by adoption organizations, the inquiry must also examine independent adoptions (private adoptions) and the role of the Finnish state in international adoption mediation in Finland.

The inquiry shall contain proposals for measures on how to ensure that today's adoptions take place legally and ethically. The adoption agency must be quality assured and followed up in a comprehensive way. The inquiry must ensure that corruption does not occur in connection with adoptions today.

Thiruvananthapuram: Phone conversation showing that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan

knew about the adoption of Anupama’s child before it came out through media has been

leaked. The conversation between the complainant Anupama and CPM leader P K

Sreemathy has been leaked.

P K Sreemathy can be heard saying to Anupama that the Chief Minister said that the