CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court has made it clear that a child who is being taken to a far off country by way of adoption needs to be protected and added that background checks by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and its equivalent authority in the foreign country are imperative in the case of an inter-country adoption.

Deciding the ongoing battle over adoption of a minor boy to a couple based in the United States under “pressure” of his grandparents after his father’s death, the Punjab and Haryana high court directed the adoptive parents to hand over the custody of the child to his natural mother.

The high court held that the adoption deed shown to be executed on December 3, 2019 is a highly suspicious document as regards its authenticity and secondly, the intention to give the child for adoption was at a time when the petitioner could not be said to be in a stable mental state due to the recent death of her husband.

As the child remained with the adoptive couple, the high court observed that the couple must have been attached with the child, thus it would be appropriate in the interest of the child if the adoptive mother hands over the child by first familiarising him with his natural mother. The process has been ordered to be completed over a period of two weeks

The matter had reached the high court in January this year after a Chandigarh-based woman (name withheld to protect identity) filed a habeas corpus petition alleging that her minor son had been forcibly taken away from her custody through “forceful” adoption by her in-laws after her husband’s death. She said her father in law and mother in law had called her to Patiala in September 2019 and forced her to sign some documents after which her son was given in adoption to the USA-based couple. She approached the HC after the Chandigarh police failed to take any action on her complaint.

It is critical that the state does not compound an administrative error being made by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and Certain Related Matters, in failing to take account of its duties under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and GDPR to set aside any national provision which would conflict with the rights of access and other data protection rights.

The Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 has been superseded by the GDPR and the Data Protection Act of 2018. Its provisions providing for secrecy cannot be applied by any emanation of the state where they conflict with either Article 15 rights of access or Article 18 rights of the data subject to restrict any proposed processing.

In addition, the proposal to ‘seal’ the archive of documents to be presented to the Minister for 30 years is simply impermissible under EU law. Even where national legislation allows for restrictions on data subjects’ rights, those restrictions must be tightly limited and necessary for an overriding purpose of national importance.

The collective body of all the data protection authorities, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has, on the 2nd June 2020, issued a policy document setting out the limits of permissible national legislation restricting GDPR rights (see EDPB, ‘Statement on restrictions on data subject rights in connection to the state of emergency in Member States’, adopted on 2 June 2020, https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/autre/statement-restrictions-data-subject-rights-connection-state_en).

The EDPB confirmed:

'Bake Off' candidate Asha Schraepen likes to emphasize her Indian roots with her colorful pastries. She and her twin sister were barely one year old when they arrived in Belgium. 'I don't need to find my biological parents.'

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Met haar kleurrijke gebakjes zet ‘Bake Off’-kandidate Asha Schraepen haar Indiase roots graag in de verf. Zij en haar tweelingzus waren amper één jaar oud toen ze in België terechtkwamen. ‘Mijn biologische ouders vinden, daar heb ik geen behoefte aan.’

Debra Lynn Murphy-Scheumann, 66, of Spring Hill, passed away on October 20, 2020 at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

She was born on July 27, 1954 to Kenneth and Beverly (Shaffer) Murphy in Newton, Iowa. She was the second child born into the family. As a child she was raised with her family around Dike, Iowa, where she received her high school diploma. She would later receive a Bachelor and Master’s Degree from the University of Northern Iowa. Debra held many hats during her working years and all those occupations included helping others. She was a nurse, magistrate, social worker, professor, director of several non-profit organizations and eventually founded a non-profit organization called Special Additions, Inc. Debra truly had a heart of gold and loved children and wanted all children to have a family. In September of 1993 she opened Special Additions, an adoption agency that specialized in special needs and international adoptions. During her time at Special Additions, Debra served as Executive Director and placed over 850 children in forever homes. She also served on a National Board where she would travel to Washington, DC to advocate for the children. She opened children’s homes in Romania (Deb’s House) and Moldova. In September of 2001, she received the Angel in Adoption Award which meant the world to her. Debra and her husband Brent were also foster parents to many children over a 20 year time span.

Debra married Brent Scheuman on June 4, 1983. Debra’s family meant the world to her and it is evident that she instilled the importance of family in her own family.

Debra leaves behind her loving husband, Brent; 4 daughters, Guri (Samuel) Sanders, Charity (Jeff) Bennett, Allison Scheumann, and Georgianna Pahon; 7 sons, Shannon (Brianna) Morrow, Joshua (Julie) Morrow, Austin Scheumann, Alex Scheumann, Derek Scheumann, Kyle Scheumann and Lukas Scheumann; loving mother; Beverly Murphy; one sister, Pamela (Gary) Stumberg; one brother, Kent (Vicki) Murphy; 2 brother-in-laws, Todd (Traci) Scheumann and Brian Scheumann; 13 grandchildren, Josh, Kirsten, Audrey, Nathan and Sydney Bennett; Erik, Gabe, Leo Sanders; Addison, Caden and Brynley Morrow; Brody and Landen Morrow; and so many more family and friends.

Deb is preceded in death by her loving father, Kenneth Murphy and her grandparents Lester and Bertine Shaffer and Loren and Gladys Murphy.

A memorial service will be held for the family on November 6th at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Leawood, Kansas.

A celebration of life will be held on November 7th from 2:00-7:00 pm at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Leawood, Kansas. This will be open to the public.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to contribute to a memorial bench at the Overland Park Arboretum for family and friends to remember Debra. In addition, additional monies will be donated to TLC, a foster care organization that Brent and Deb used to help many foster children. Please send any memorials to Brent Scheumann 19712 Norton St., Spring Hill KS 66083-8448, or:
PayPal: DebMemorialFund@hotmail.com
Venmo: @Brent-Scheumann



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Penwell-Gabel - Funeral Home (913-768-6777) is assisting the family

The Adoption Authority cannot lawfully refuse to register the separate Mexican adoptions of two young children whose lives here involve "a legal limbo", the Supreme Court has ruled.

The adoptions of 15 other Mexican-born children in a similar position to the two children, including a sibling of one of them, have been registered by the Authority in the register of intercountry adoptions, Mr Justice Donal O'Donnell noted.

It would be a failure to hold these two children equal before the law “in such an important feature of their human personality” if the law were to permit a different outcome for them, he said.

He was giving the five-judge court's judgment today dismissing an appeal by the Authority over the High Court's answers to legal questions raised in the Authority’s proceedings concerning the status of the two children.

Both have lived in "a legal limbo" here because their separate adoption processes began under the Adoption Act 1991, but were not complete before the coming into force on November 1, 2010, of the Adoption Act 2010, when the 1991 Act was repealed.

S. Korean government program allows adoptees to submit DNA samples to locate families

Yun Sang-ae (on the screen), who was separated from her family at a young age and then adopted by a family in the US, speaks with her birth family for the first time in 44 years on Oct. 15. (provided by the National Police Agency)

“Sang-ae! Meeting you is a dream come true. If I hadn’t met you, I don’t think I could have found peace beyond the grave,” said Lee Eung-sun, 78. She had to stop talking, choked up by her tears. The South Korean woman had just been connected by video with the daughter she’d lost 44 years ago.

The face mask covering Lee’s nose and mouth was soaked in her tears. Lee cautiously lowered the mask when the police officer beside her gave her permission to do so. Despite the flowing tears, there was a big smile on Lee’s face.

“I miss you, Mom,” said Sang-ae, 47, in halting Korean. In 1976, Sang-ae, at the age of three, was separated from her grandmother at Namdaemun Market in Seoul. She was eventually sent to the US, where she was adopted by a family who named her Denise McCarthy.

The Adoption Authority cannot lawfully refuse to register the separate Mexican adoptions of two young children whose lives here involve "a legal limbo", the Supreme Court has ruled.

The adoptions of 15 other Mexican-born children in a similar position to the two children, including a sibling of one of them, have been registered by the Authority in the register of intercountry adoptions, Mr Justice Donal O'Donnell noted.

It would be a failure to hold these two children equal before the law “in such an important feature of their human personality” if the law were to permit a different outcome for them, he said.

He was giving the five-judge court's judgment today dismissing an appeal by the Authority over the High Court's answers to legal questions raised in the Authority’s proceedings concerning the status of the two children.

Both have lived in "a legal limbo" here because their separate adoption processes began under the Adoption Act 1991, but were not complete before the coming into force on November 1, 2010, of the Adoption Act 2010, when the 1991 Act was repealed.

From: ACT

Date: Mon 19. Oct 2020 at 14:55

Subject: Protection of Mr. Dieu Merci Kitambo

To:

Dear President von der Leyen,

SP en GroenLinks kritisch op nieuwe subsidieregeling onder geadopteerden

Gisteren

•

leestijd 3 minuten

Adoptiebedrog III

The trauma and harm to families and communities caused by intrusive child welfare system interventions is well documented by multiple sources – to the degree that many argue the system can be more accurately viewed as the family policing system, family regulation system, or foster care industrial complex. In our paper It Is Not a Broken System, It Is a System That Needs to be Broken, we outline research that shows that the act of forcible separation of children from their parents is a source of significant and lifelong trauma. As we summarized in the article, “trauma associated with separation has been shown to result in cognitive delays, depression, increased aggression, behavioral problems, poor educational achievement, and other harmful outcomes.”

Youth and parents who have experienced child welfare services regularly testify to the harm of separation and the failures of and trauma created by both short- and long-term involvement with the foster care system. Advocates and those working to reform child welfare from both within the system and without, regularly document this harm. For example, in the most recent court report, M.D. ex re Stukenberg v. Abbott, a consent decree focused on reforming Texas’ child welfare system, the federal court monitor stated on page 11: “The Texas child welfare system continues to expose children in permanent managing conservatorship to an unreasonable risk of serious harm.”

It is within the context of this knowledge and understanding and our many years of concerted reform efforts that we have launched the upEND movement, an emerging collaborative aimed at creating a society in which the forcible separation of children from their families is no longer an acceptable solution when help is needed. This movement seeks to protect the health of children, which requires us to center our work around keeping them with their families and communities.

Despite system acknowledgment and efforts to keep children with their families, supporting families is not the organizing priority of child welfare interventions. The upEND movement seeks to change that. It values families and requires an investment in what they need to be successful. To meaningfully do that, we need to reimagine the supports families have and the systems that provide them.

The upEND movement is rooted in the deep history of the disproportionate harm the system has and continues to cause Black children and families. Not only does the child welfare system have a history of disproportionately surveilling and separating Black children from their families and communities, research points to the ways that the system criminalizes and polices Black mothers, is more likely to substantiate cases against Black families, and penalizes poor families for issues related to poverty and material hardships. Even child welfare reforms that attempt to change how services are delivered within the system still reproduce the system’s coercive power, further marginalizing families and communities already disenfranchised by structural racism.