Kolkata, Mar 11 (UNI) The West Bengal Government has launched a government-run adoption centre at Medinipur. It will come up at Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan (girls’ home) in the district. The centre was officially inaugurated by the Minister for Women & Child Development and Social Welfare.

There are a total of 22 adoption centres spread across Bengal, most of which are run by voluntary organizations, and are aided by the State Government.

The Minister for Women & Child Development and Social Welfare has confirmed that starting with Medinipur, five more adoption centres of the same kind will be set up in other places. Ten children can now be housed at this adoption centre. Children up to the age of six can reside here. They will also receive education here.

Painful questions in Latvia and often promises to find more funding for pensioners have been present in the country’s government halls for years. The difficult topics regarding orphanages and support of families that have disabled children do not become easier with time either. Why is social inequality Latvia’s bleeding wound? This and other topics were discussed by BNN with Latvia’s Welfare Minister Ramona Petravi?a.

«Adoption in Latvia – nearly all potential parents pick children aged three to five years. Preference given to girls»

One of the main priorities for the new welfare minister is improving adoption rates in Latvia and making sure orphanages provide family-like conditions for children. Petravi?a says Latvia already has a long queue of people waiting to adopt children. Unfortunately, the problem is that nearly all potential parents want children three to five years old. On top of that, the main demand is for girls.

«The situation is especially hard for disabled children – they are picked for adoption far less often than other children,» the minister said.

Low benefits represent one of the reasons why disabled children and not often adopted. «Parents are unable to leave work. Additionally, disabled children require parents to be present all the time. However, a situation in which a child is put in an orphanage costs the state far more – care of such a child in a social care centre costs the state EUR 800 a month,» said the minister.

GEORGE TOWN: At Hendrik Smit’s home in Batu Ferringhi, a marble urn containing some of his granddaughter’s ashes sits in a corner, a grim reminder of how Ivana died two years ago at the tender age of 18.

Almost every day, his wife Ho Sioe Tjoan places fresh flowers in a vase next to the urn and lights several candles around it.

Hendrik, 80, and Ho, 79, raised Ivana from a young age in the Netherlands. When they migrated to Penang in 2002, Ivana, then three, was sent to live with them as well.

Her death in 2017 left a bleak hole in their lives, turning their once-lively home sombre.

“We are lonely, just the two of us here,” Hendrik said in an interview with FMT.

Security service lawyer says it ‘regrets’ claims against Peter Morrison were not investigated

MI5 warned the cabinet secretary in the 1980s about rumours that a minister had a “penchant for small boys” but did not inform the police or launch an investigation into the allegations, according to a member of the security services.

Giving evidence anonymously to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), a lawyer with the security service apologised for it having taken a “narrow, security-related view” of the accusations against Sir Peter Morrison.

“With hindsight,” the lawyer, whose voice was heard via remote video link, said “it was a matter of deep regret” that MI5 had not cooperated with police or made inquiries into the activities of the former MP for Chester, who died in 1995.

The official said the security service did not investigate people merely because they had a public profile but only when there was reason to suspect they posed a threat to national security. Not all files were “adverse”, he added, saying that some might be opened if a person was targeted by a terrorist group or could be susceptible to approaches by a foreign intelligence organisation.

KOLHAPUR: The Panchgani police are questioning a Kenya-based couple - hailing from Pune - for "adopting" a baby for Rs1.5 lakh, in connection

with a rape case.

The couple was summoned by the police as part of a probe into allegations of rape involving a businessman and the sale of the baby born as a result of

the sexual assault. The couple was originally from Bund Garden Road. Panchgani assistant police inspector Trupti Sonawane told TOI that the couple had not followed any legal procedure in the adoption of the baby. "This is serious, and we are following up," she said.

When the suspect revealed the address of the couple that bought the baby, a police team rushed to Pune. The suspect revealed that he got Rs 1.5 lakh

In 1966 in the nation’s capital, what Kara and Frank Speltz wanted to do simply wasn’t allowed.

By Diane Bernard March 10

After Frank and Kara Speltz got married in 1965, the couple found out they couldn’t have children.

Depressed, Kara, then 28, began calling local adoption agencies in the nation’s capital to see if they could adopt. Private agencies in Washington, including Catholic Charities, said the waiting lists were so long that it would take at least five years to adopt a healthy white baby.

Longing for a child, the white couple, who were involved in the city’s civil rights struggles, began to research how they could adopt an African American child instead. A year after their wedding, they contacted D.C.’s Department of Public Welfare and Junior Village, the city’s overcrowded home for orphaned and destitute children. Both organizations turned them down, saying it was against their policies to allow adoptions between whites and blacks.

By Dimithri Wijesinghe

Adoption is the process of permanently transferring all the legal rights and responsibilities of being a parent to a particular child from that child’s birth parents (biological parents) to the adoptive parents.

According to Attorney-at-law Harshana Nanayakkara, who works closely with the Department of Probation and Child Care Services (DPCCS), most people do not realise that adoption is about the child and not the parents. In that “it is about finding a suitable home for a child and not about providing a child to a childless family”.

Many would still say: “Oh, that’s the same thing, just worded differently,” but the fact of the matter is it is not. The biggest concern with such a misconception, regardless of however small it may seem, is that it gives way to all of the illegality and corruption that surround the adoption process.

Olivia

Verona, 29 - 31 March

One of the speakers Marco Griffini

i

The prosecutor has closed the procedure initiated by the previous management of the international adoptions commission for a series of irregularities in the Congo. Griffini: the end of a nightmare

Adoptions, now the long season of poisons is officially over. The Milan Public Prosecutor has definitively closed the proceeding initiated by the previous Cai management (International Adoption Commission) against Aibi, one of the most important institutions authorized for adoptions , for a series of serious irregularities concerning the adoption procedures in Congo. In practice, Aibi was accused of getting the green light for adoptions by the authorities of the African country behind the payment of bribes.

The minors, according to the charges made by the Cai to the Milanese institution, would have been taken away from the families of origin, imprisoned in fact in the orphanage, and then "sold" to Aibi that provided to transfer them to Italy to families awaiting adoption. But none of this really happened. The Public Prosecutor's Office ordered the filing "due to the groundlessness of the crime report".

The news takes on a significance that goes beyond the dispute between Cai's past management and the Aibi. It marks the end of a long period that has seen heavy shadows lengthen over the entire system of adoptions, when a crisis of confidence was added to the general collapse of the arrival of children in Italy, but also in the West, which undermined the credibility of the institutions , the relationships with adoptive families, the long-established collaboration between juvenile courts and central control body (precisely the Cai).

"The end of a nightmare that has upset our lives for almost six years. And it has made it almost impossible for us to work and for our families to continue the adoptive path in a serene way. But do we realize what it means for an institution that deals with international adoption to go ahead with the suspicion of stealing children, of buying them in Africa and then reselling them in Italy? ". He has the voice broken off to Marco Griffini, founder and president of Aibi, while commenting on the decree of archiving of the Court of Milan that on March 5 last dissolved all doubts. In the 600 pages of accusations put together by the previous Cai manager, Silvia Della Monica, against Aibi, there is no news of a crime.

Lasse became panic-struck: Denmark's only adoption agency warns members about money shortages

Falling interest in adopting means that the adoption process can become more expensive and longer.

Lasse Nyhus was both angry and sad when he read the mail from the country's only adoption agency, Danish International Adoption (private photo).

SALLY FRYDENLUND LARSEN

09 MAR. 2019 KL. 6.30| UPDATED 09 MAR. 2019 KL. 09:37