FutureLife Medical Group, one of the world’s leading providers of assisted reproduction, has acquired the Nij Group, a Dutch market leader in this field. This was noted by Hospodá?ské noviny (HN). The FutureLife Clinic is owned by the Hartenberg Holding investment fund, which is part of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s (ANO) trust fund. The price of the deal has not been disclosed, but it will be in the hundreds of millions, according to HN.

The Nij Group is the largest private assisted reproduction provider in the Netherlands, where it has a 10% market share, HN wrote. “It consists of three clinics: Geertgen, Linge and Barrahus,” said Jozef Janov, managing partner of Hartenberg Capital, which manages the holding’s holdings.

The FutureLife Group becomes part of a large European health group. In addition to clinics, Hartenberg Capital will also acquire Serpha’s online pharmacy for infertility drugs and Legropharma, a wholesaler.

“For us, this is the largest acquisition FutureLife has made,” added Genoa. According to him, Dutch clinics will generate sales of over half a billion kronor and EBITDA, i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, will be 70 million kroner. The entire FutureLife group will then have a turnover of around 200 million euros, i.e. over five billion crowns. After the Spanish group IVI, FutureLife is number two on the European market.

After investing in the Netherlands, the FutureLife Group is already active in eight European countries. Own clinics in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Great Britain, Ireland, Romania, Finland and Estonia. There are a total of 42 clinics in these countries that perform 39,000 artificial insemination cycles each year. “Thanks to us, ten thousand children are born in Europe every year. After the acquisition of Dutch clinics, it will be almost twelve thousand, ”said Janov.

Mia Dambach, Co-Founder and Executive Director for Child Identity Protection, on her work as a children’s solicitor in Australia, why ensuring children’s identity protection worldwide is important and the role of her many backgrounds in her daily life.

Dear Mia, you have studied at University of Sydney were you did a Bachelor in Law and a Bachelor in Commerce with a triple major in accounting, marketing and economics before doing your Master of Laws (LL.M.). How did you end up volunteering at a local children’s court during your studies?

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While I was studying law at the University of Sydney, I wanted to gain some work experience to confirm my desire to work with children. I contacted the local children's court closest to the University to see if they needed any administrative help, which would give me the opportunity to watch the closed proceedings. They offered me work, archiving and writing letters to the children following a decision by the children's court magistrate. This allowed me to get a first-hand look at the cases and types of sentences children were given for different offences. Eventually, they allowed me to be a children's court monitor/officer, which is the person who runs the court in terms of saying "silence, please, all stand" when the children's magistrate enters and leaves the court and also records the different proceedings. After a few months, one of the paid staff went on maternity leave and the Children's Court offered me a part time paid position that I could carry out whilst finishing my law degree. This experience confirmed my desire to work as a children's lawyer as well as to learn the different ways that children could be defended well in court.

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The group, which includes NRIs, had written to Minister Smriti Irani on October 7. On October 21, some met officials of CARA — nodal agency that facilitates adoptions in India — seeking a faster adoption process.

A GROUP of over 300 “prospective parents” has complained to the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) about “the increasing delay in the adoption process”.

Responding to their concerns, the ministry said on Friday that their “suggestions… have been noted and actionable points are being addressed.’’

The group, which includes NRIs, had written to Minister Smriti Irani on October 7. On October 21, some of them met officials of CARA — the nodal agency that facilitates adoptions in India — seeking a faster and more transparent adoption process.

The group had raised issues of delay and uncertainty of referrals (each prospective parent receives three referrals or profiles of children they match); lack of information and transparency from CARA; lack of clarity on the new processes post-pandemic; rising number of children in institutional care; increased

Canada says it will appeal against a court order to pay billions of dollars to compensate indigenous children who went through the child welfare system.

Last month, a top court upheld a 2016 ruling that the government underfunded First Nations services compared with those for non-indigenous children.

It ordered C$40,000 ($31,350; £23,340) payouts to each child who was in the on-reserve welfare system after 2006.

The case has been a source of tension between campaigners and the government.

The government has said it is not opposed to compensation, but that it had issues over the order's jurisdiction and how the money was to be divided.

Just before U.S. Route 93 crosses over into Canada, it bisects Eureka, Montana, a ranching town that sees few visitors apart from the handful of hikers and fishermen who trek to the area each summer. On a mild day in June 2012, a caravan of vehicles with tinted windows sped a few miles past the town center and turned off onto a winding road leading up into the mountains. The cars reached a cluster of modest clapboard houses in a vast green pasture, and several Russian government officials climbed out. They wore dark suits and sunglasses that shielded their eyes from the warm western sun.

The group was led by Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights. He had come to inspect the Ranch for Kids, an unlicensed care facility for children adopted from abroad. Many of the ranch’s wards had trouble adjusting to life with their new families in the United States, often because of the lasting effects of abuse, neglect, and prenatal alcohol exposure. Almost all of them are from Eastern Europe, though there are also children from other parts of the world.

Joyce Sterkel, the ranch’s owner, had turned down Astakhov’s request for an official visit. He came anyway, and brought along a television crew to document the expedition for the state-owned news stations Channel One and RT. Astakhov was also narrating the events of the day on Twitter: “Here live 23 Russian children, ‘returned’ by American parents who adopted them.” In another post, he tweeted, “They are basically abandoned and betrayed.”

Astakhov is a tall, fit man of forty-seven, with combed-back light-brown hair and a confident stride. In Russia he is something of a celebrity. In addition to his position within the Kremlin, he is a prominent attorney and the host of Chas Suda (“Hour of Judgment”), a mock-courtroom TV show modeled after Judge Judy. He is also the author of a series of novels whose hero is a fearless renegade lawyer who triumphs over his corrupt enemies and punishes them ruthlessly.

In Eureka, Astakhov paced energetically at the end of the ranch’s driveway, his perfectly shined shoes collecting dust — a bull eager to charge. In his hand was a red folder, embossed in gold with the Russian Federation’s coat of arms, that he claimed contained files on children who were supposed to be living in their American homes but who in fact had been deposited at the ranch. “There are so many lies in regard to the well-being of our children,” Astakhov told the cameras, “that we cannot say if our children lead a normal life, if they are in need of anything.”

Article was published on 12 Nov 1959

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CARA and the ministry must accord attention to the vulnerable and invisible community of children silently suffering in our institution

The average number of children in the CARA pool has been around 2,200 over the last five years. One would have expected the number to change after Covid-19. On the contrary, the number of children in the CARA pool dropped (Shutterstock)

According to an affidavit filed by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, more than 3,600 children have been orphaned as a result of Covid-19 and other causes since the start of the pandemic. The official figure quoted by the women and child development (WCD) ministry is 600 orphans — this lacks credibility given the scale of Covid-19 deaths in the country.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), under the WCD ministry, regulates adoption of orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children. The average number of children in the CARA pool has hovered around 2,200 over the last five years. One would have expected a significant number of children impacted by Covid-19 to have found their way into the CARA pool. Even if we were to allow for the procedural delay in declaring children legally free for adoption — a process which usually takes anywhere between two to five months after a child is reported to an orphanage — the number of children in the CARA pool should have increased by at least couple of hundreds (going by official figures), if not by thousands (going by unofficial estimates).

Surprisingly, the needle hasn’t moved one bit. On the contrary, the number of children in the CARA pool dropped, with a greater fall in percentage of healthy children within the already shrunk pool. A closer look at the data suggests some worrisome trends.

Patrick Noordoven was illegally adopted as a Brazilian baby in 1980. Using false witnesses, his adoptive parents in Brazil and the Netherlands registered the birth of their 'own child'. When Patrick found out about this, he felt cheated. "You lack ownership of your identity because you don't know what happened to you," he says in the NPO Radio 1 podcast Het Onderzoeksbureau . Since then, he has been fighting to make sure this doesn't happen to other adopted children.

As part of that battle, Patrick is taking his adoptive parents to court in 2017. For years they withheld information about his illegal adoption, which only complicated the search for his biological family, and with it his own identity. “I knew almost nothing other than that I was born in São Paulo in 1980, around February,” he says.

And that lack of important information causes a lot of pain. “That goes hand in hand with a lot of emotion,” says Patrick. “Every adoptee experiences that differently, but I think 'being bitter' is a general term that is appropriate.”

Because of everything he went through, Patrick started studying law. He gives lectures and has founded an NGO for victims of adoption. He is aware that what he has been through can still happen and is still happening.

Mandatory and verifiable birth certificate

NEW DELHI: Three months after the Rajya Sabha passed a bill proposing amendments in the Juvenile Justice Act to allow district magistrates instead of civil or family courts to approve adoptions, the Centre has sought public feedback on the bill.

A key provision in the bill is also to grant registration to a shelter home after the DM’s recommendation.

In a public notice, the Union women and child development ministry has now said that the stakeholders can send their suggestions for the amendments to Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) model rules, 2016 by November 11.

The suggested clauses include authorising DMs and ADMs to issue adoption orders under Section 61 of the JJ Act, in order to ensure speedy disposal of cases and enhance accountability, while proposing to empower them to implement the Act for the benefit of children in distressed conditions.

As per the amended provisions of the Act, any child care institution will be registered after considering the recommendation of the DM who will independently evaluate the functioning of district child protection units, child welfare committees, juvenile justice boards, specialised juvenile police units and shelter homes.

Summary: This is a response by Scottish mothers. We hope to corroborate evidence that the committee may receive from mothers of MAA who gave birth in England or Wales prior to 1976. We believe that a full public inquiry, such as that commissioned by the Australian Senate is necessary to assess the scale, nature and consequences of historic adoption practices in the UK. Our submission provides anecdotal evidence in response to key questions set by this JCHR inquiry, that is largely concordant with Australian findings. In short, we contend that the right to family life was not respected, nor was the right to freedom from degrading treatment.

This is a submission on behalf of Origins Scotland, which is affiliated with Origins International – an organisation which was founded in Australia in 1995 by Dian Wellfare. Origins International has branches in a number of countries including Australia, United States, Canada and New Zealand. Origins Scotland was set up in 2010 by Marion McMillan, who has now stepped back due to ill health. A number of our mothers, including Marion, have collaborated with the Movement for an Adoption Apology(MAA) over the years since it’s formation, and have made contributions to associated activism in Scotland and at Westminster. It is surprising and disappointing that our mothers are not included in this JHRC inquiry. In addition, our members had babies taken for adoption in the 60’s, late 70’s and early 80’s, with a significant proportion in the later period after 1976.

Accounts of forced adoption practices are difficult to obtain and verify. Women who were traumatised, humiliated and shamed are often reluctant to speak, and very reluctant to be identified. Prior to the advent of internet forums and facebook groups, it was difficult for those affected by adoption to find one another. For many, first contact with another mother was the first occasion on which they realised that many of their troubling experiences were far from unique. Following a recent BBC documentary, mothers and adoptees have contacted Origins, and while not all of those wished to join a campaign, all showed a strong desire to share their experiences.

A full public inquiry, as ordered by the Senate in Australia, would be the only way to determine the scale, nature and consequences of the policies and practices which facilitated historic forced adoption. The Senate report resulted in the commissioning of formal research - Past adoption experiences National Research Study on the Service Response to Past Adoption Practices Pauline Kenny, Daryl Higgins, Carol Soloff and Reem Sweid

We decided it was right for us to make a submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry to support our Movement for Adoption Apology friends. Our submission will be anecdotal, rather than quantitative. However, we are very confident that our evidence will corroborate the submissions made by those in England and Wales, as it is largely concordant with the findings of the Australian research.