1.5 million children lost a caregiver during pandemic, including thousands in the UK

An estimated 1.5 million children worldwide under the age of 18 have lost a parent, grandparent or caregiver due to Covid-19, according to a global study.

Of those, more than 1 million experienced the death of one or both parents during the first 14 months of the pandemic, leading to what one researcher called “the hidden pandemic of orphanhood”.

Another half a million experienced the death of a grandparent or caregiver living in their own home, according to a study published in the Lancet.

Researchers extrapolated Covid-19 mortality data and national fertility statistics for 21 countries to produce the global estimates.

In Cambodia, Holt’s social work team has helped to develop three care alternatives for children growing up in institutional care — kinship care, foster care and, for the first time, a formal, ethical system of domestic adoption. In March 2021, the first child in Cambodia joined her adoptive family via this new process.

In May 2020, early in the COVID pandemic, a baby girl was born in a hospital in Cambodia. She was small — weighing just over 5 pounds — but her eyes were dark and lovely and shining with light.

A bright new life had just begun.

But for her mom, this was not a day of celebration. As she looked in the eyes of her newborn daughter, she faced a heartbreaking decision.

Unmarried, and separated from the baby’s father, she feared her family’s reaction if she came home with a child. In many communities in Cambodia, the stigma of single motherhood remains alive and well — shaming women for having a child outside of marriage. This newborn girl’s mom had managed to keep her pregnancy a secret from her family. And on the day her daughter was born, she decided to relinquish her parental rights.

Fiom conducted research on women 1 who discovered their pregnancy late. What seems? They face a lot of misunderstanding. Fiom is therefore starting a campaign to gain more understanding for these women. An unintended pregnancy is often an intense experience, a late pregnancy is even more so. Women in the study share their experiences.

Many people cannot imagine that someone will not discover a pregnancy until after 30 weeks or during delivery. It is often thought that a woman deliberately kept it hidden. But would you know you're pregnant if you didn't get a big belly and keep bleeding every month? Imagine what that would be like. How would you feel if you suddenly gave birth to a child without knowing you were pregnant?

A late pregnancy can happen to anyone, of all body shapes and sizes, of all reproductive ages, mother or not and of any level of education. For all these women 1 this is a heavy event. They are suddenly told that they are not only unintentionally pregnant, but also have a child within weeks or days. Women who discover pregnancy at delivery have even less time to get used to the idea. From one moment to the next they have a child in their arms.

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A MUM who fled the country with her son during a custody fight has won the battle for him to live with her and will tell her story on TV.

Ellie Yarrow-Sanders, from Basildon, will appear on a Channel 4 show, speaking for the first time since winning custody earlier this year.

In 2018, Miss Yarrow-Sanders vanished mid-way through a high court hearing over custody her three-year-old son.

Her disappearance led the judge to lift reporting restrictions on the case and make an appeal on social media for her to come home.

Eight months after her disappearance, Miss Yarrow-Sanders returned and the case resumed in private.

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A Lake County family is fighting to bring home their daughter, who was adopted from an orphanage in Nigeria.

“They live in an orphanage, don’t get out much, everything over there is secluded in the sense that it’s like 10-foot walls, so when you get to the orphanage it’s like a 10-foot wall, so they can’t see over the walls,” said Ian Lord as he described his daughter, Ivy’s, living conditions.

Ian and Lisa Lord said they went through the lengthy process to legally adopt the child, but when they applied for a visa to get her to the United States, it was denied.

“It’s just unbelievable, it shouldn’t happen, there’s no excuse,” Lisa said, fighting back tears.

The couple told Channel 9 they’ve already spent more than $50,000 during the process, but it’s about more than the money. Two previous adoptions through Bulgaria also failed.

PUNE: A complaint has been filed against an unknown

woman after she abandoned a seven-month-old baby girl at

a private travel operator’s office on Thursday afternoon (July

15) in Alandi .

A woman from the travel operator’s office filed an FIR. “A

For a long time, adoption has been seen as a way of fulfilling the desire to have children. The number of adoptions in Germany is now falling dramatically. At the same time, the proportion of stepchild adopters is growing. The reasons for this are diverse.

In Germany, significantly fewer couples adopt a child than a quarter of a century ago. The number of adoptions has more than halved within 25 years. While far fewer boys and girls are adopted from abroad, the proportion of stepchild adopters is increasing. What are the reasons for this and how has the handling of adoptions developed over the years?

Call Iris Egger-Otholt in Mainz. The 54-year-old is the head of the Joint Central Adoption Office for Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. "Especially in the area of ??international adoptions there is a drastic decline," says the expert. The reasons for this are varied - and can be found both in the country of origin and in Germany.

An important aspect in this country is the progress in reproductive medicine. "Today many people simply have much better opportunities to have their own child." According to the German IVF Register in Düsseldorf, the number of artificial inseminations is steadily increasing. While there were already more than 110,000 treatments in the fertility centers in 2019, the figure was only around 23,700 in 1994.

New Adoption Assistance Act

The XII. The Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice had to answer the question of whether the biological father of a child also has a right of access if the child was adopted by the mother's registered partner with his consent.

The mother of the child, conceived by means of a so-called private sperm donation by the applicant and born in August 2013, lives in a registered civil partnership with the other person involved (life partner). The life partner adopted the child in 2014 with the consent of the applicant by way of the so-called stepchild adoption. The applicant initially had contact with the child until 2018, which either took place in the household of the (legal) parents or was accompanied outside by one of them. The child is aware of the biological paternity of the applicant. In the summer of 2018, he expressed to the parents the desire to have contact with the child in his home environment and for a longer period of time, which they refused. After two further meetings, the applicant's personal contact with the child broke off. The applicant has applied for a contact arrangement whereby he picks up the child from the day-care center at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesdays every fortnight and hands it over to his parents at 6:00 p.m. The district court rejected the application. The applicant's complaint was rejected by the court of appeal because there was no legal basis for a right of access.

In response to the applicant's appeal on points of law, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the decision of the court of appeal and referred the matter back to it.

Admittedly, there is no right of access according to Section 1684 of the German Civil Code because only legal parents are entitled to it and this is therefore excluded for the applicant who is only the biological father. There is also no entitlement under Section 1685 (2) of the German Civil Code (right of access for close associates). For this it is necessary that a social and family relationship with the child, characterized by actual acceptance of responsibility, was established, which, however, did not exist in the present case due to the time limit of the contacts, which were always accompanied by the parents.

On the other hand, a claim according to Section 1686 a, Paragraph 1, No. 1 of the German Civil Code (biological father’s right of access) is generally possible. According to this, the biological father, who has shown a serious interest in the child, has a right to contact with the child if contact is in the best interests of the child. According to Section 167 a (1) FamFG, applications are only admissible if the applicant declares in lieu of an oath that he or she was with the mother of the child during the period of conception. The fact that the child was conceived with the help of a so-called private sperm donation does not prevent the producer's entitlement to claim and the admissibility of the application, especially since the private sperm donor, in contrast to the "official sperm donation" in the case of medically assisted fertilization according to § 1600 d para. 4 BGB, also has the right to determine his paternity would not be barred by operation of law. Even the adoption carried out does not exclude the right of contact according to Section 1686 a Paragraph 1 No. 1 BGB. In this respect, there is no factual difference between a stepchild adoption by the mother's husband and the parenthood of the mother's life partner or wife - which is not expressly taken into account by law - through adoption. The fact that the applicant had consented to the adoption does not conflict with the right of access. Rather, the biological father's consent to the adoption only excludes the right of access if this also constitutes a waiver of the right of access. In any case, this is missing if the child should get to know the biological father and have contact with him, as agreed by the parties involved. This is also in line with assessments under adoption law. This is because adoption law increasingly provides for the possibility of maintaining contact between the child and the family of origin for so-called open or semi-open adoption. Whether and to what extent contact is to be regulated is therefore primarily judged by whether the biological father has shown a serious interest in the child and to what extent contact is in the best interests of the child. In doing so, the biological father must respect the legal parents' right to bring up children, without this giving the parents the right to refuse contact.

A new documentary from filmmaker Elizabeth Jacobs aims to investigate whether Angelina Jolie's adopted son Maddox was among a number of children in Cambodia whose parents were allegedly duped into giving them up for adoption, something Angelina has previously insisted wasn't the case

A new documentary will take a fresh look at claims suggesting Angelina Jolie ’s son Maddox may have been the victim of unethical adoption practices in Cambodia.

Hollywood star Angelina used Lauryn Galindo to help organise the adoption of Maddox from Cambodia.

But it has been alleged that Lauryn’s baby-recruits duped poor families into selling their children for adoption, something she always denied and was never convicted of.

Galindo later pleaded guilty to visa fraud, currency structuring and money-laundering conspiracy charges. She was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in 2004.

Was Maddox 'stolen from his birth family?': Fears that Angelina Jolie's son may have been adopted unethically in Cambodia to be explored again in new documentary

Jolie adopted son Maddox from Cambodia in 2002

The star used the services of adoption agent Lauryn Galindo who was jailed in 2004 for 'falsifying documents to obtain US visas for orphans'

When the scandal was first exposed, Jolie said she knew nothing of the illegal trade, and there is no evidence Maddox was not an orphan

Galindo ran an adoption agency with her sister Lynn Devin who was fined $150,000