Holt is acting to holistically address the changes with lifelong support

Eugene, OR, Nov. 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In honor of National Adoption Month, Holt International Children’s Services is showcasing the evolution of international adoption and emphasizing Holt’s lifelong adoption services available to families and adoptees. In addition to these services, the organization’s partnerships allow for families to apply for funding to support their international adoption journey. Holt representatives and affiliates are available to share relevant stories for media representatives during National Adoption Month including:

Do you want to know more about international adoption and how it is evolving? Eugene-based Holt International has welcomed over 44,000 children from 27 countries through international adoption and today reaches over 1 million children and individuals around the world. Truth is, the profile of adoption has significantly changed, and Holt is growing to provide holistic support services. If you seek to learn more about how adoption has changed and how Holt’s global impact is adapting, reach out today. We can present personal stories from adoptees and families to give insight and encouragement.

Post-Adoption Services are available for adoptees and families on their lifelong journey! Holt’s post adoption services team stands committed to serving all those whose lives have been touched by adoption: Adoptees, adoptive families, birth parents, and the entire adoption constellation. Holt offers these services to anyone seeking assistance, even if Holt was not the placing agency. Our team is here to care for families through their lifelong journey of adoption. To learn more about these programs, visit https://www.holtinternational.org/post-adoption/.

Funds may be available to assist with International Adoption! We believe that finances should not be the primary barrier to prospective adoptive parents considering adoption. We partner with Gift of Adoption, Connected Hearts, and others who work to reduce or remove financial barriers for qualified families through grants and support.

November 3, 2022-

Also offer adopted children from the US the chance of a family in the Netherlands. With this call, COC Netherlands and Meer dan Gewenst respond to the decision of Minister Weerwind (Legal Protection) to break the adoption relationship with the US.

In a letter to the House of Representatives dated 2 November, Minister Weerwind announced that he would break off the adoption relationship with the United States and seven other countries.

"Children are now at risk of being left behind in temporary US foster care when they could be given a loving home in the Netherlands," said COC and the organization for rainbow families Meer dan Gewenst . "That is regrettable and undesirable."

The aim of the review by the Netherlands of the intercountry adoption policy is to reduce the risk of abuses. In the past, abuses have led to suffering among adopted children and often also among their biological and adoptive parents. COC and Meer dan Gewenst wholeheartedly support the objective of preventing abuses.

The Netherlands, which paused international adoptions in 2021 due to structural abuses, promises to soon reinstate the possibility of adopting from the Philippines, Hungary, Lesotho, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Africa.

Cooperation between the Netherlands and the countries from which adoption will be resumed is intensifying, the government confirmed.

A similar type of cooperation relationship with Bulgaria and Portugal is expected in the first half of 2023 following an investigation by the Central Authority for International Children’s Affairs.

At the same time, the adoption cooperation relationship with the US, China, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Peru, Colombia, Burkina Faso, and Haiti is being phased out.

“Now that it is clear from which countries intercountry adoption will remain possible and which not, information and information meetings will follow and family surveys will be resumed. This will bring an end to an uncertain time for those involved,” said Legal Protection Minister Franc Weerwind

It is with great disappointment that the NAS and ANW have taken note of the decision of the Minister of Justice and Security not to award the establishment of the new CBO for intercountry adoption to our initiative.

As new organizations, founded after the entry into force in 1998 of the Hague Adoption Convention in the Netherlands, ANW and the NAS represent the innovators in the adoption field. Unimpeded by the ballast from the period investigated by the Joustra Commission, we have been the pioneers and drivers of changes that have served the interests of children, based on our positively critical work attitude. In no way can our organizations be linked to the abuses of the last century. We regret that with our passion and high ethical standards we did not get the chance to establish the CBO. The minister awards the CBO to Wereldkinderen, a respected colleague but also part of the situations from the last century that prompted a review of the system.

With pain in our hearts we accept the decision regarding the CBO, especially because there is a fundamental difference of opinion with regard to the future of adoption and its importance for children. In the ANW and NAS plan, we stated that adoption should be maintained as an international child protection measure, regardless of where your cradle was. We believe that there are parents in the Netherlands now and in the future who can and want to play a role in providing a permanent family for children who cannot or are not allowed to grow up with their biological parents. In addition, in line with the Hague Convention, we believe that appropriate care does not mean that you grow up in a home or a system or in ever-changing foster care situations. The minister clearly makes different choices in this respect,

The minister has also made a choice for the countries with which cooperation will continue in the future and countries which will be divested. At the moment there are still active collaborations with 17 countries and children from all countries that meet the principles of the Hague Adoption Convention can be helped, provided that suitable parents are available. That will change drastically.

The US, Haiti, Peru, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are being phased out from the NAS and ANW's range of countries. Ongoing files in these countries may be processed, except in Haiti. This has to do with the security situation in the country. It is still allowed to adopt from our partner countries South Africa, Hungary and Lesotho. Whether the cooperation with Portugal (NAS) and Bulgaria (ANW) will be continued will be further assessed by the ministry. The other countries with which the Netherlands wants to maintain the adoption relationship are Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan.

EAU CLAIRE — Erika and Jeff Ehrhard were met with a smiling face almost a year ago when they first welcomed the young boy they would one day hope to adopt into their home.

“Hi, Jeff and Erika,” said Vanya, now 13 years old.

The couple had awaited his arrival for around three weeks by that point, nervous about the inevitable language barrier between them. They didn’t speak a word of Russian, and they were told Vanya knew very little English.

But they soon learned that gestures and Google Translate go a long way. Within weeks, the Ehrhards and their Ukrainian foster child spoke a language of their own. And within those same weeks, the Ehrhard Family soon realized they didn’t want Vanya to leave when the six-week foster period was up.

“I began to realize that, gosh, our family’s not going to be complete anymore,” Erika Ehrhard told the Leader-Telegram. “It’s like the piece that was missing that you never knew was missing until it got there.”

Children though brought up in an orphanage cannot be declared as 'orphans'

as defined under Section 2(42) of the Juvenile Justice Care and Act, 2015 if

their biological parents are alive, the Bombay High Court held.

"X and Y would not be termed as 'orphan' as defined under Section 2(42) of

the Act, 2015 in as much as their biological mothers are alive."

Between 1912 and 1968, thousands of children were sent to Australia from the United Kingdom and Malta under a child migration scheme. These children were usually placed in institutions and many of the children were falsely told they were orphans.

In recent years, growing recognition of the plight of former child migrants led to the establishment of travel funds to facilitate travel to their country of birth and reunions with family.

Between 2000-2006, ISS Australia administered the UK Government’s Child Migrant Support Fund and the Australian Government’s Australian Travel Fund.

As a result of this work, over 1000 former child migrants were assisted with financial, practical and emotional support to reunite with surviving family members or visit family gravesites.

Most of the former child migrants reported the reunions were life changing, giving them a sense of belonging and of closure with the past.

A cruel injustice was inflicted on thousands of Queensland women who found themselves young, unwed and “in trouble” at a time of strict social mores. JO CRANSTOUN investigates the enduring impact of forced adoption on the young mothers who are now grandmothers.

From the 1950s until the mid-1970s the babies of young mothers were forcibly removed at birth and adopted by married couples.

Those mothers are now broken-hearted seniors living with the trauma, some never speaking again of a stolen baby, others struggling to reconnect decades later with their estranged adult children.

These women consider their babies the “other stolen generation”.

Tireless campaigns for justice led to apologies from the Queensland government in 2012 and the federal government in 2013. Several churches and hospitals involved in forced adoptions have also apologised.

Sandra DeVries

Sandra De Vries

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Manager Programs Kinship Questions and Adoption Services

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EXCLUSIVE: Woman given up for adoption in Australia by unwed mother who was sent Down Under to have her is reunited 60 years on with British family she never knew she had

Suzy Fraser, 64, was given up for adoption after her mother was sent to Australia

Her unwed mother Janet was packed off from Portsmouth to give birth in 1958

Janet had asked not to be contacted but Suzy did and found out she had siblings

Suzy has been reunited with her siblings Sharon, 57, Eileen, 54, and Steve, 61