ROOT SEARCH BY ADOPTED CHILDREN: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES by Dr. Jagannath Pati, Deputy Director, CARA (Indian Central Authority)

Many people think of the issues that take place before and during an adoption, but fail to realize that it is important to anticipate and understand the issues that may come up after you have brought a child into your family. Adoption is an emotional experience. It is also a physical experience, a biological, and a psychological experience. Post Adoption Services shall refer to psycho-social and support services provided to the adoptee, adopter and the biological parents, popularly known as the adoption triangle, by a professionally trained social worker and/or other discipline e.g., psychiatrist/psychologist, etc., after the adoption is legally completed.

Children need some knowledge of their heritage to foster self-esteem later on in life. Long-term studies have shown that children whose heritage was celebrated in their adoptive families by and large grew up to be healthy, self-respecting adults.The Case for Transracial Adoption International adoptions presents unique challenges in securing accurate and truthful background information and history on individual children. Differences in culture, language, terminology, and the competence of medical resources all profoundly affect this process.

The access to information and the quality and reliability of information varies widely country by country. From countries where programs are well established and sophisticated, child information can be very complete and available. Routinely orphanages, institutions or hospitals that are all under the authority of appointed government ministries hold this information. The range of cooperation on the part of these authorities is often irregular and inconsistent (http://www.holtintl.org/ethics.shtml).

Guiding principles/Policies

Mission République de Moldavie et Roumanie (janvier 2019)

En janvier 2019, EFA a effectué une mission en République de Moldavie et en Roumanie. S’il n’y a aucune adoption internationale dans ce premier pays et très peu dans le second (les adoptions internationales sont autorisées uniquement pour les personnes d’origine roumaine), il s’agissait avant tout de comprendre leur système de la protection de l’enfance et plus particulièrement la place qu’y tient l’adoption.

Les défis auxquels ont à faire face ces deux pays sont similaires en ce qui concerne la protection de l’enfance et la désinstitutionnalisation des enfants placés. Les progrès y sont considérables même si les différences entre les villes et les campagnes restent importantes.

Cette mission a été l’occasion de présenter le fonctionnement d’EFA aux autorités de ces deux pays, d’envisager les perspectives possibles en matière d’adoption internationale et, pour la Roumanie, de comprendre également le système mis en place pour la recherche des origines. En effet, dans les années 1990, un nombre important d’enfants roumains, devenus adultes depuis, ont été adoptés et peuvent aujourd’hui entreprendre une démarche de recherche des origines.

The TV2 documentary "The Danish children from India" may give rise to a number of questions about adoption from the Shejar Chhaya orphanage and an investigation that the Appeals Board launched in 2014. Here you can see our answers.

Briefly about the process

• 2005 AC Børnehjælp terminates the cooperation with Shejar Chhaya due to a lack of development in the quality of the work.
• 2014 Media coverage of problems with adoptions by Shejar Chhaya from 2004 to 2008.
• 2014 The Danish Appeals Board initiates an investigation into Danish adoption cases from the orphanage in the period from 2004-2005

Have we done enough on the matter?

Our possibilities as a supervisory authority to assess whether there have been irregularities or unethical conditions with a Danish organisation's former partner are limited when the collaboration - as in this case - has ended several years ago.

Mumbai: Two children from Chembur orphanage die under mysterious circumstances

The Chembur orphanage. Pic/Rajesh Gupta

In a shocking case that came to light, two kids from a private orphanage in Chembur died under mysterious circumstances. Both the kids died on consecutive days. Six children from the facility complained of dehydration on December 25 after which they were admitted to private hospitals, where the two kids — one was five months old and one 10 months old — succumbed. Now, Govandi police have registered an accidental death report.

All the children are from Bal Anand Orphanage at Ghatla. The facility houses around 52 children (up to 18 years). DCP (Zone 6) Shahaji Umap informed, "Four kids are undergoing treatment at the moment; three are admitted at Zen Hospital and one at Kohinoor Hospital.

All the kids admitted are below the age of one year." Post-mortem was conducted at JJ Hospital, where the preliminary cause of death is considered as dehydration. In both the cases, tissues have been preserved for examination. "We are finding out what they were fed before the incident took place," a source said.

2 babies die of gastro in city orphanage

TNN | Dec 30, 2018, 05.00 AM IST

Printed from

MUMBAI: Two babies of Bal Anand Orphanage in Ghatla, Chembur, have

died of acute gastroenteritis and dehydration and four others are

The Government is contemplating to amend J&K Justice Juvenile (Care & Protection of Children) Act 2013 by introducing a draft Juvenile Justice Bill 2018 through Department of Social Welfare. One of the amendments relates to lowering of juvenile age from 18 years to 16 for criminal liability. According to J & K Juvenile Justice Act 1997 (unimplemented so far) juvenile means a boy or girl who has not completed age of 16 /18 years respectively. Various age tags stand prescribed by precedent or law for different people or positions to consider them for approval or negation. For voting purpose the age is gender neutral at 18 years. Legally for marriage of a boy it is 21 years and for a girl 18 years. These limits have been set after taking into consideration the physical and the mental maturity aspects of the genders to decide their representatives in constitutional/other bodies and be able to share the responsibilities of parenthood to maintain a reasonably balanced political & social order. Age for marriage is elastic as even the below 16 couple can have marital results but biology is totally different from psychology, psychiatry and brain sciences juveniles are more confronted with.

Indubitably the lowering of age will bring more juvenile offenders under the ambit of correctional mechanism. Does the mechanism deliver the intended results, suffers guarantee of certainty as jackboot policy cages body and not the mind or emotions to hold manifestation. They need schooling, psychological and in some cases psychiatric orientation which we perennially lack drastically. The amendment is feared to create more problems than solving. The lowered age will widen the catch-net dragging more and more children to trial courts from the repository of lodging houses denying them access to the reformative & the rehabilitative interventions under the Juvenile Justice Act. This may tend to harden them prematurely to argumentative and animus state. While locking up them in the prisons for adults they shall be exposed and tempted to the adult world of crime rendering them irreparable. If Government readies itself for shouldering the pain/cure of these incidental offenders efforts should be made to reach the source such tendency sprouts from. Make laws, rules & regulations to create an atmosphere that would help eliminate or reduce the youth impairment. Lowering the age will not wipe out the problem. The age should remain 18 years.

The draft bill, inter alia, proposes one more important provision of legalizing ‘ Adoption’ which was not in the earlier Act of 2013. The clause states, “A child in respect of whom an adoption order is issued by the court , shall become the child of the adoptive parents, and the adoptive parents shall become the parents of the child as if the child has been born to the adoptive parents, for all purposes, including intestacy with effect from the date on which the adoption order takes effect and on and from such date all the ties of the child in the family of his/her birth shall stand severed and replaced by those created by the adoption order in the adoptive family.” The draft further says that, “provided that any property which has vested in the adoptive child immediately before the date on which the adoption order takes effect shall continue to vest in the adopted child subject to the obligation, if any. attached to the ownership of such property including the obligations, if any , to maintain the relatives in the biological family.” The bill also provides for having ‘ Specialized Adoption Agencies’ in the state for the rehabilitation of orphans, abandoned or surrendered children through adoption and non-institutional care , ‘State Adoption Revenue Authority’ to facilitate adoption and frame regulations on adoption and related matters as may be necessary from time to time.

It is to recapitulate that in Muslims, which is the majority community in J&K , the practice of adoption is not in vogue by precept except by a thin precedent and that too within blood relations. There is a lucid pronouncement in the holy book of the Quran that adopted children cannot be named after their adoptive parents or be heir to inherit the property in a manner the biological children do. The intention is that heir-ship does not drift away from the genuine biological heirs to non heirs not entitled to it naturally. However, to accommodate destitute, orphans, needy, poor, disabled, abandoned, surrendered etc, provisions of paying zakat, oushur (1/10th) and creation of baitul-maal have been made mandatory, making testacy upto 1/3rd of the total property suggested and giving alms/charity encouraged in a number of verses in the same Book. Experiencing the fate of beggars & the beggar/leper homes , the only two observation homes, from some time past and the drug de-addictions centres now, the proposal of adoption needs to be dropped and turned down as has been done by the Law Department during 2013. The best way for redressal is through the Department of Social Welfare itself which has an age old experienced net work upto grass root levels. The department if provided with required funds in time and monitored properly with ensured accountability and transparency can surpass in achieving very well the objectives of all adoption like initiatives.

However, if Government wants to go ahead with adoption, it should be intra-state and within the blood relations. To make the process state friendly the cases must be dealt in line with Notifications No.1-L/84 dated 20-4-1927, No. 13L dated 27-6-1932, Article 6 of Constitution of J & K and Article 35A promulgated through Presidential Order of 14-5-1954 under Article 370 (1) of Constitution of India. To ensure transparency cases should be allowed only after registration, scrutiny and authentication by the appropriate Hon’ble judicial authorities after vetting these like conveyance deeds based on genuine revenue records of the state subjects. Besides, the provision for adoption should include a clause that no law/ amendment would be passed that would attack special status of J & K as apprehended. Moreover, proposal for effecting any amendments should be invariably put on outer-net to gain feedback for better outcomes. The J& K having its separate independent constitution and special status must make its own laws , sans imitations, catering to its distinct needs.

Doubts have been raised as to whether the economy plays a role when municipalities choose to forcibly adopt children.

Lolland Municipality is responsible for more than half of the forced adoptions that the municipalities have sent to the National Board of Appeal at national level.

This year, the municipality has nominated seven children between zero and seven years for forced adoption, while at national level there are 13 settings.

Five forcibly adopted children can save the municipality four million kroner in 2022, shows a savings catalog from this summer, which DR Zealand has been given access to. The municipality saves the cost of a placement or institution.

This now causes the Danish People's Party's Karin Nødgaard, who is deputy chair of the Folketing's social, interior and children's committee, to ask a number of questions to Minister of Social Affairs Mai Mercado (K). It writes DR News.

GUWAHATI: A woman, Rajini who was born in Assam but now lives in Belgium is searching for her biological mother.

In a video posted on YouTube, she narrates her story and is being shared on many social media applications.

She wrote on a Facebook page that she was born in Tezpur, Assam, on the 24th of February, 1983. Four days later, someone bought her to the orphanage, Missionaries of Charity in Tezpur also known as the Orphanage of Mother Theresa. She lived there for a year and then was moved to Kolkata’s Shishu Bhavan orphanage. At the age of 2, she was adopted and now has lived in Belgium for 33 years.

She said that she is not sure if her mother gave her up or if her mother even knows that Rajini is alive. She said she does not even know the truth and that for her entire life, she thought she was an orphan. Even her adoptive parents thought that she was an orphan as no information was available about Rajini’s biological family.

She said that for the past two years, she has been writing to the orphanage and the adoption agency and recently, she got some positive news. Listed below is the information shared by her:

Travel.State.GovU.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE — BUREAU OF CONSULAR AFFAIRS

Travel.State.Gov > Intercountry Adoption News and Notices > Kyrgyzstan Notice: Suspension of All Adoption Service Providers

Kyrgyzstan Notice: Suspension of All Adoption Service Providers

Last Updated: December 21, 2018

The Kyrgyz government notified the U.S. Department of State that it has suspended the accreditation of all foreign Adoption Service Providers (ASPs) operating in the country. Although the Kyrgyz Ministry of Labor and Social Development’s (MLSD) notice (see below) only cited a failure to submit post-adoption reports as the reason for the suspension and indicated that the suspension would be for 30 days, the Kyrgyz government has indicated to the Department that it has additional concerns and that the suspension could be longer, as explained below.