Hyderabad: SOS Children’s Villages of India, a self-implementing premier child care NGO providing alternative care solutions for children without parental care or those at risk of losing one, helped all 41 Yenadi families of Chindepalli Tribal Colony in Tirupati, Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh get permanent housing plots from the State Government of Andhra Pradesh, under the latter’s YSR Jagananna Illa Pattalu Scheme. The land owners are expected to begin the construction of their own concrete homes this year, as they are now eligible for housing loans from the government.

The flagship Family Strengthening Programme, the community outreach model of SOS Children’s Villages of India, brought children of 23 eligible families, out of 41 families, under its direct care in 2016. Through its various capacity building and welfare measures, including livelihood training for mothers as primary caregivers of children, healthcare camps for awareness, and remedial education over the last four years, the NGO has transformed the Yenadi tribal community into a self-reliant one, securing parental care for their children. The household income has increased sustainably, the community has broken itself free from the clutches of usurious money lenders, and the school dropout rate has been brought down from 90% to 0%. There has been no child marriage, which used to be very common, since last two years.

Commenting about the Yenadi community’s transformation, Mr. Sumanta Kar, Senior Deputy National Director, SOS Children’s Villages of India, said that the impoverished Yenadi tribes were living in vulnerable conditions at Chindepalli Tribal Colony, before we commenced our Family Strengthening Programme. The primary class children were quite irregular, and almost 90% of them dropped out from school after class five. These Out-of-School Children were sent to work in agricultural fields. Child marriages were widely reported from the community.

They were subsisting with meagre, irregular income from agricultural labour. They were exploited by usurious money lenders. Fire accidents, due to electric short circuits, were frequent in the habitat, as the houses, in the absence of legal electricity connection, drew power by illegally tapping the overhead electricity lines.

We started off our developmental work in 2016. We first offered financial support to families to rebuild their houses, damaged by fire accidents. In 2017, with the support of the Tribal Welfare Department of the state, we arranged for caste certificates and temporary land documents for them. In 2018, using these documents, we helped obtain ration cards for all the families, and power connection for all houses. And last year, when the state government announced housing plots for landless Below Poverty Line (BPL) families, we supported community members to apply for the scheme, and facilitated housing plots for each of 41 landless families under the government scheme.

DN Nagar police are investigating a matter after filmmaker and producer Ashoke Pandit, tweeted a video of parents, who were allegedly physically and mentally abusing their adopted daughter. In this case, three residents of the building have registered an official complaint with the child helpline 1098 and approached DN Nagar police to register an FIR against the parents.

The girl and her parents reside in Ratnasamuh Society at Juhu Link road in Andheri West. The girl was adopted at birth and is now around six years old. In the complaint, the neighbours have alleged that the parents physically abuse the child. They also said that the parents leave her in the compound when they go out, and the watchman looks after her.

The society members, who registered the complaint, have been identified as Amit Mohite, Yogesh Pingulkar and Raju Anarkat. Speaking with mid-day, Pingulkar, said, “The watchman found her crying by her window and fed her. Another resident, who has a CCTV installed, saw in a video that the father was hitting her.” Anarkat said, “Finally on May 2, we contacted 1098, and they told us to send an official complaint via email. Meanwhile, we also contacted filmmaker Ashoke Pandit and shared the video with him. On Saturday morning, Pandit tweeted this video and tagged Mumbai Police. Then, DN Nagar police inspector Swapnil Manjre recorded our statement.”

When contacted, Senior Inspector Bharat Gaikwad said, “We have not registered an FIR yet. We are recording the statements of everyone involved. Once the investigation has been completed, we will take action.”

Vienna - On Thursday, SOS Children's Villages Austria announced that children and young people in 20 countries in Africa and Asia have been victims of violence, mistreatment and sexual abuse. The number of victims was not mentioned, it was in any case "small", it said to the APA. As the management of SOS Children's Villages around the world has now announced, there is a need for action in 50 of a total of 3,000 facilities of the national SOS Children's Villages associations.

Also mismanagement and taking advantage

According to the company's own statements, this came out of external reviews. Previously, there had been investigations into the areas of sexual abuse, advantage and corruption in 22 cases. According to its own information, the umbrella association of SOS Children's Villages has known since 2020 that known incidents have not been consistently investigated. In November the investigation of the 22 cases was commissioned. The results were presented to the international Senate on April 26th.

Overall, the 50 affected projects deal with violations of child protection as well as cases of mismanagement and personal gain. This includes limited financial audit reports that are submitted by independent auditors, but also cases of violations of child and youth protection guidelines that are documented in the annual child protection report, according to the Munich-based management of SOS Children's Villages worldwide in a statement sent to the APA .

No details given

Bengaluru’s child helpline 1098 has been receiving at least 10 calls a day over the past week,

mostly from parents offering to adopt children orphaned by the pandemic.

Fake messages calling for adoptive parents and giving out numbers are also doing the rounds.

Most calls are from childless couples who have already registered on the Central Adoption Resource

Authority (CARA) website.

Rani (39) from Maarheeze was just 2 years old when she was adopted from her native India by a Flemish couple. She soon ran into numerous problems with her adoptive parents. She recently found out that her biological mother is probably still alive and has started a search. "My adoptive parents kept this from me for years."

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Jade Smith

Rani was picked up in India by her adoptive father. “I had tapeworms in my intestines when I entered Belgium. In all likelihood I was ill and therefore my biological mother had to give me up, ”says Rani.

Adoption practices continue to challenge the ethics of social workers due to myriad conflicting interests which have existed since the practice began. Dangerous informal child care arrangements in the early to mid 1900s have been replaced by a patchwork of state and federal laws, regulations and child care practices meant to serve the best interests of everyone associated with adoption, but we continue to allow for ethically concerning “wrongful” adoptions.

The transition to formal adoption practices was initiated in the early 1980s, with adoption case law establishing best legal practices for improving positive outcomes for children and families. Starting in 1981, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) followed suit by formalizing standards for child welfare with the publication of the NASW Standards for Social Work Practice in Child Protection.

adoptions

Daniel Pollack, Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work.

Over the last two decades, the NASW Code of Ethics and the child welfare practices have evolved and stronger assessment practices related to approval of adoptive parents have been established. Despite these advances, social workers have found themselves observing or being caught up in ethically challenging adoption practices that have continued to lead to unethical family disruptions and poorly implemented adoption policies, all of which have created more “wrongful adoptions” and a continued mistrust of the profession.

In 20 countries, children and young people are said to have experienced abuse in SOS Children's Village Aid facilities. An independent commission is to clarify the incidents.

Vienna - “In an atmosphere of trust and reliability”, children and young people should grow up in SOS Children's Villages. At least that's what it says on the organization's website. In 20 countries in Asia and Africa, young people are said to have become victims of violence and sexual abuse in institutions and projects. The aid organization made the child protection violations public on Thursday in Austria and set up an independent commission to deal with the incidents. According to its own information, indications of mismanagement and misappropriation of funds should also be investigated.

At first it was not known exactly which countries are involved. The sub-organization in Germany announced in a press release on Thursday that there were also allegations against employees of a facility in Bavaria . These relate to incidents in the 2000s. A work-up has been initiated. "The information available as well as the results from the first discussions that have already taken place show that there have been serious incidents of educational misconduct and allegations of abuse," explains Prof. Keupp, who is leading the investigation. Results are planned for autumn 2021.

SOS Children's Villages apologize to alleged victims of abuse

The number of victims is said to be rather small worldwide. The managing director of SOS Children's Villages in Austria, Elisabeth Hauser, spoke of "serious misconduct by employees and serious allegations". The children concerned had been "inflicted violence", it had come "to mistreatment up to sexual abuse ". Hauser assured a "relentless and transparent processing" of the incidents.

Noida police, along with the district Childline, has started a helpline to help the children who are stuck alone in a house because of their parents and other family members being hospitalised after testing Covid positive and in need of food and shelter. Cops have said that such children can be provided food, shelter and water in case they require and can also be dropped at a relative’s place in case they need to. The helpline number — 9870395200 — can be contacted in case a neighbour or relative wants to give information about such children needing help.

Satya Prakash, manager, FXB India Suraksha, the NGO that runs Childline for Noida, told TOI that in a discussion with police, the idea was developed and transportation can be arranged for children who need to go to their relative’s place in case they are left alone.

“If someone wants to donate a transportation service for such a child or provide children with food, such Good Samaritans will be welcomed and help be extended to the child in need,” he said.

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DOCUMENT

"Many Christians do not understand the complexity of adoptions"

The priest Rebecka Folkesten wants Christian actors to be examined

Documents with children awaiting adoption.

There are approximately 60,000 internationally adopted children in Sweden. Experts that Dagen has spoken to say that a large proportion of these have grown up with Christian adoptive parents. (Moises Castillo, private)

November is National Adoption Month, during which several awareness programmes and workshops will be held for prospective parents.

It took Simon Qvennerberg 40 long years to find his way back to Shreevatsa, a child care centre in Pune, from where he was adopted by a Swedish family when he was barely eight months old.

As he walked around the centre on Tuesday, Simon said, “My mother told me I was adopted when I was five years old, but I preferred not to think about it. I was not really interested. Today, I am finding some answers, but I am actually doing this for my teenage children,”

During the visit, Simon and his parents Monica, a social worker, and Tommy, a retired priest, interacted with the staff and children at Shreevatsa, a centre run by the Society of Friends of Sassoon General Hospital. Set up in 1973, the centre has a well-established adoption programme, and caters to the needs of abandoned and orphaned children. Currently, the centre is taking care of 50 children.

Monica and Tommy, who had two daughters, said they wanted to expand their family and adopt a boy. “How we approached the issue was important as each adopted child has two identities. Families need to offer unconditional love and support to them,” said Tommy.