Funding ‘Stan Meuwese took over the chairmanship of the DCI-Netherlands board in 1988. He was working for the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports at the time and had experience in youth policy and juvenile justice. In 1991 the ministry was reorganising and gave him the opportunity to work full time for DCI-Netherlands. As of January 1992, he became the Executive Director of DCI-Netherlands. He stayed on until 2007. He was the first paid employee. In that way, the Dutch government, through the Ministry of Health, greatly contributed to the development of DCI-Netherlands. The subsidy of the Dutch ministry stopped in 1995 and the organisation had to look for other funds. It has been quite successful at that. DCI-Netherlands has grown slowly but steadily, with approximately one new paid employee per year over the last fifteen years.’
 

https://www.defenceforchildren.nl/images/20/1024.pdf

We are super proud to have had our CEO, Katinka, as a hosted guest speaker at the #euradopt2022 conference in #Denmark last week. The theme of the conference was the Sustainability of Intercountry adoptions from an ethical and practice perspective as well as the importance of post-adoption support.

There were also opportunities for meetings and re-connections with our other partners in the region.

Our CEO was joined by our COO Rene.

Crystal Theron

Voice 007- elvira 12-2-2020.m4a

New laws streamlining the adoption process will have a "significant and really positive" affect on families going through the process, the health minister has said.

Regulations relating to the Adoption Act 2021 will go before Tynwald this month and if approved come into effect in July.

The regulations aim to speed up the decision-making and process of adoption, which is currently governed by legislation from 1984, and provide ongoing support once the child is settled into their adoptive family.

Health and Social Care Minister Lawrie Hooper said the new laws would make the process more "focused", but would "ultimately put the needs of that child absolutely at the heart of everything".

While the updated legislation received Royal Assent in October 2021, the Department for Health and Social Care has since been developing underlying regulations, with nine orders set to go before Tynwald - six of which require approval.

Sir Rod Stewart looked every inch the proud father in a sweet Instagram snap with his large blended family as he celebrated the wedding of his hockey player son Liam in Croatia.

Joined by six of his eight children, wife Penny Lancaster and ex Rachel Hunter, who is Liam's mother, the 79-year-old singer couldn't keep the smile from his face as he posed with his clan on the steps of the church of Jesuits in the Old Town.

Sir Rod shares eight children with five mothers. He is a father to four daughters Sarah, 60, Kimberly, 44, Ruby, 36, and Renee, 32 and four sons, Sean, 43, Liam, 29, Alastair Wallace, 18, and Aiden Patrick, 13.

Remarkably, he regularly proves he is the friendliest of exes with Alana Stewart, Kelly Emberg and Rachel Hunter, having previously posed with his wife Penny, 53, and the mothers of seven of his children in 2019 at daughter Kimberly's 40th birthday party.

The rocker's paternal adventures began at the age of 17, and his youngest was born nearly half a century later, when he was 66. Along the way there has been three wives, one long-term girlfriend and a teenage fling.

There will be a stop to adoptions from Peru, South Africa, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The reason is that Bufdir cannot be sure that the adoptions from these countries are carried out in a legal, ethical and sound manner.

ore than 15 000 adoptions have taken place in South Africa in the past decade.

November is World Adoption month. The National Adoption Coalition of SA said that according to the UN, an estimated 260 000 adoptions take place worldwide each year.

The coalition said that based on statistics from the Department of Social Development, 15 068 adoptions were registered in South Africa from April 2010 to March 2020.

Many South African children grow up in families that face poverty, exposure to domestic violence, neglect, abuse, exploitation, lack of parental care, abandonment, unplanned crisis pregnancies, substance abuse and mental health issues.

Katinka Pieterse, chairperson of the coalition and CEO of Abba Specialist Adoptions and Social Services, said these children “should be entitled to responsive services to protect them and to return them or place them in a nurturing family environment”.

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Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia in the early months of the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion have been put up for adoption by authorities, in one case under a false Russian identity, a Financial Times investigation has found. Using image recognition tools and public records, as well as interviews with Ukrainian officials and the children’s relatives, the FT identified and located four Ukrainian children on the Russian government-linked adoption website usynovite.ru. One Must-Read This article was featured in the One Must-Read newsletter, where we recommend one remarkable story each weekday. Sign up for the newsletter here The findings add to the mounting body of evidence that the International Criminal Court, Ukrainian government officials and legal experts say point to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia. One of the children is shown with a new Russian name and age that differs from their Ukrainian government-issued documents. Another child is shown using a Russian version of their Ukrainian name. There is no mention of the Ukrainian background of any of the children. The children were abducted from state care homes and separated from their guardians and relatives in towns across the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that fell under the control of Russia’s invading army in 2022. They range in age from eight to 15-years-old. The children traced by the FT and whose identities were confirmed with their families by the Ukrainian authorities have ended up in the Tula region near Moscow and in the Orenburg region close to the Kazakh border. One of the children was taken to occupied Crimea. Seventeen additional matches identified by the FT on the adoption website were confirmed as Ukrainian children in a recent New York Times investigation, all of them from a children’s home in Kherson. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, saying they bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of the children. The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment about the FT’s findings. It has objected to the warrants, denied abducting children and tried to justify its actions by claiming it was done for their protection despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary. A defiant Putin has signed decrees making it possible to fast-track Russian citizenship for Ukrainian children taken to Russia. RESUME Show video description A video posted by Maria Lvova-Belova's Telegram account in July 2022 shows her with Ukrainian children from the Donbas, Ukraine. The post says they are to be adopted in the Russian region of Tula. These are not missing children identified by the FT. © @malvovabelova/Telegram Ukrainian authorities estimate nearly 20,000 children have been forcibly taken from occupied territories to Russia since its full-scale invasion began in February 2022; many thousands are still missing. The parents and relatives of the four children located by the FT declined to speak about their situation in detail, citing concerns that Moscow would thwart their return home. But other families whose children have been forcibly taken to Russia and returned to Ukraine recounted harrowing experiences during their time in the country. Moscow has allowed some children to return to Ukraine if their relatives or guardians come to Russia to collect them. They described the children being coerced to watch and recite Kremlin propaganda; being held against their will; not being allowed to contact relatives; and being forced to take Russian identities. Many described verbal and physical abuse by Russian children and some caregivers. “I was heartbroken,” said Svitlana Popova, mother of 15-year-old Alina Kovaleva, who was abducted by a group of Russian soldiers in the occupied Kherson region. Her daughter’s captors “had a new birth certificate forged to say that Alina was born in Russia”, she said in Kyiv after returning with her daughter. “And adoption papers. [They] were going to make my daughter their own.” Wayne Jordash, president of Global Rights Compliance, an international humanitarian law firm, said forcibly transferring or deporting children are war crimes. “However, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population as Russia’s attack on Ukraine undoubtedly is, they are also crimes against humanity,” he said. “Changing [children’s] identity and putting them up for adoption only confirms the necessary criminal intent.” The FT confirmed the children’s identities with the help of the Ukrainian Child Rights Protection Centre (CRPC), a state body. The centre is awaiting further confirmation on two more children located by the FT who they strongly believe are Ukrainian. The children’s guardians and Ukraine’s authorities had previously been unaware of the children’s whereabouts. The FT identified the kidnapped children by comparing photographs from an official database of missing Ukrainian children with public profiles of children up for adoption in Russia using an image recognition tool. Reporters reviewed potential matches manually to select those likely to be a true match. The false names and ages the children had been given meant it would have been challenging to find them in other ways. High probability matches were shared with the CRPC, which contacted the children’s relatives and guardians to confirm each missing Ukrainian child. Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights whose office oversees the CRPC and helped the FT with the identifications, called Russia’s removal of Ukrainian children “premeditated”. Ukrainian officials shared with the FT Russian government documents that show the Kremlin had devised plans ahead of its invasion to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia as part of a so-called “filtration” process. “They had a well-planned genocide policy towards us,” said Daria Herasymchuk, an adviser and commissioner of the president of Ukraine for children’s rights. “They committed a crime, they kidnapped children in large quantities.” It is a struggle for Ukraine’s government, the country’s charities and the children’s relatives and guardians to return the children. It often takes many months to track them down and several weeks or more to plan how to reach them. The journey is roughly 4,000 miles round-trip, winding from Ukraine through the EU and then into Russia, where relatives and guardians face hours-long interrogations by the FSB, and then back. As of June 11, Ukraine has managed to return at least 389 children from Russia, according to the president’s office. The office of Ukraine’s human rights commissioner and the CRPC are attempting to confirm the identities of dozens more Ukrainian children taken to Russia who were flagged to them by the FT. The CRPC is working with a relative of one of the children identified and located by the FT to return them home to Ukraine. Visual investigations team: Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, Sam Learner and Sam Joiner. Additional reporting by Anastasia Stognei in Tbilisi.

The number of children and young people who found a place in a foster family rose to 11,169 last year. Foster children can also count on the support of their foster family for increasingly longer. In long-term foster care situations, children remain in a foster family for an average of more than 7 years. This was reported by Opgroeien today.

“A total of 11,169 children in a difficult home situation and adults with a disability stayed in a foster family last year, an increase of 5.3 percent. In three out of four new foster care situations, children end up in a family they already knew. One in four children is matched for a short or long period, or occasionally a weekend, with a foster family they do not yet have a bond with,” says Niels Heselmans, spokesperson for Opgroeien.

In 79 percent of foster care situations, it concerns a long-term form of foster care. “In theory, children or young people then remain living in their foster family for at least a year. But the figures show us that this period is often much longer. On average, a foster child who is entrusted to a foster family for a longer period of time, remains with that family for more than 7 years. For many children and young people, this of course means that they spend a large part of their youth in a foster family. This stability is incredibly important when children come from a difficult situation,” according to the spokesperson.

“Care tailored to the child”

In addition to the long duration, it is also noticeable that many foster families switch between different forms of foster care. “In this way, we provide care tailored to each child,” says Jeroen Vandenbussche, coordinator of Foster Care Flanders. “For example, when children return to their parents after a few years, foster families continue to be of significance as weekend foster families. In this way, foster children do not have to immediately cut the bond with their foster parents and parents can also count on support in raising their children.”

As a teenager, Yaneth Menger already thought that her adoptive parents were hiding details about her origins. She now has indications that a lot of money was paid for her adoption. On Tuesday, her adoptive parents had to give a statement about it in court.

ZYaneth Menger (50) has not seen her adoptive father for even years. On Tuesday morning she meets him again for the first time, at the Noord-Nederland court in Leeuwarden. It is not a warm reunion, but a business meeting: the 76-year-old man, who walks behind a walker, has to testify under oath about Yaneth's adoption. Just like his ex-wife.

It is a rare occurrence: Dutch adoptive parents who have to answer to their daughter or son in the witness box for decisions made long ago, with what they see as nothing but good intentions.

About the author
Menno van Dongen is a police and justice reporter for the Volkskrant.

The hearing is part of a trend. Adult adoptees who were brought to this country as children are standing up for themselves more. They give critical interviews, request documents from the government, file petitions and file lawsuits against the state, agencies or their adoptive parents.