Profiles of children up for adoption cannot be shared because of privacy issues, the Foundation for Social Welfare Services CEO Alfred Grixti, told The Malta Independent on Sunday.

“As an entity entrusted by the State with the responsibility of being the guardians of these children, we cannot share their profiles because of GDPR issues,” Grixti said. Nothing can stop these children, when they became adults, from suing the State if their personal information is shared without their consent, he added.

Grixti, together with the director for Alternative Care, Remenda Grech, were speaking to this newspaper after last week, Josette Sultana, a founder of Adoption Opportunities, said that one of the reasons why the country has a very low rate of adoptions of Maltese children is because there is a lack of sharing of their profiles.

Only 27 Maltese children have been adopted by Maltese families in the last decade.

Grixti began by clarifying that adoptions are no longer the responsibility of A?enzija Appo??, as indicated by Sultana. This is now the remit of the Directorate for Alternative Care (Children and Youths) which was set up in July 2020 through the introduction of the Minor Protection (Alternative Care) Act. The Directorate is now the responsible entity for minors in alternative care, foster care and adoptions, among others.

Statement Adoption Association Reformed Gezindte (AVGG) in response to the Standpoint on the future of intercountry adoption of the Minister for Legal Protection, dated April 11, 2022.

On Monday 11 April 2022, the Minister for Legal Protection, FM Weerwind, sent a letter to the House of Representatives containing his position on the future of intercountry adoption. This was in response to the critical report of the Joustra Committee of 8 February 2021.

Our -short- response is as follows:

We are happy and grateful with the choices the minister has made;

The letter has a good tone, the right balance and it's nice that adoption has been clearly chosen as a child protection measure;

The illiberal pattern is familiar, as ministers plan to change the rules and block avenues of resistance for parents who disagree

A deep, sometimes toxic contradiction has long sat at the heart of Conservative politics, and thanks to Boris Johnson’s government it is now more visible than ever.

Brexit has replaced frictionless trade with Europe with a nightmare of form-filling, surcharges and red tape. The benefits system is seemingly designed to be a bureaucratic mess of inexplicable rules and regulations, so impossible to navigate that people are thereby incentivised to stay well away from it. Getting to see a doctor or dentist now feels much the same. And there is another, rather more overlooked example of how the promise of choice and a responsive state is all too often nullified by its exact opposite, which is about to become even more glaring: England’s system of provision for children and young people with special educational needs.

Just under 1.5 million kids in England fall into this category. Around 470,000 of them currently have what officialspeak terms an education, health and care plan (EHCP). This legally binding document, which sets out the provision a child or young person needs, can now run up to the age of 25, and offers families at least some certainty about what they’re entitled to and who delivers it. As I know as a matter of experience – my 15-year-old son is autistic, and has an EHCP – it often takes a mind-bending level of effort to get one. But since 2010, when EHCP-like documents were known as statements of special educational needs, national figures for the number of people who have one has increased every year. Indeed, at the last count, the number of plans was up nearly 10% year-on-year, and initial requests for one had increased by nearly a quarter.

The system built around EHCPs allows parents to appeal against local authority decisions via the Send (or special educational needs and disabilities) tribunal system – very often, people contest refusals to allow them to even begin the process of acquiring a plan, or push to get their child the kind of specialist schooling often delivered by independent providers. Again, the relevant figures are on the up: over the past eight years, the number of appeals has more than doubled. Some of this is traceable to parents being able to access information and advice via online communities centred on such websites as the brilliant Special Needs Jungle, and being empowered as never before. Current statistics, moreover, suggest that nine out of 10 appeals are decided in favour of families and against councils.

BERKELEY – Angela Fillingim, one of thousands of children orphaned or adopted during El Salvador's bloody 1980-1992 civil war, shared with reporters on Thursday, Dec. 21, memories and photos of her extraordinary return to her native land. She spoke at a well-attended press conference at UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center, a key collaborator in the DNA Reunification Project, which is helping Salvadoran war orphans track down their biological families.

Fillingim, 21, was adopted as an infant from El Salvador by a Berkeley couple in 1985. She recently received confirmation of her parentage after providing a DNA sample to the database, which was developed by UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center, the California Department of Justice and the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights.

On Saturday, Dec. 16, at her biological grandparents' modest ranch in Ilobasco, a town in north central El Salvador, she met her biological mother, half-brother, grandparents, uncles and nephews. It had been a year and a half since she began the search.

"I felt a sense of relief. It was a nice moment to be on that ranch and hear all the stories," said Fillingim, a UC Davis sociology student. She said her biological mother, Blanca Rodriguez, cried when she saw the daughter she had given up for adoption because of violence and poverty in El Salvador.

"She asked me to forgive her," Fillingim said. But, instead, Fillingim wanted to thank her. "I've had such a great life," she said. "I thanked her for making the best possible decision she could make . under the circumstances."

As of June 28, there are 3,596 children legally free for adoption, including 1,380 with special needs.

NEW DELHI: More than 16,000 prospective parents have been waiting for over three years to adopt a child, with officials attributing the slowdown to the availability of fewer children who are legally free for adoption.

According to data shared by officials of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) in response to an RTI filed by PTI, there are 28,501 prospective parents whose home study reports have been approved and are in queue for adopting a child.

Out of them, 16,155 prospective parents whose home study reports have been approved three years ago are still waiting in queue for adoption, according to the data.

As of June 28, there are 3,596 children legally free for adoption, including 1,380 with special needs.

Romania’s minister of family Gabriela Firea announced the Government’s intention to close all orphanages and move children to family-style homes, a project that is almost two decades in the making.

“Closing all placement centers, the so-called orphanages, in the country is our primordial interest, so that children left in the care of the state will have a better, warmer, friendlier life in [the care of] foundations or in family-style homes,” said Gabriela Firea, Romania’s minister of family, youth and equal opportunities. She added that there are currently nearly 47,000 children in orphanages throughout the country, out of which six thousand are up for adoption.

Romania has a dark past when it comes to orphanages. In the aftermath of the 1989 revolution that toppled the communist dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu, a series of pictures came out showing the squalid conditions in orphanages. Subsequent investigations estimated that between 1966 and 1989 there were up to 20,000 unnecessary deaths of children left in the care of the state. The vast majority of those who died were disabled.

“Roughly 70% of the registered deaths were from pneumonia. They were dying of external causes that were preventable and treatable,” said Florin Soare, an investigator, quoted by The Guardian.

Firea’s recently announced intention, however, has been part of the Government’s commitments for years.

A woman went viral for recalling her trauma as an adopted child as discussions around adoption became more prevalent with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The woman, known as @alyxstone33, posted the TikTok on Saturday where it received more than 410,000 views and 2,300 comments.

"Adoption is a scam," the on-screen text read over a duet with another creator's video. In the original video, user @debtcollective asked: "what's a scam that's become so normalized that we don't even realize it's a scam anymore?"

Adoptions by the Numbers

According to the Adoption Network, no more than 2 percent of Americans have adopted, meaning only 1 in 50 children are adopted. Data from 2020 estimated that more than 407,000 children were in foster care.

PIKE COUNTY (KMOV) -- A Missouri family claims the federal government mishandled and wrongly blocked their son’s adoption, and now they’re suing in what’s become an international adoption nightmare.

Jill and Adam Trower live in Pike County with their 9-year-old daughter. For more than four years ,they’ve been forced to watch through pictures and videos as Luke, the child they’re adopting, grows up in an orphanage thousands of miles away.

“It definitely feels like a betrayal for us, we have tried to do everything correct and it doesn’t matter,” Jill said.

The Trowers wanted to grow their family through adoption and started working with an international adoption agency. The family says in 2018 the agency connected them with Luke, an infant who was abandoned in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“Luke was found when he was a few months old, he was just abandoned in a trash heap,” Jill explained.

We asked readers to channel their inner Carolyn Hax and answer this question. Some of the best responses are below.

Dear Carolyn: Hi Carolyn, I am 45 and recently found the daughter whom I gave up for adoption when I was 16. My childhood was very traumatic and dysfunctional, therefore I knew that I couldn’t raise her properly or provide the best for her.

Since reconnecting we have established a great friendship and she fully understands and even appreciates that I gave her up for adoption. I am recently married and have a 2-year-old baby and step kids whom I adore. All have met her and are very supportive.

The problem is social media. I am very active and post often about my life and our family's adventures. I would like to start including my bio-daughter (with her permission) in these posts. But before I do I feel that I should at least offer up an explanation or part of the story so people I am connected to understand. I am not seeking validation but I feel it would be awkward or strange to just pop up with a new family member who looks like me that no one has ever seen or heard of.

My husband and friends think otherwise. They say it's no one’s business and that I don’t need to say a thing. But I think it would be weird not to, so I am torn.

CHENNAI: Esther (33), a French teacher in Liege, had reconciled herself to the fact that she was an orphan from India, adopted by her Belgian parents Maurice and Madeline. And then, on a sojourn to her native land 28 years after she was adopted, Esther was told she had a mother and sister in Chennai. Twists of destiny and turns of luck finally reunited her with them, albeit temporarily.

She landed in Chennai with her friend Delphine on December 16 to find out about the children's home from where she — then named Gomathi — was adopted as a five-year-old. She knew that a person called Pastor Mani, who used to write to her Belgian parents, had put her up for adoption. All she had was a greying photograph of herself with a foreigner taken at a Chennai beach when she was four years old, and an address from an old letter Mani had sent her Belgian parents.

"Her parents were apprehensive when she informed them that she was going to Chennai to find out about Pastor Mani and his children's home," said Delphine, who became friends with Esther at a music class.

While wandering about on Wallajah Road, Esther and Delphine met Bhawanesh Deora, who runs the NGO Shreyans Foundation. Deora helped them trace Mani, who said that her mother and elder sister were living in Thirumullaivoyal. And then on December 22, Esther, who loves Bollywood music and Chinese food, met her mother and sister for the first time.

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