Almost 70% unaware of after-care entitlements under the law: study

Nearly 40% of children who leave shelter homes after turning 18 are unable to complete schooling, 50% are unable to find paid work and almost 70% are unaware of their after-care entitlements under the law, finds a study conducted by an NGO across five States.

The study, released on Wednesday, is based on the testimonies of 435 “care leavers” and 100 other key stakeholders such as functionaries working on the ground for child protection. The age of the care leavers was between 17 years and 30 years.

While 48% of these young adults were from government-run institutions, 52% were from NGO-run institutions. Out of the total care leavers, 55% were male and the rest were female.

The study was conducted in Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Rajasthan by the NGO Udayan Care and was supported by the TATA Trusts and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund).

Jean-Philippe LEGAUT

Images of abused, malnourished children, deprived of access to care, crammed into unsanitary buildings: in 1989, international opinion discovered with horror the hell of the "Ceausescu orphanages", to the point that their dismantling was a condition sine qua non of Romania's accession to the European Union.

Beyond the sensationalist representations disseminated by the press and international organizations, the reality of this phenomenon is still largely unknown. One thing is certain: due to a cruel lack of means and qualified personnel, these "children of the State" have, by the tens of thousands, endured for years, without any possibility of escape, the harshness of the living conditions under the socialist regime and daily violence within the institutions supposed to support them.

Based on unexplored national and local sources, on numerous testimonies from former minors in care, but also on his twelve years of observation and social work in the field, Jean-Philippe Légaut shows us why and how these structures condemned those they should have protected.

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LUCKNOW: The state cabinet on Tuesday approved the new Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Care-and-Protection-of-Children)) Rules of 2019, under which all institutes working

with juveniles have to be compulsorily registered. A separate chapter has been included in which provisions for adoption of a

child by an eligible couple have been made more transparent.

The cabinet also sanctioned Rs 1 crore for seting up a botanical garden and Rs 25 lakh for a yoga centre in Dr Bhimrao

A Perth couple says it was “insane” to make them live apart for months for them to be able to bring their adopted daughter to Australia. They say the separation has caused them extreme stress and their children are suffering while they wait to know the fate of their daughter.

Vineet Sharma’s GP says the debilitating back pain the Perth father is suffering from is due to psychosomatic symptoms because of stress. Mr Sharma’s wife, Madhvi Bhatnagar’s health has also deteriorated because of the extreme stress and anxiety resulting from the fact that Ms Bhatnagar had to live in India for many months, away from her husband and son, to meet a visa requirement.

Mr Sharma and Ms Bhatnagar were trying to get their adopted daughter Dhruvita to Australia. One of the preconditions for the visa is that one of the adoptive parents has to live out of Australia for 12 months before the visa application is lodged.

Six-year-old Dhruvita was the biological daughter of Ms Bhatnagar’s sister who passed away when Dhruvita was just one. The couple adopted her as per Indian law in order to raise her in their family in Australia.

When the couple applied for their adopted daughter’s visa, that’s when they say they experienced the “surreal complexities” of Australia’s adoption visas.

1st state consultation on child adoption

Eastern Mirror Desk

Dimapur, Aug. 19: Due to ignorance about customary practices when adopting children, and about the Central Adoption Resource Authority (Cara) Regulations Act of 2017, several cases of illegal and random adoptions have happened in the past.

This is a violation of child rights, which is also a matter of grave concern, a recent consultative event in Dimapur highlighted. Illegal adoption also brings many problems to the family besides causing serious implications for the society in the long run. This was the concern raised by the Nagaland NGOs Forum (NNF).

The NNF’s first consultation on child adoption in the Naga society will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 20 at the Tourist Lodge in Dimapur with the anticipation that caregivers and Nagaland government will consider the endeavour on priority.

AHMEDABAD: She was found from a railway coach at Kalupur railway station (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Kalupurrailway-station) as an infant in June last year.

When the entire train was empty, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) heard a child’s cry and had found the girl child

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/girl-child) wrapped in a cloth. As the police could not find her biological parents, the

child was sent to Shishu Gruh in Paldi where she grew up with other children.

After over a year, Kranti, now one and a half years old, will start another journey on Tuesday when she will fly to the US with her

When she saw him through the window of an Omaha hotel lobby, her eyes welled up with tears. There he was, a man with a silhouette just like her boyfriend’s decades ago. A minute later, Kathleen Chafin hugged her son, Tom Rouse, for the first time in her life.

“It made me alive again,” Chafin recalled in an interview with The Washington Post, crying as she remembered the meeting in August 2015. “He took my hand, held it firmly, and he never let go the whole time. Just seeing him, oh my.”

Chafin had spent decades searching for a son she says she never wanted to give up for adoption. When they finally did meet, her years of despair turned into anger at the Catholic Church and one of its priests, who she alleges manipulated her and then removed her son from a hospital room 50 years ago.

Chafin has filed a federal lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Omaha and the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus, alleging on Wednesday that a Jesuit priest named Thomas Halley forced her to give her son up for adoption. She’s seeking $10 million for damages and relief.

Neither Catholic organization immediately responded to requests for comment late Monday. But when Chafin first raised concerns about the adoption in 2015, an investigation from the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus concluded that Halley operated within the law and that his actions were “born of a desire to avoid scandal and find good homes for babies of unwed mothers,” the Omaha World-Herald reported.

A United Nations watchdog is concerned that travel and certification documents issued by Irish authorities to couples who want to adopt children abroad “lack specificity and can be easily falsified.”

The observation is in a report on Ireland by special rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Ms de Boer-Buquicchio was highlighting Ireland’s use of immigration clearance letters (ICLs), instead of a visa, to facilitate the entry into Ireland of a foreign-born child who is being adopted by an Irish couple.

Ireland is almost unique internationally in not requiring a visa for a child being taken in from abroad for the purpose of adoption. Instead, these children are brought into the country by means of ICLs, issued to prospective adoptive couples by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS).

In her report, published last March, Ms de Boer-Buquicchio said she was concerned that ICLs did not contain enough security features. She said that “travel and certification documents used for children adopted internationally lack specificity and can easily be falsified.”

My name is Michaela, I would like to tell you my story. To say it right from the start: My story is not an "ideal world" story. I have gone through major crises in my life and was almost always on my own. So I've had to make some decisions that many women won't understand. But: Everything that I have done, I have done because I love my children and wish them a better life.

But let's start at the beginning. It starts in 2015. That year I separated from the father of my two children. He and I always went to work full-time, and after my job I did the children and the house by myself. This went on for years and at some point I got sick from the stress. I could no longer go to work and the relationship finally collapsed.

Since the father was no longer interested in his children after the separation (actually he didn't have that before), I moved 300 kilometers away to another city and wanted to start again. In mid-2016 I met another man who - as I only found out six months later - was in a committed relationship. I'm not a woman who destroys marriages or relationships - so I broke up with this man immediately. And moved back to my former home.

Four weeks later I realized that I was pregnant. I didn't want to have the abortion, but I also knew I couldn't raise this baby. I already had two children, I was always at the limit, financially it was tough and most of all I had no support. I knew that the father of the unborn child would have no interest in the child and it was clear to me that I could not create another child.

I researched how and where you can give birth anonymously to a baby and read a lot about baby hatches on the internet. I wanted to know what would happen to the baby if I put it in there. I wanted to be sure that it would be found and that it would be taken care of.

When she fell pregnant, her parents kicked her out of their home. The Ethiopian teenager then sought refuge across the border in Moyale.

But after giving birth at Sololo Mission Hospital on July 18, 2012, she abandoned the baby. Not even community service penalty by a Moyale court could tighten the bond between the young mother and her baby. She fled. The infant was placed under foster care at the Nairobi Children’s Home.

But on July 11, 2019 the baby found new parents. The court allowed a couple, who had adopted a son in July 2015, to assume parental rights of the baby’s biological parents.

“The child shall have the right to inherit their property. The applicants shall not be able to give up the child owing to any subsequent unforeseen behaviour or other changes in the child. This court dispenses with the consent of the child’s biological mother who abandoned it and disappeared into Ethiopia,” said Justice Aggrey Muchelule.

Hers is just one of several cases of parents running away from their children. While some give up their children due to economic hardships, others do so due to traditions and the stigma of giving birth at a young age. It is a situation that has seen the children acquire new parents, identities and homes as they continue with their lives without knowing their biological parents.