Perfect parents for the child - and not vice versa Würselen families found their sons and daughters in Romanian orphanages. Interested parties must adjust to some bureaucratic hurdles.

BY OUR EDITOR RALPH ALLGAIER

AACHEN.

Suddenly everything went fast: on Mondays the call came, Marika and Günther Kreutz sat in the car on Tuesdays, and on Thursdays the couple from Wuerselen in the Romanian town of Temesvar held their future daughter in their arms: Georgiana, two years and three months old. A moment that both had long been working for.

With Karin and Markus Schroeder, the events were similar: As soon as the message was received, they made their way to a Romanian village called Babadag - on roads that eventually became more and more lonely and hickeliger, until finally the children's home was reached , Here the Schroeders picked up their son Dominik Vasile.

The rescue became possible due to timely information by a government doctor.

Preliminary inquiries by the DCPU staff and police revealed that the child’s mother resides in a village under the jurisdiction of the Boothapandi police station. The woman aged around 30-years-old has a 12-year-old daughter and her husband was working abroad. She developed an extramarital affair with a man in that locality, resulting in her pregnancy. This resulted in the family distancing themselves from her. Recommended By Colombia.

The woman’s husband refused to take care of her when she became pregnant. After the delivery, the man who was the cause of her pregnancy also refused to take care of her. She underwent check-up in the government primary health centre (PHC) where the doctor came to know of her background and alerted the DCPU. DCPU officials gave her counselling and asked her to give her baby for legal adoption if she could not raise it.

On January 19, 2019, the woman gave birth to the baby in the Asaripallam Government Medical College and Hospital in Nagercoil. DCPU officials conducted follow-up checks on January 20 and 28 and found the baby in the possession her mother. On February 21, the PHC staff went to her house on a field visit and found that the baby was not with the mother. This was brought to the notice of the DCPU.

During inquiry with the woman the woman produced a stamp paper saying she has wilfully given her daughter for adoption to a couple from Manavalakurichi area in Kanyakumari district, who did not have children. District Child Protection Officer (DCPO) of Kanyakumari district S Kumuda told TOI that they had told her that this was illegal adoption and conducted inquiries with her.

A 47-year-old woman from the Philippines has admitted having bought a baby in her home country and presenting a fake a birth certificate naming herself as the mother and a Cypriot man as the father, the Nicosia criminal court heard on Wednesday.

The woman was arrested last month after suspicion that two men in a same sex partnership had illegally adopted a baby brought to Cyprus by a woman from the Philippines.

Police told court on Wednesday that the woman had given a false statement that she was the mother of an infant born in July 2017 in the Philippines and had presented a fake birth certificate that said she was the mother of the child and a Cypriot man the father.

The woman admitted to buying the baby in the Philippines and bringing it to Cyprus to be illegally adopted and that the documents she had presented to the Cypriot authorities were fake, the court heart.

She is facing 19 charges concerning child trafficking. If found guilty of child trafficking, she could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison.

A controversial provision requiring adopted people to sign an “undertaking” to not contact their birth parents in order to receive their birth information has been removed from the Government’s planned information and tracing legislation.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone confirmed Government approval to draft amendments to revise the privacy provisions in the long-promised legislation.

Under the bill up to now, adopted people would be entitled to their birth information only if they sign a formal undertaking that they “will not contact, or attempt to contact, the birth mother, birth father, or relevant guardian concerned”.

The revised legislation will replace the current provisions, including the undertaking, and will provide for contact with all birth parents to ascertain whether they have any objection to the birth information being released.

Where the parent does not consent to the release of the information, both parties will make their case before the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI).

The government have declared their intention to change the Children's Amendment Bill. But critics fear it could crush the adoption system.

You don’t get many warnings sterner than this. But Western Cape Minister for Social Development Albert Fritz has gone in hard with his criticism of the Children’s Amendment Bill – a change to current legislation that he believes would be the beginning of the end for adoption in South Africa.

What is the Children’s Amendment Bill?

He makes the extraordinary claim just a day after the bill was gazetted by the ANC. The bill sets out a number of provisions and changes to existing legal frameworks, listing the following as its main objectives:

Promote and protect a child’s right to physical and psychological integrity.

Adopted people will no longer have to sign an undertaking that they won’t contact their natural parents

Adopted men and women will no longer be forced to sign an “undertaking” saying they won’t contact their natural parents in order to get access to their birth cert information under proposals approved by Cabinet on Tuesday.

TDs and lobby groups expressed concerns with the provision contained in the Adoption and Information Tracing Bill which is currently making its way through the Oireachtas.

The proposed law would give adopted children access to information on their birth as well as providing access to birth certificate information for adopted people who found out that they had been wrongly registered as the biological children of their adoptive parents.

Ms Zappone received the backing of the Cabinet on Tuesday to draft amendments on the controversial aspects of the law.

A new government proposal could ease the path for authorities to force adoption of children whose parents are not deemed able to take charge of their care.

Under current rules, very few situations can result in parents being required by law to give up their children for adoption.

But proposed new rules would make the option an easier one for authorities to take, newspaper Berlingske reports.

Forced adoptions could occur in cases in which parents are not deemed able to continue as guardians, the newspaper writes.

The proposal, which was scheduled for parliamentary procedure on Tuesday, was tabled by Minister for Children and Social Affairs Mai Mercado. The minister said she wants an easier process for authorities taking the measure of forced adoption.

“The statutory procedure and the statutory regime, which is prevalent as on date and is equally applicable to all aspirants, i.e., Indian prospective adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents for inter-country adoption, cannot be lost sight.”

The Supreme Court has observed that even if the common seniority list has to be utilised for the purpose of in country adoption and inter-country adoption, the difference between in country adoption and inter-country adoption cannot be lost sight of or given a go by. A couple, eager to adopt a child, submitted an application on 19.07.2016 through Central Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System (CARINGS) to adopt a child as Indian Prospective Adoptive Parents. While this application was pending, one of them acquired US citizenship (the other was already one). On 01.01.2018, Baby Shomya was referred for adoption by the couple. However, the authority informed them that, their request for permission to continue the first application dated 19.07.2016, as Indians living in India Prospective Adoptive Parents, was declared as invalid, because they are not Indian Prospective Adoptive Parents anymore. They were further informed that they will, instead, have to wait for a referral of another child as 'Overseas Citizen of India'.

They filed writ petition before Delhi High Court, which directed the Authority to examine the request of the couple on the basis of their first application dated 19.07.2016 expeditiously. The Union of India then approached the Apex Court challenging this order. (Union of India vs. Ankur Gupta)

The bench comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice KM Joseph observed that, since both had become US citizens by 06.12.2016, they were not eligible for adoption as Indian prospective adoptive parents living in India. Mere fact that Act or Regulations does not provide for any mechanism to upload any further information in first registration cannot alter the legal position and consequences of acquiring the foreign citizenship by an Indian, the court said. The court also dealt with the contention that, prior to Regulations, 2017, there were two separate seniority lists, which were maintained under the Guidelines, 2015, which has been now made a single seniority list. The bench said:

The court also dealt with the contention that, prior to Regulations, 2017, there were two separate seniority lists, which were maintained under the Guidelines, 2015, which has been now made a single seniority list. The bench said:

As an independent child protection researcher and rights activist, I have been asked repeatedly why the government is considering drastic changes to the Child Protection Act that will potentially have a dire impact on adoptions in South Africa. I share my opinion based on my experience as a change management consultant for the past 20 years, and specifically in the child protection community for the past nine. In doing this I hope to speak for abandoned children who are left on the streets, rubbish heaps and latrines of South Africa every year, for too often they do not have a voice.

Experiences in child protection in South Africa

I entered the child protection community in 2010, the year child abandonment sky-rocketed in South Africa. Having experienced multiple miscarriages and suffering from postpartum depression, my mothering instincts were on high alert.

In July of our World Cup year, I was horrified to see a picture of a newborn baby girl who had been abandoned and who had died on a rubbish heap on the outskirts of Soweto – on the front page of a national newspaper. Calling around, I quickly realised that the issue of child abandonment was reaching epidemic proportions (estimated at 3,500 children in 2010 alone). However, the Department of Social Development at the time were refusing to acknowledge that it was a problem.

To put this in perspective, a social worker at one of the largest child welfare organisations in the country told me that a few years previously, they would see only one or two abandoned children a month, but in 2010 as many as five or six children were being delivered to their doors every week.

Children died,Unhygienic condition,Adoption homes

UP government authorities said that poor health of children lodged in state adoption homes was responsible for this figure.(Representative image)

Over the past five years, UP witnessed death of 170 children in the state-run adoption centres. This figure, revealed as part of data furnished by the union ministry of women and child development in the ongoing Parliament session, is only marginally lower than Maharashtra’s 172 over the same period.

UP government authorities said that poor health of children lodged in state adoption homes was responsible for this figure. Commissioner for protection of child rights, Uttar Pradesh, Vishesh Gupta, said, “Sometimes, children lodged in adoption centres have been rescued by stake holding agencies in peculiar situations. Sometime, children are rescued from the roadside and are already suffering from infections. In such a situation, it becomes difficult to save their life despite earnest attempts.”

He also admitted that the state lacked trained manpower in its adoption homes. “Lack of manpower is also an issue. We don’t have the training mechanism and the infrastructure that is needed. It has been observed that the staff is not adequately trained to take care of such children,” said Gupta.