Lynelle is the founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV), beginning in 1998. She is a Vietnamese adoptee residing in Australia (Sydney). She has built ICAV into an extensive worldwide network amongst the intercountry adoptee community and provided one of the first platforms worldwide for intercountry adoptee led organisations and individuals to collaborate, share, and encourage one another, regardless of sending or adoptive country.

In the first decade, Lynelle focused locally and built strong and positive relationships with the Australian Federal Government responsible for intercountry adoption (DSS & AGD) and most State Central Authorities in Australia. She also built lasting relationships with the majority of Australian NGO post adoption support organisations who provide intercountry adoption services to adoptees. This advocacy at government level in Australia, resulted in free psychological counselling to all intercountry adoptees in Australia from Relationship Matters, access to a free Hotline for all intercountry adoptees for visa, passport, birth country queries; and a free Search & Reunification Service to all intercountry adoptees via International Social Services, Australia for 2 years, which sadly, despite much advocacy, ended mid 2018 after helping over 200 adoptees and families. Today, Lynelle’s work has extended to include international networking and relationship building with other Central Authorities and organisations who work in or are connected to intercountry adoption.

Over the years, Lynelle has presented at many seminars to governments and related organisations nationally and internationally, including adoption related conferences. She has written, edited and collaborated to publish extensively on the experiences of intercountry adoptees. The book The Colour of Time was her brain child which she edited, compiled, and published in June 2017 in collaboration with ISS Australia, funded by the Australian federal government.

In 2019, Lynelle was invited to represent ICAV at The Hague Working Group to Prevent & Address Illicit Practices in Intercountry Adoption and brought together a group of leaders from around the world to contribute to this important forum. She was also guest speaker at the US Department of State Intercountry Adoption Symposium, bringing with her a group of 10 American intercountry adoptee leaders to have a say and become visible in American intercountry adoption policy & practice. Lynelle continues to elevate the intercountry adoptee voice around the world and encourages adoptee leaders to do likewise.

Lynelle has an IT and business background, having worked at large corporations, IBM and PwC. Her various roles have included managing large contracts, delivering outsourced services, sales and client management, crisis and problem management, managing high functioning IT specialist teams around the world, and bringing people together to deliver a complete IT service.

Although intercountry adoption, according to systematic reviews as well as meta-analysis, is from a perspective of child protection, a successful intervention, this often comes at the cost of lengthy therapy and support. Both in studies as in clinical practice intercountry adoptees are overrepresented in mental health services worldwide (Barroso, Barbosa-Ducharne, Coelho, Costa, & Silva 2017; Palacios & Brodzinsky, 2011; Van IJzendoorn & Juffer, 2006; Rutter et al., 2009). From my clinical experience, the focus on classifying the problems and using highly standardized treatments are not enough to help intercountry adoptees and their families (Vinke, 2011, 2012). In this practice-based article, I propose to use the concept of Van der Kolk's Developmental Trauma Disorder to describe the problems intercountry adoptees face in combination with Waters’ Star model (Waters, 2016; Van der Kolk et al., 2009; Gindis, 2019). Although not an official DSM-5 disorder, DTD has been embraced by many clinicians as a valid concept to approach the diversity of symptoms seen in patients coming from severe deprivational backgrounds such as intercountry adoptees. Both have proven useful in my small private practice2DTD and the Star model prove helpful especially when dealing with dissociative symptoms. In 2004, the ISSTD published guidelines on evaluation and treatment of dissociative symptoms in children and adolescents, yet dissociation is hardly ever mentioned in diagnostical evaluations. This strikes as odd since in daily life of adopted families, in clinical practice, in peer supervision, when discussed, dissociative behaviours seem often very present. Still they are hardly ever referred to in research, assessment or treatment in relation to intercountry adoptees. In this article, I will focus on trauma related dissociation in intercountry adoptees and present a theoretically informed, practical approach to this phenomenon with respect to intercountry adoptees that integrates insights from developmental, trauma and neurobiological research. The approach is illustrated by using some clinical case-examples.

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The phone call was unexpected. Navya took it at her home in northern Italy, 11 years ago. The caller said that her birth mother, whom Navya believed dead, might still be alive somewhere in Kerala. She decided to find her mother, and began a search with the handful of details her adoptive Italian parents passed on. But over a decade and a visit to Kerala later, she hasn’t had much luck.

“All I know is that her name is Sophia and she was 19 years old when she gave birth to me. She came to stay at an orphanage in Kozhikode two to three months before the delivery. There was a woman with her, by the name of Thankamma. I don’t know how they are related to each other. On March 31, 1984, she gave birth to me and then she was gone. I was raised in the orphanage for two years before being adopted and taken to Trento in Italy,” Navya says.

As a little girl of three or four, Navya noticed how she looked different from her Italian parents. Why was she dark and they white, why was she not similar to them, she asked them. When she was old enough, they told her what they knew. She has since been curious about her birth mother, the person she hopes to be more ‘similar to’.

“I am not at all mad at her. I am thankful to her for giving birth to me. We don’t know what her situation might have been back then. And I have had a good life. I am very thankful to the people at the orphanage for giving me so much love and care. One of the nuns kept in touch with me all through my life through letters we wrote to each other. I am also thankful to my parents who adopted me and gave me a good life in Italy. But my mother doesn’t like it when I thank them. She says she needed a daughter and I needed a mother and we were there for each other,” Navya says, laughing.

Soon after learning that her birth mother was alive, Navya visited Kerala, but only for a few days. “I wanted to spend time with the nun at the orphanage who was quite aged by then. She passed away last year; today is her first death anniversary,” she says on Wednesday, showing a picture of the late nun.

On Tuesday, the Chamber of Deputies decisively adopted the draft amending and supplementing the Law on the adoption procedure, in the sense that the procedure for evaluating adopters and the post-adoption monitoring stage is made more flexible, as well as debureaucratizing procedures, including: elimination from the procedure the identification of relatives up to the fourth degree in cases where the individualized child protection plan aims at adoption; making the adoption procedure more flexible for children who have reached the age of 14, as well as groups of siblings who cannot be separated.

Among the changes proposed by the two deputies is the elimination of the double search for relatives up to the fourth degree - both for establishing the protection measure and for approving the adoption. Relatives will be searched only once and only up to the third degree, thus shortening the periods in which children remain trapped in the protection system, shows, in a press release, the deputy Oana Bizgan who submitted amendments to the project by law.

Also, for the first time, children declared adoptable will be able to benefit from the chance at a family, even after reaching the age of 14, remaining adoptable until adulthood.

For adoptive parents, the measures are extremely beneficial: the period of validity of the adopter certificate is extended from 2 to 5 years, the accommodation leave and the allowances they receive are aligned with the benefits enjoyed by any biological parent, and the bureaucracy excessive is considerably reduced, precisely to emphasize the quality of the act of adoption and to humanize the whole process which, we must remember, serves human lives and not files with rail.

"If the adopter or the adoptive family belongs to the national minorities, the evaluation and preparation can be done, upon request, in the language of the respective national minorities", the legislative proposal adopted by the deputies also shows.

Sunny Ridge Family Center, a long-standing child services organization in Illinois, merged with Holt International and became Holt-Sunny Ridge in April 2014. In June 2019, Holt-Sunny Ridge became licensed in Wisconsin and took over Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan (LSS)’s private domestic adoption services in Wisconsin.

“With this name change, we hope to convey that the mission and work being done in Illinois and Wisconsin is the same as Holt International’s mission and work around the world — to strengthen families at risk of separation and to find loving, permanent homes for children,” says Amy Trotter, director of Holt’s Illinois and Wisconsin branch.

Including the U.S., Holt International currently works in 14 countries around the world. In Illinois and Wisconsin, Holt provides options counseling for women experiencing unplanned pregnancy; empowers single mothers to reach their goals and independently care for their children; trains adoptive families and ensures safe and permanent adoption placements for infants; provides adoption-competent counseling to adoptees and their families; offers adoption-related trainings to professionals; and more. These services will not be impacted or changed by the branch’s name change.

About Holt International

Holt International, (https://www.holtinternational.org) seeks a world where every child has a loving and secure home. Since Holt’s founding in 1956, the organization has worked towards its vision through programs that strengthen and preserve families that are at risk of separation; by providing critical care and support to orphaned and vulnerable children; and by leading the global community in finding families for children who need them and providing the pre-and post-adoption support and resources they need to thrive. Always, Holt focuses on each child’s unique needs —keeping the child’s best interest at the forefront of every decision.

JEJU, South Korea, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- A Jeju Island woman, who recently stunned Korean society after offering to sell her newborn baby for 200,000 won (US$175) in a mobile secondhand marketplace, will undergo a formal police investigation as a criminal suspect, police said Monday.

The island's Seogwipo Police Station said it has booked the 27-year-old woman, whose identity was withheld, on charges of attempting to traffic a child in violation of the Child Welfare Act.

Under the current law, anybody who sells a child is punished by imprisonment of up to 10 years. Even if a child is not actually traded, the perpetrator is subject to punishment.

The woman is accused of uploading two photos of her baby on the cyber marketplace on Oct. 16, saying a 36-week-old baby was available for adoption for the price of 200,000 won.

She reportedly uploaded the controversial post due to her physical and emotional difficulties after giving birth to the baby following an unwanted pregnancy. She had immediately deleted her online post after realizing her behavior was wrong and expressed remorse in a subsequent police questioning.

Eighty-eight Romanian NGOs accused President Klaus Iohannis and MPs of making it harder to prosecute human trafficking and child pornography cases by adopting a controversial new law.

Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis in Bucharest in September. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

Eighty-eight Romanian NGOs published an open letter on Sunday criticising President Klaus Iohannis for promulgating on October 29 a controversial law that effectively reduces the statute of limitations for crimes related to human trafficking and child pornography.

“We note with deep disappointment that one week after the publication of the European Commission’s Human Trafficking Report in which Romania is presented as the state with the highest number of victims in Europe… the President of Romania enacted a law more favourable to defendants in crimes of child trafficking and child pornography,” the NGOs’ letter said.

The letter said that the new law unjustifiably removes references to child trafficking and child pornography from a paragraph of the country’s criminal code.

(Jamaica Star) Marlon* says he has been restless since September when he discovered that his eight-year-old daughter was given up for adoption overseas without his consent.

The fuming father said he is seeking assistance from the relevant authorities to reverse the procedure.

“I can’t sleep at nights. I don’t know if my child is happy. I need to speak to my child. I would do anything to reverse the adoption. I am all about a better life for my child but do it the right way. Mi never did have to find out from others say mi daughter get adopted because no loving father would feel good,” he said. “I want to have access to my child and I don’t want her to have another person’s last name.”

Marlon said although he and his babymother, Faith*, parted ways when she was pregnant, he is adamant that he was very involved in his daughter’s life. But he admitted that his name is not on the birth certificate.

“I was at work when my baby was born and when I went to the hospital the following morning, her mother was not answering her phone,” he said.

A total of 3,531 children, including 2,061 girls, were adopted in India during the one year period ending March 31 with Maharashtra recording the highest number of adoptions among states, according to government data. As per data from the Child Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), 1,470 boys and 2,061 girls were adopted from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020.

In the context of widespread and generational preference for sons across cultures in the country, an official said people's mindset is slowly changing and they are becoming more accepting towards adopting girls. "We give them three choices - one can opt for a girl, a boy, or can give no preference (while applying for adopting a child). Many people prefer to adopt a girl child," he said. Activists, however, say more girls are adopted because more of them are available for adoption.

"Even a casual visit to an adoption agency will tell you there are far more girls than boys to select for adoption. So to attribute it to progressive values may be a bit exaggerated or over-simplistic," said Akhila Sivadas, executive director at the Centre for Advocacy and Research, a non-profit organisation. She said many families have a strong preference for sons and go to the extent of taking recourse to pre-natal sex determination and selection to abort the female foetus, with some even abandoning the girl child. "There is a sense of collective wrong and guilt among some people who genuinely strive to redress it by adopting girls," she said.

According to the data, 3,120 children were adopted in the age group of 0-5 years while in the age group of 5-18 years as many as 411 children were adopted between April last year and March this year. The official said adoption of older children continues to be an issue as most parents still prefer to adopt children below two years of age. "People prefer to adopt younger children due to which it becomes more and more difficult to get a child adopted as he or she grows up," he said. Sivadas said people might prefer younger children to experience the joy of parenting a child from the time it is born or soon after it is born.

"However, we must recognize that adoption is not always done with the altruistic motive of giving the child a better life. As a result children with any kind of challenges including inter-sex children are rarely adopted," she said. She further said "to what extent all this is reflecting changing values is yet to be established and only an in-depth study can resolve this matter with some degree of certainty and authority". Within the country, 3,110 children were adopted while 421 inter-country adoptions took place in 2019-20, according to the data.

Mandira Bedi on adopting a four-year-old and the challenges that come with it

When Raj and I were getting married 20 years ago, I told him that I not only wanted to have a biological child, but also

wanted to offer another child the same opportunities, hope and a new life. Both of us, however, got caught up with our own

careers and that plan was soon forgotten.

In fact, it took a while before I became a mother, in 2011, when my son Veer was born and biologically, I was certain, I