The state will help older foster youth who are aging out of care find families that will last beyond foster care.

TOPEKA, Kansas — Kansas will be the first state to let foster children pick their foster parents. The goal of the one-of-a-kind change aims to let older foster children create strong connections that could help them as they age out of the state’s care.

Foster children can find permanent homes either through adoption, being reunited with family or guardianship, but this new option gives foster youth more say.

Foster children age 16 and older would be able to pick up to two adults to serve as their legal, permanent family. Those people could include caregivers or people close to the child.

“It would be an unprecedented change,” said Scott Henricks, director of permanency at the Kansas Department for Children and Families. “It would be a change of direction on really how the system works.”

Lee Kyung-eun to meet Korean adoptees during Europe book tour next month

By Jung Min-ho

If inter-country adoption truly was intended "for the best" of children born in poor countries, why doesn't anyone listen to them when they finally have a voice to say that it wasn't what they wanted?

Inter-country adoptees' access to knowledge of their origins is still denied over their biological parents' right to privacy in Korea, a nation that remains as one of the leading "baby exporters" despite being the world's 10th-largest economy today.

Lee Kyung-eun, 53, one of the most famous, indefatigable defenders of adoptees' rights and author of "The Global Orphan Adoption System," will listen to the voices of Korean adoptees in person next month during her book tour in four European cities ? Amsterdam, The Hague, Copenhagen and Stockholm.

LOCHRISTI -Tonight starts on One 'We Are Family'. After reporter Lidewij Nuitten went looking for her former sweetheart Mark last year, she is now unraveling the roots of two adoptive sisters. In the second episode she looks for golden tips in Lochristi.

If you want to get to know yourself, you have to look for your origin. Lidewij learned that last year in 'Where is Mark?', the search for her first love. A story that was mainly about adoption. Starting tonight she will work on an analogous story and together with Noëmi and Anéline she will look for their biological parents. This brings her back on the track of rapprochement with her own brothers. But first a detour to Lochristi, where photographer Filip Naudts has a cozy family, with partner Katrien, son Alphonse and daughter Yang. So an adoptive daughter.

"Lidewij came to us with Noëmi and Anéline, hoping to pick up some golden tips from our noses during their search," says the Lootse photographer. “They got wind of our own search and asked if we didn't want to participate in the new series around the same problem.”

From the moment that Yang completed their family, Filip and his wife Katrien went in search of the answer to the origin-related question that Yang might one day ask himself. “We don't know Yang's birth history and there is certainly no information about her biological family. It is therefore like looking for a needle in a haystack. But doing nothing was not an option for us from the start, especially as time could erase clues. There are always files that disappear, or relatives that die. Despite many attempts through various American and Chinese channels, and also having search posters posted in Yang's native region, the search has still not yielded any fruitful results after all these years," it sounds.

What does daughter Yang, 17 and a student Restaurant-Keuken at the Hotel School in Ghent, think about this? “I don't really care that much about my past. I am only reminded when others approach me about this and ask, for example, what it is like to be adopted, or whether it was easy to learn the Dutch language.” “During my internship at De Lozen Boer, someone asked me why I considered working in a Chinese restaurant” (laughs). “People may mean well, but personally I find these comments rather irrelevant. Not because I want to deny my Chinese roots – a bit difficult in my case – or because adoption has no meaning in my life. But I actually prefer to be judged on my skills and who I am as a person. My origin doesn't really matter. That's why I don't feel the urge to visit my biological family at the moment. Though I'm not saying that can't change. For example, if I ever become pregnant or, who knows, adopt a child.” ?(Geert Herman)

When Michael Bennett ordered a 23andMe DNA testing kit in 2018, he was hoping to gain insight into his family health history.

“Every time I went to the doctor, they’d ask questions that I didn’t have the answers to,” said Bennett, a retired army veteran in Fort Worth, Texas, who was adopted at age 3.

Bennett, now 70, was born in 1951 in post-WWII occupied Japan. His biological mother, Yoshiko Nakajima, was Japanese; his biological father, Dick Webster, was an American serviceman. In 1953, Bennett was adopted by a couple in the United States. That was pretty much all Bennett knew about his birth family and he was OK with that.

“I had a very happy childhood. I adored my parents,” Bennett told TODAY Parents.

Sure, Bennett was curious about Nakajima and Webster — what happened between them? Why was he placed for adoption as a toddler? But Bennett didn’t dwell on the unknowns.

Instead, they tell parliamentary panel to improve access to education to delay marriages

An umbrella body of child rights organisations set up by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, which appeared before the parliamentary panel studying the Bill on raising the age of marriage for women to 21 from 18 years, has opposed the move and emphasised the need to improve access to education to delay marriages.

The India Child Protection Forum [ICPF] comprising nearly 70 civil society organisations, represented by its convener Amod K. Kanth as well as Ravi Kant from the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, made its submissions before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports headed by BJP MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe on Monday.

The panel has been meeting NGOs for the past one week and is expected to submit its report in June. Last year, Parliament had sent the Prevention of Child Marriage Bill, 2021 to the Standing Committee after the Opposition parties expressed concerns over raising the age of marriage for women and demanded greater scrutiny of the proposed law.

The ICPF told the panel that the Prevention of Child Marriages Act, 2005 had failed to stop child marriages in the country, which was evident through the National Crime Records Bureau data which show that only 2,530 cases were registered under the Act between 2016 and 2020, while the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-2021) indicated that 23.3% of women surveyed were married before attaining the legal age of marriage of 18.

The appointment of experts in the inquiry into foreign adoptions is reminiscent of the home blindness that the inquiry seeks to address. The criticism that the government might have hoped for is already being renewed when the legitimacy of the inquiry can be questioned.

It was after Dagens Nyheter's and SVT's extensive investigations of irregularities and crimes in connection with adoptions to Sweden, that the government in October 2021 got its thumbs out and Minister of Social Affairs Lena Hallengren announced that an investigation was being appointed . One of the main purposes is to clarify the existence of irregularities. The assignment will be reported in November 2023.

One subject of the reviews, which has also received a lot of criticism from adoptees, was the Adoption Center, Sweden's largest adoption mediator. Former employees of the Adoption Center in Chile were singled out for making children available for adoption without parental consent, through corrupt contacts in the judiciary, social services and health care. The Chilean tragedy is spreading over large parts of the western world. Children were pronounced dead, they were stolen from daycare, they were torn from their mothers' arms, they lost their families. A major criminal investigation is underway in Chile.

Cold hand

When Dagens Nyheter focused on Colombia , the newspaper was able to provide information about incorrect background stories and how children disappeared from hospitals and day care to eventually be sent to Sweden. The newspaper also spoke with the Colombian families. But when they searched the Adoption Center for a comment about the organization's responsibility for unethical and sometimes illegal adoptions, it became cold.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade could come as early as next month. Tennessee lawmakers expect adoption and foster reform legislation to be a priority in next year’s general assembly.

Tennessee, like all Mid-South states, has a trigger law that would go into effect banning most abortion in the state if Roe v. Wade is overturned and a leaked Supreme Court Draft opinion suggests it may.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says adoptions and foster care reform has been a focus of his throughout his term and will continue to be so no matter the decision.

The Adoption Project, a newly formed organization in Nashville, is aiming to have some of that legislation in front of lawmakers’ next general assembly.

The policy organization says it’s likely more children will be given up for adoption or go into foster care if most abortions are outlawed in the state.

At a time when most Irish people chose to ignore the thousands of girls and women locked up in Magdalene Laundries, one Galway family went to extraordinary lengths to break 15 young women free from one such ‘prison’.

It was a feat that could have come straight from a heist movie involving an insider, a getaway van and a heroic family in the west of Ireland in the early 1960s.

A new two-part RTÉ series, Ireland’s Dirty Laundry, details the desperate escape attempts by young girls incarcerated in the laundries, which often ended up heartbreakingly in failure, with gardaí returning them to the religious orders.

Along with new identities, the documentary reveals that female inmates, some just young girls, were assigned a number prefixed by the letter PEN, which stood for penitent, meaning someone who is repenting.

Labelled the “Maggies”, the women were sent to the laundries where they worked for nothing, some for their entire life, simply for being unmarried mothers or regarded as morally wayward or for transgressions such as going to the cinema twice in a week.

Do you want to learn more how civil society organisations can deliver a change for the most vulnerable children? Eurochild is organising a workshop highlighting the experiences of our Greek and Turkish members and how cultural differences and religion shape child protection.

The online event takes place on ZOOM on 1 June 2022 14h-15h30.

Join Eurochild as we highlight country-level practices from Greece and Turkey that support the transition from institutional to family- and community-based care. We will also hear from EU representatives on what opportunities lie ahead for child protection reforms in the EU and pre-accession countries - the European Child Guarantee and Enlargement Package in particular. We will discuss how EU policies & funding can further support these civil society efforts.

Eurochild members Roots Research Centre Greece and Hayat Sende Youth Association Turkey will share their lessons learned and good practices on what worked best for preparation of professionals and foster carers as well as how to increase an interest among the public to become a foster parent. They will also explain how cultural differences and religion shape child protection systems.

In cooperation with the Martin James Foundation, Eurochild provides capacity building and targeted technical assistance to convert the good practices and innovations of our members into systemic change. Read about our new push to support our members and strengthen family-based care.

CLEVELAND, Ohio— A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the former owner of a now-defunct Strongsville adoption agency to three months in prison for her lying to U.S. and Polish authorities about the adoption of a 5-year-old girl from Poland, whose caregiver later violently raped her.

Margaret Cole, the owner of European Adoption Consultants, will also spend a year on house arrest after she serves her prison term and must pay a $7,500 fine.

U.S. District Judge James Gwin sentenced Cole to far less than the two years in prison and a $90,000 fine sought by prosecutors. Cole’s defense attorneys argued for probation. Gwin also allowed Cole to self-report to prison.

“I’m really sorry for what happened, but I worked for 24 years to help 8,000 families,” Cole said. “The children were the joy of my life.”

Gwin said he factored in the 74-year-old’s age and health issues before handing down his sentence.