Broad demand for more control over adoption

More and more Westerners want to adopt children, while the Third World offers fewer and fewer children for adoption. Therefore, the need to control the adoption market is growing so that children do not end up as a commodity

By Lars Henriksen and Henrik Hoffmann-Hansen

The Danish adoption system needs a major overhaul. In particular, the possibilities for controlling adoption organizations and orphanages must be looked into more closely.

That demand comes from several sides, after Danmarks Radio has revealed, among other things, the sale of adopted children from India. Yesterday, the revelations caused family and consumer affairs minister Carina Christensen (K) to temporarily stop new adoptions from the country. Yesterday she had a long-planned meeting with the adoption organisations, who want the adoption rules adjusted in several areas.

The demand for better control comes, among other things, from Adoption & Society, an independent, advisory association for adoptive parents and adoptees.

It has been 10 years since we last reviewed the adoption system, and it is time to do it again, says the association's chairman Michael Paaske.

The supervision and control function in particular is out of date. The adoption board goes on inspection trips to the donor countries once a year, and that is far from good enough, he says.

Director Ole Bergmann from Danadopt, which mediates foreign children for adoption by families in Denmark, shares the same opinion.

The inspectorate simply does not have enough funds, he says.

For example, the Adoption Board was in India in 2000 and had some comments. But they never follow up on them. There are annotations for a number of countries, but no resources to go back to see if anything has been done about things. This is also the case for our neighboring countries, but that does not make matters better, he says and suggests that the structure of the Adoption Board be changed.

The board generally runs well, but has run in the same way for more than 20 years. Perhaps you should shake things up a bit and, for example, consider sending people from the council's secretariat on inspections in places for only the chief medical officer and Supreme Court judges. That would make the system more flexible, says Ole Bergmann.

He points out, however, that in his 16 years in the industry he has only heard of a case like the current one about a child from India once before. And then it wasn't about Danish parents.

In the Adoption Board, Acting Head of Secretariat Henriette Braad Olesen confirms that they do not have the resources to check the donor countries and the individual orphanages all the time.

We have ongoing contact with the organisations, and they report if there are problems. So we address them, but we cannot have a small branch in India, South Africa and Colombia. We can't be out in one country every year, it can't be done. When we were on an inspection trip to India in 2000, we actually had the impression that the conditions were satisfactory, she says.

So there were no warning lights flashing?

No, there wasn't.

There are also calls from the political side to coal mine the adoption area. Actually, a few adjustments were planned, but the radical rapporteur Simon Emil Ammitzbøll believes that more thorough work must be done now.

Originally, people started adopting because there were too few parents in the world. But now things are better in the Third World, and therefore there are fewer children for adoption. At the same time, demand is increasing in our part of the world because fertility is falling, and there is an obvious risk that the entire adoption area will be marketed, he says.

He admits that you can't do anything about the increasing demand for children, but you can try to improve the control of international adoptions. He would also like to have more control over the two Danish organizations that have the authorities' blue stamp for adoptions, AC Children's Aid and Danadopt.

If they are to have such a big responsibility, you have to take a closer look at them and their finances. It may be that the adoption agencies need to be upgraded. Therefore, we must address the entire area without resorting to patchwork solutions, he says.

At De Konservative, family spokesperson John Ørum agrees that a stop must be put to children becoming a commodity.

There may clearly also be a need to dig up the adoption organisations, their budgets, accounts and so on, he says.

A source in the Ministry of Family Affairs states that the ministry will take a closer look at the finances of the organisations. Among other things, it appears that AC Children's Aid has built up assets of around DKK 23 million. However, it has started to be reduced in the past two years, which has resulted in a deficit. The organizations must have a certain amount of assets to be able to reimburse parents whose adoptions cannot be completed anyway.

henriksen@kristeligt-dagblad.dk

hoffmann@kristeligt-dagblad.dk

1100-1400 children are adopted annually in Denmark, half of which are stepchild adoptions, that is, one spouse adopts the other's children. The majority of the other half are anonymous adoptions of foreign-born children, i.e. adopters and adoptees do not know each other in advance. The rest are anonymous adoptions of Danish-born children, family and acquaintance adoptions and foster child adoptions. Two organizations are approved by the authorities to handle adoptions from abroad. The largest is AC Børnehjælp, while the smallest is Danadopt. The price for adopting a child from abroad typically fluctuates between DKK 100,000 and DKK 150,000, of which the state provides a subsidy of DKK 41,000.