As we move into a new Democratic administration, ending family separation inflicted by the so-called child welfare system should be a top priority. Specifically, the Biden administration should refuse to sanction the federal government’s endorsement of arbitrary timelines that permanently tear families apart. That means repealing the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. 

ASFA was developed at a time when our country was hysterical about “crack babies” and resentful of their poor, mostly Black, parents. Media coverage focused on these selfish, drug-addicted parents who were giving birth to permanently damaged infants. As a result, many children were spending years in foster care with little pressure on systems to reunify them with parents or find them an adoptive home. 

The law ties federal child welfare funding to a requirement that, with a few exceptions, states move to terminate the rights of parents whose children have been in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months. After that period, the children become eligible for adoption. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the arbitrary and unfair nature of this timeline and which parents are most unlikely to meet it. Parents who are unable to visit with their children or participate in services recommended by CPS in furtherance of reunification during the pandemic are unsure whether their parental rights will be terminated. Even in normal times, for incarcerated parents whose ability to visit with their children or access services is out of their control, this timeline is usually out of reach.  

This is true regardless of whether the crime for which the parents are incarcerated had anything to do with the children. Many parents are held pre-trial because of their inability to pay cash bail before entering jails, which are even less likely to have services than prisons. Similarly, for many parents who are struggling with addiction — where relapse is often a part of recovery — this timeline is simply unrealistic. 

THE ARCHBISHOPS OF the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland have expressed shame over mother and baby homes.

More than 10,000 women and girls entered institutions for unmarried mothers across Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1990, and a report has revealed claims of inappropriate labour and being stigmatised at the homes, run by Catholic orders and Protestant clergy.

A “victim-centred” independent investigation was ordered by Stormont ministers and should be completed within six months.

The Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, said all historic records from the homes should be released in full.

“If anyone is trying to hide records or destroy records, that is a crime. Of course there is no reason why records should be withheld because people want to know who they are,” McKeown told the BBC.

For several weeks in 1907, the Australian public was gripped by a sensational trial in Perth that exposed the dark practice of baby farming.

While it was a trial over the death of one infant, proceedings revealed that 37 babies had died in the care of one woman, Alice Mitchell, over a six-year period, leading to headlines suggesting she might be Australia's worst serial killer.

This extraordinary, but now largely forgotten, case is explored in the book The Edward Street Baby Farm by Perth author Stella Budrikis, who stumbled upon the term while researching another book.

'Baby farming' for profit

"I'd never heard of baby farming until I was writing a book about my great-great-grandmother who became a single mother in Adelaide in the 1860s," Dr Budrikis told Geoff Hutchison on ABC Radio Perth.

Police operatives in Anambra State have arrested 10 people in connection with a child trafficking ring operating a baby factory within the Idemili South LGA.

On Tuesday, following an intelligence report, police operatives attached to the SIB and Area Command, Oraifite, coordinated by the Area Commander, ACP Afolabi Wilfred, raided the house of one Melvina Uju Uba, ‘f’, located opposite Nnamdi Azikiwe Orthopedic Teaching Hospital in Oba.

The suspects arrested include “Edna Nnadi, ‘f’, aged 37 years, Ujunwa Nweke, ‘f’, aged 25years, Izuchukwu Uba, ‘f’, aged 24 years, Chinaza Ibeh, ‘f’, aged 19years, Peace Okon Effiong, ‘f’, aged 25years, Gift Collins, ‘f’, aged 20years, Chimkaso Kingsley, ‘f’, aged 25years, Happiness Monday, ‘f’, aged 18years, Chioma Okonkwo, ‘f’, aged 25years and, Uchechukwu Nwankwo, ‘f’, aged 18years.”

The place was raided following credible information that teenage girls were being impregnated and the babies sold out by human traffickers.

During the operation, five newly born babies and three other children were rescued.

A REPORT INTO the operation of institutions for women and babies in Northern Ireland is to be published later today.

The academic research on mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries will be considered by Stormont ministers this morning.

First Minister Arlene Foster is due to outline the findings to the Assembly this afternoon.

Prior to that, Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill are due to meet survivors at Stormont.

The region’s political leaders are already facing calls to establish a public inquiry into the institutions and those are likely to intensify after the release of the Stormont-commissioned research.

For as long as she can remember, Maria Diemar has known she was adopted. Her Swedish parents were always open about her Chilean heritage, and growing up in Stockholm in the 1970s and 80s with brown skin and dark hair, it was impossible not to notice she was different.

When she was 11, Diemar’s parents showed her the papers that arrived with her in Sweden as a two-month-old baby in 1975. The file on her parentage offered a brief, unflattering portrait of a teenage mother who sent her newborn girl to be raised by strangers on the other side of the world. “They said she was a live-in maid, that she had a son who lived with her parents, and that she was poor,” recalled Diemar.

In her mid-20s, Diemar went looking for her mother. She contacted the Adoption Centre, the Swedish NGO that had organised her adoption. Sweden has one of the highest per-capita international adoption rates in the world, and in the 90s, the agency had launched a programme that helped adoptees reunite with their biological families. But they had no information on Diemar’s mother.

In 1998, she flew to Chile, requesting help from various sources: child welfare services, the family court that approved her adoption, the hospital where she was born, the civil registry. But none of them provided any information. When she visited the courthouse in Temuco, the nearest city to her birthplace, a court clerk stood in front of her, holding her file in hand, leafing through the ageing papers, and refused to give her so much as a peek. She left Chile empty-handed, but still determined to find her mother. “I came home with more questions,” Diemar said, “but I felt I had got closer to my family. I just needed to find them.”

A few years later, in the winter of 2002, Diemar heard about a Swedish TV documentary series that featured two adoptees searching for their biological families in Chile. Shortly before, Diemar had been given a promising lead: Chile’s National Children’s Service had come up with a possible address for her mother. Seizing on this new possibility, Diemar contacted Ana Maria Olivares, a Chilean journalist who had contributed to the documentary, to ask for help.

Hollywood star Jane Russell’s adoption of an Irishwoman’s child in the 1950s nearly ended the actress’s career.

Russell had already adopted a girl with her husband, NFL quarterback and kicker Bob Waterfield, but wanted to expand their family, according to the Journal.ie. News of the star’s desire for another child reached Hannah McDermott, a Derrywoman then living in London with her husband and young son. Reportedly Hannah offered her custody of baby Thomas on condition that Jane and Bob provided him with a good home, love and education.

When the news made the papers the controversy rippled across the world and young Hannah suddenly found her home in London besieged by photographers.

Local historian Willie Deery told the Belfast Telegraph he believes Hannah was motivated out of love for her child, “Hannah came in for a lot of criticism, but I think what she did was out of love for her child.

“And the adoption caused Jane Russell all sorts of grief. Howard Hughes thought all the bad Press would finish her and he ordered her to return the boy, but she stood her ground and refused to give up the child.”

When Consul General Remco van Wijngaarden walks down the street with his family in his hometown of Shanghai, it sometimes happens that someone walks into a lamp post in surprise. It is therefore a special spectacle by Chinese standards: the tall, white Remco and his half-Vietnamese man Carter have three children: Ella (almost 4) has a dark skin color, the twins Lily and Cooper (almost 2). is mixed white-Asian.

It has been a few years since Remco and his husband Carter, together with daughter Ella, exchanged the 'safe Amsterdam-Center' for gay people for Shanghai. In China, a 'fascinating, beautiful country', according to Remco, homosexuality is not prohibited by law, but much remains to be done to ensure its acceptance. That is why Remco sometimes has to 'go back in the closet' to do his job properly.

'Every gay man experiences'

He puts that into perspective himself. "Everyone who is gay goes through that, I think, that you just hide that you are in a relationship with someone of the same sex. That certainly does not feel good, but then you have to think of the greater importance."

It also happens that he receives a gift 'for his wife' through his work. "But that also happens in the Netherlands. The first time I received an invitation in China for me and my 'husband', it felt like a small victory."

EurAdopt Conference

VIGTIGT - EurAdopt Conferences udsættes til 2022

The 14th international EurAdopt Conference with the theme: “Bæredygtighed i international adoption”, the oprindeligt var planlagt til at skulle være afholdt i maj 2020, blev udsat til april 2021 pga. COVID-19, he atter udsat!

Efter the anden bølge af Covid19 har ramt Europa, har arrangørerne meets the vanskelige beslutning endnu en gang at udskyde begivenheden til afholdelse torsdag 28th and Friday 29th April 2022 at Hotel Scandic Sydhavnen, Sydhavns Plads, 2450 København.

Læs mere her: https://www.d-i-a.dk/euradopt/

Olivia* was sat in her conservatory last May, looking out into the garden, when she realised she was ready to adopt. She’d been furloughed for three months, and the lengthy haze her abusive ex-girlfriend left behind had finally cleared. Feeling uncertain and hopeful, she caught sight of a sign, perched there on the fence. “A sparrow and a blue tit,” she beams. “I hadn’t actually seen birds in my garden for years because of construction work going on around the area. It just seemed to be a symbol of hope, really, in amongst the pandemic. That I was hoping to adopt two children and suddenly, there’s these two little birds outside.”

The 34-year-old decided to take the leap after the pandemic wrung all notions of what if from her head. “Nobody expected this time last year for the pandemic to get as bad as it did, and as it is now. You can spend your whole life saying, ‘Well, I’ll just wait until...’ And then ‘until’ never comes,” says Olivia. “With plenty of time to apply to adopt and go through the process without the pressure of having to do it around work, I thought, ‘When am I going to get another opportunity to do this?’”

Adoption interest rates are buoyant for the first time in half a decade. Since lockdown was first implemented in March, Adoption UK has seen traffic on prospective adopter web pages surge by 63 per cent. For agencies such as One Adoption West and Adopt South West, interest has doubled since the pandemic began, with other agencies across the country observing similar waves of applicants. It comes as a welcome shock to a sector grappling with a sharp decline in adoptions since 2015.

“We went into 2020 with an adopter shortfall,” Sue Armstrong Brown, chief executive of Adoption UK tells British Vogue. “So children in care waiting for adopters, and not enough adopters. The pandemic started, and everybody was deeply concerned about that. But what we actually saw was really surprising, and extremely encouraging.”

Brown suspects that a slower societal pace has allowed more scope for reflection. “It appears that the lockdown and the disruption to the world caused by coronavirus has actually been prompting people to think about what really is important in their lives. I think people have, for better or for worse, been forced to step out of their normal lives, and think about what they would really value doing.”