BHOPAL: The six-year-old boy from Jhansi, who got lost in Bhopal in May,

will soon be united with his mother.

The secretary of State Legal Service Authority told TOI on Sunday that the

adoption process of the boy had been cancelled and orders to send him

home were passed in late November. There has been a delay in executing

Since January 1, 2003, the federal government has been responsible for supervising the placement offices for adoptive children. In accordance with Article 6 of the old adoption ordinance and in accordance with the Hague Convention, the federal government and the cantons guarantee the reliability and seriousness of the placement agencies on the list. Accordingly, the cantons were previously and since January 1, 2003 the federal government has been responsible for approving the switching centers. The responsible regional social services provide the list of recognized adoption agencies to parents who are willing to adopt, thereby providing a guarantee. Parents who are willing to adopt and who care about the child's well-being rely on the list of Swiss placement agencies with a Swiss permit, which is checked by the authorities.

In this context I ask the Federal Council:

1. According to which criteria does the federal government draw up a license or withdraw it?

2. What does the official approval of an exchange guarantee for?

3. Is the Federal Council aware that the agency "RomAdopt" is working with questionable practices?

Vijayawada: Krishna District Child Welfare Committee (DCWC) directed the District Child Protection Unit to rescue and produce two infants, who were taken for adoption against the Government of India's CARA guidelines by two families in Kalidindi village in Krishna district. On receiving specific information from the police of Kalidindi village, the Child Welfare Committee, Krishna district, has conducted a spot inquiry regarding two cases of illegal adoption

It was observed that these families have taken infants for adoption. When it was noticed by the local ICDS Supervisor and Anganwadi worker, they have warned those families against illegal adoptions and suggested them to take guidance from the Project Director of Women Development and Child Welfare department in Vijayawada. Accordingly, those families have come to Vijayawada and contacted District Child Protection Officer, who has advised them to enter into an agreement and get it registered in local Sub Registrar office to legalise the adoption, which is a gross violation of adoption process. According to his advice, they have registered the agreement on January 6, 2020 and January 9 respectively, said the chairman of the CWC, BVS Kumar. The adoptions are guided by CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority), Ministry of Women Development and Child Welfare, Government of India. As these two adoptions were not done as per the CARA guidelines, CWC directed the DCPO to immediately rescue and produce before CWC Bench for necessary orders to keep the children in Sishu Gruha. CWC has also taken this issue to the notice of CARA and District Collector and requested the Collector to constitute an inquiry committee with Joint Collector to probe into the details of the case and to initiate action. CWC members L Francis and L Malleswara Rao also participated in the spot inquiry at Kalidindi.

Kent County Council has the largest child protection department in the UK.

It is warning there could be an increase of 250% in referrals of children that need to be investigated and kept safe when lockdown is eased further.

Matt Dunkley, corporate director for children and young people at Kent County Council, said: "What we are looking at is a huge surge in September in children needing to be seen, families needing to be assessed, when they are at the end of their tether after six months being locked down or being out of the eye of their school... that leaves us with a huge budget problem."

"In September, just when the money from the government is drying up, the extra money that they've given for coronavirus will be beginning to dry up. So children's services are facing their biggest challenge."

Before COVID-19, 40,000 cases were referred to the department each year.

ICAFSS meets only the tip of the iceberg of needs in the intercountry adoption community. I can only speak for intercountry adoptees like myself but we have spoken up for years about the need for ongoing counselling. The budgeted 10 sessions of therapy a year is simply not enough for most adoptees. As an idea, personally I spent over $25k in ongoing therapy across 5-10 years for the traumas involved in my reliniquishment and adoption. The current budgeted amount of $900,000 per year, if all the budget was spent on counselling alone, only equates to $90 per adoptee given we have over 10,000 intercountry adoptees recorded in our AIHW statistics. That’s not including those who are here as expatriate adoptions or the private adoptions that were done prior to the statistics being captured which only began in 1979. Many of us Vietnamese adoptees arrived prior to this, approx 500 of us. So the hugest change I recommend would be a substantial uplift to the budget so that counselling can be unlimited and the service adequately resourced to administer it, and provide ongoing education and training to the community and professionals providing the service, and to best utilise the resources trained up in this area.

There needs to be more than 1 administrator of the service at head office. If training of those counsellors is to be done properly, the budget needs to also include accessing the experts from other countries to upskill our therapists and create an Adoption Competency Training which includes speciality components on Race, Culture, Return to Birthland, Searching/Reunion, as these are aspects not covered adequately from a local adoption perspective because our situations are so much more complex covering other countries, languages, races, customs, values, expectations.

The service needs to be provided so that there are more face to face points in major areas of Australia not just 1 – Melbourne. The current advertising of ICAFSS makes it falsely appear to be a Melbourne only service. I have had many adoptees who tell me they didn’t make contact because as soon as they saw the flyer, they thought they would not be serviced as they were not located in Melbourne.

The service needs to be provided by a broader range of therapist. Currently it appears there are 1-3 counsellors per state who are providers of the service. That is not enough as there is a wait list to speak to one. Also, there is not enough diversity represented in those counsellors – most are white females who, to many adult intercountry adoptees, feel they are sitting there facing their adoptive mother. We want to see people who understand our racial and cultural issues. We want people of colour, people of diversity (LGBQTi), we want more males for the male adoptees. We also want different modes of therapy not just talking cognitive therapy. Eg constellation, emdr, psychosomatic, gestalt, etc.

The advertising of the service needs to connect into the first ports of call of other major services eg. Lifeline, Suicide hotlines, mental health services, GPs, schools. Many adoptees share how they had no clue about there being a service so that means, so far, the service is hugely under utilised because people don’t know it exists. Unless they contact ICAV, adult intercountry adoptees don’t know. More needs to be done to become visible on Social media platforms and advertise to targeted groups eg adolescents, young adults.

Latvian Welfare Minister Ramona Petravi?a has received 17 letters from children who were adopted by foreigners and who now live abroad, asking her to not ban child adoption by foreigners for children who remain in orphanages, as confirmed by the minister’s advisor for communication affairs J?nis Zari?š.

Authors of those letters shared with the minister their adoption experience, expressing gratitude for the opportunity be adopted into a family that cares for them. Letters have also been received from grown-up youngsters, who described their life now, says Zari?š.

Considering the content of those letters, more than a dozen of NGOs and activists have turned to Latvia’s top officials, government, parliament and the ombudsman, detailing confusion over Saeima’s Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee’s decision on establishing a moratorium on child adoption by foreigners. Zari?š says activists outline the fact that only representatives of NGOs that are publicly against allowing foreigners adopt children were present at the committee’s meeting. Activists also mention in the letter that there were no representatives of orphan courts or orphanages among the people invited by the committee. Nor there were there representatives of child right protection institution or representatives of organizations that represent the children who grew up in the system, says Zari?š.

The rush with decision-making is also confusing, because there is currently no crisis in Latvia with child adoption by foreigners, nor are there any major human rights violations. Zari?š says the letters addressed to the welfare minister also reference Section 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that member states’ duties include making sure every child able to formulate their opinion has the right to ask questions regarding them, and the state has the duty to listen.

«By banning child adoption to foreign countries, children would be denied their interests and their opinion would be ignored.»

In this article we present a brief history and recent statistics of child abandonment and adoption in Romania. After a rise in international adoptions in the 90s, a moratorium on adoption was established and in 2004 international adoptions became virtually impossible. Based on statistics of the Romanian National Authority for the Protection of Children's Rights and Adoption, we noted that since 2004 international adoptions were rare, whereas domestic adoptions remained relatively stable with about 1,000 adoptions each year. To date, not all potential adoption placements are realized. We conclude with reflecting on possible changes to improve child welfare in Romania.

Keywords: Romania, domestic adoption, international adoption, child welfare, child abandonment

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Child rights activist alleges collusion of govt officials and Delhi-based SOS Children’s Villages India, which didn’t

release funds for Pune home over 3 yrs

Almost four years after its affiliation to Delhi-based SOS Children’s Villages India ended amid a row over a sexual assault

case, Balgram SOS Children’s Village in Yerwada has found itself in another controversy — involving the district women and

child development (WCD) over alleged financial irregularities.

Guwahati: The Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (ASCPCR) is conducting an inquiry into the alleged sexual assault on three inmates of the SOS Children's Village here at Borjhar.

Police on Thursday arrested the assistant director of SOS Children's Village, Loon Vaiphei, 44, on the charge of sexually abusing the minors and registered a case against him at Azara police station under Section 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012.

The commission's chairperson, Sunita Changkakati, said a three-member team of the commission led by Rupa Hazarika visited the SOS Village on Monday and spoke to the victims, officials of the village and police.

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Changkakati said though the police promptly registered the case and arrested the accused, they did not conduct the medical examination of the victims till the team visited the village on Monday. "The victims were also not produced before the Child Welfare Committee," she said.

Moradabad, Mar 16 (IANS): A woman has been booked for allegedly selling her seven-day-old daughter for Rs 10,000 to a neighbour at Kathghar area of Moradabad district in Uttar Pradesh.

The matter came to light when the woman herself went to the SSP office to lodge a complaint against her neighbour, saying that she wanted her daughter back.

On being questioned, she admitted that she had sold her daughter to the neighbour two months back.

The SSP directed the station house officer (SHO) of Kathghar police station to detain the woman and register an FIR against her.

The police later told reporters that the woman was married nearly three years ago and separated from her husband after she gave birth to a baby girl on January 4. Since she was living alone and her daughter had a medical condition, she allegedly threw the newborn on a railway track.