As per data by WDCW, till May this year, around 143 children were orphaned due to COVID-19, of which 30 are from Hyderabad.

HYDERABAD: In a bid to curb illegal adoption taking place after the second COVID wave, the State Women Development and Children Welfare (WDCW) Department launched awareness campaigns and counselling sessions.

Fatalities in the second wave of the COVID pandemic have left several children orphaned. As per data by WDCW, till May this year, around 143 children were orphaned due to COVID-19, of which 30 are from Hyderabad.

Amidst this chaos, many social media platforms were flooded with adoption posts for orphaned children. Experts say that adoption through these ways can not just lead to human trafficking but also have legal repercussions.

Legally, adoptions can be done by a Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA). Regarding this, training will be given to SAA Managers and social workers from July 12 to 17 at the WDCW office.

LEGAL COUNSEL FOR women seeking judicial reviews of the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes report have proposed proceeding with three test cases in the High Court.

Eight women, some of whom cannot be named, are taking legal challenges against the Irish State.

A number of women have claimed that their testimony was misrepresented in the report and have taken issue with the fact they were not given a right to reply before the report was published in January.

A test case is one brought forward that would then set a precedent for future similar cases.

The Journal understands that the three proposed test cases are those being brought by high-profile survivors Philomena Lee, Mary Harney and Mari Steed.

(CNN)There could be a new princess in Disney's royal court.

Nearly two decades after Sarah Culberson discovered that her father was the chief of a village in Sierra Leone, the West Virginia native's life story could finally come to the big screen.

Culberson, who is biracial, was put up for adoption in 1976 at just a few months old, and was raised by a White family, the Culbersons, in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Her biological father, Joseph Konia Kposowa, is from Sierra Leone and is chief of the royal family of the Mende tribe in Bumpe, Sierra Leone, which makes Culberson a princess. Her biological mother was White.

The discovery "gave me a deeper sense of my identity as being someone who operates and straddles two different worlds and cultures," Culberson told CNN. "Learning about my history in Sierra Leone, my family, community, country, that makes a huge part of who I am."

Is it good or bad to adopt a child? And should intercountry adoption continue or not? Special professor Femmie Juffer and emeritus professor by special appointment René Hoksbergen, both specialized in adoption, discuss these issues. But they don't agree.

Update

On Monday 8 February 2021, Minister Sander Dekker will announce that the adoption of children from abroad will be suspended. He decides this following a report on the system of so-called intercountry adoption in the Netherlands. It is up to the next cabinet to take a position on the future of intercountry adoption. Read more about this decision here .

In the series ' I'm not from Sri Lanka ', we follow Dinja Pannebakker, a young woman of 32 who was adopted from Sri Lanka. She herself feels completely Dutch and has no need for connection with her native soil.

Pannebakker is one of more than 3,400 Sri Lankan children who have been adopted by Dutch parents since the 1970s. In 2018, adoption from Sri Lanka was definitively stopped. Adoption from a dozen other countries, or 'intercountry adoption', still exists, although the number of adoptees is decreasing every year. In 2018, a total of 156 children were brought to the Netherlands from abroad. Most of them come from China (28), Hungary (24) or the United States (23). Within the Netherlands, 21 children were adopted last year and placed with other Dutch families.

Hong Kong (CNN) — The abduction of 2-year-old Guo Xinzhen in eastern China in 1997 sparked a desperate, seemingly never-ending nationwide search by his parents

that inspired filmmakers to bring their story to the big screen.

But this week -- 24 years after his disappearance -- the search for Guo finally came to an end.

Police in Liaocheng City, Shandong province, said Monday they had found Guo, now an adult living in neighboring Henan province -- and had reunited him with his parents.

Video footage of the reunion on Sunday, released by police, shows the family in tears and embracing tightly, crying out, "We found you, you've come back."

PHOENIX (AP) — A woman who acknowledged helping a former Arizona politician in an illegal adoption scheme involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday.

Lynwood Jennet, 47, took part in submitting false applications for the birth mothers to receive state-funded health coverage, even though none of the women resided in the state. She had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and theft charges for her role at the direction of Paul Petersen, a Republican who served as Maricopa County assessor for six years.

FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2019, file photo, is former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, right, with his attorney, Kurt Altman, after a court hearing in Phoenix. Prosecutors in Arkansas are seeking a 10-year prison sentence for Petersen for his conspiracy conviction in running an illegal adoption scheme involving women from the Marshall Islands. He also faces sentencings in Arizona and Utah during January for convictions related to the adoption scheme. (AP Photo/Jacques Billeaud, File)

Petersen worked as an adoption attorney before resigning his elected post and pleading guilty in three states to crimes related to the scheme. The health care fraud committed by Petersen and Jennet totaled $814,000, authorities said.

Petersen is in prison serving a total of 11 years for a conviction in Arkansas for conspiring to commit human smuggling and a health care fraud conviction in Arizona.

LIMA — In Alex Butcher’s line of work, things rarely stop or slow down. There will always be kids and teenagers in need of adoption, but those who make it possible are often overlooked in those feel-good stories.

On Tuesday, Butcher was officially recognized as a recipient of the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Recruiter of the Year Award for her work with Allen County Children Services. She becomes one of three recipients of the award for 2021 out of nearly 500 recruiters across the United States and Canada.

“I am really honored to have my work recognized,” she said. “I’m really fortunate to work with such an amazing foundation as well as agencies that support this recruitment and permanency for the kiddos in the foster care system that need it most.”

Butcher specializes in helping put kids from foster care into their forever homes. Oftentimes, they are medically fragile, have behavioral issues or are teenagers past the desired adoption age. These groups are in need of the most help in getting adopted, which is where Alex comes in.

“Child-focused recruitment method can help make children up to two times more likely to be adopted,” she said. “We look at not only adoptive families, but we also look at people that children already have relationships with, and we try to recruit permanent families that already have an existing relationship with that child.”

She is only two years old when her mother dies. Then she was sent to a Russian orphanage. A move to distant Sweden followed with everything that went with it: a new family, a new language, a kindergarten, new friends. As soon as she got used to everything, she had to go back to Russia. Because the parents supposedly regretted the adoption.

Now a lawyer and a youth welfare office are fighting to get the little one back to Sweden. The Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" reports .

When the little one, who is repeatedly torn between two worlds, was two years old, her mother died. The father is unknown. After the mother's death in Russia, the toddler did not have a single relative. No grandma, no aunt. Nobody. However, there is an uncle in Sweden. This uncle and his wife applied for adoption. However, the couple had to be screened by the Swedish Youth Welfare Office just like all other couples willing to adopt. The case was legally complicated as there has been no adoption agreement between Sweden and Russia since 2013.

Eventually, however, the couple got the green light. In autumn 2019, the two-year-old girl was allowed to move to Sweden. She now lived with her new adoptive parents in the 14,000-inhabitant town of Tranås in southern Sweden. Not much is known about these parents, but both are said to be well off and live in a stately home in Tranås.

Kindergarten switched on the youth welfare office when the girl no longer showed up

This article is the seventh in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children they had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. ? ED.

By Lee Kyung-eun

gettyimagesbank

From early 2000, Korea witnessed the permanent return of children it had once sent to the U.S. for adoption. Unlike adoptees visiting on motherland tours, these individuals had been deported by the U.S. after committing petty crimes. Despite having grown up in the U.S., they had never acquired American citizenship and therefore were regarded as foreign criminals since their Korean nationality remained intact.

These cases have had tragic consequences. In 2011, Philip Clay, born Kim Sang-pil in the 1970s, suffered such a fate. Like the other deportees, his adoption was never finalized, and he failed to acquire U.S. citizenship. After a long struggle to adjust to Korea, he committed suicide in 2017. While Clay had Korean citizenship, his adoption should have guaranteed him U.S. nationality. Adoption is meant to serve as a permanent and secure solution for children deprived of parental care, and becoming a national of the receiving country represents a fundamental basis for achieving such security.

TILBURG - How strange and beautiful life can be at times. Until she found her biological family, Inja Hage-Koelemeijer had nothing to do with Korean cuisine, she will soon open her own permanent place on Willem II Street. A Korean deli where you can also take away meals. And from where they deliver.

She is 'very happy'. Tilburg's Inja Hage-Koelemeijer has come a long way, but in September will open a 'luxury toko' with professional kitchen on Willem II Street, next to Kras2 sandwich shop. Inja's Seoul Kitchen, Korean through and through. Where you can buy Korean ingredients, all kinds of kimchis (fermented cabbage) and kimbap (seaweed rolls).

The story of Inja is not just a catering story. If you want to see the beauty of your own business, you have to take a few steps back in time. In 1974, as a 5-year-old, she and her younger brother moved to the Netherlands after their adoption.

Found family

She hardly stood still for that adoption for years until the telephone rang in 2007. At the other end of the line is the Korean adoption association Arierang. Whether Inja needs contact with her mother? The first meeting follows the next day . Her biological mother has been looking for her for years, not knowing where to look. Finally she finds Inja.