A UK-based adoption agency, Literacy Integration and Formal Education (LIFE) Foundation has reacted to the statement made by the UK Department for Education that banned child adoptions from Nigeria and other countries.

By virtue of the order, adoptions from Nigeria to the UK were suspended with effect from March 12, 2021.

President, Literacy Integration & Formal Education (LIFE) foundation, Elvira Salleras, in a statement insisted that the law is a gross abuse of adoption law.

Salleras currently operates an adoption agency with expertise and extensive experience in inter-country adoptions from Nigeria since 2006, working in partnership with Lagos and Anambra States.

“We feel constrained to address the issues raised in the said circular, using Lagos state, which has similar processes to those of Anambra State, as a reference point, to provide clarity and set the records straight,” Salleras said.

Fiom has been assisting women who have unwanted pregnancy for a long time and are considering choosing distance for adoption. During this guidance, women regularly ask about the experiences of other women in this situation. They have a specific need for recent experiences of peers. That is why we will have a closed online environment for experience stories from May 1, 2021.

Unwanted pregnant women who are considering distance for adoption regularly encounter misunderstanding and disbelief. For example, they are told: 'Did you really not realize you were pregnant?' or 'you're not giving up your child, are you?'. These comments can hurt and can influence a woman's choice.

That is why we have consciously opted for a closed online environment. The women only share their experience story with women who go through the same thing and who understand each other.

For the online environment, we asked women who recently considered choosing distance for adoption if we could interview them. These interviews have been elaborated into extensive stories, which can be read in the online environment. In the area you can read stories of women who chose distance for adoption, but also of women who considered renunciation for adoption but ultimately chose foster placement or raising their child themselves.

The women indicated that telling their story again led to further processing of the choice made. They also gave tips for women who have to make the choice now.

The husband of the Florentine couple, who was stranded for days in India, is serious for Covid. Another couple faced an odyssey to return. While LIAN's appeal to vaccinate the few hundred adoptive couples already matched with a child remained unheard

For a few days, the news of the couple of adoptive parents blocked in India with their daughter, who fell ill with Covid, had filled the pages of all the newspapers. Then, as always happens, other priorities have made the issue a little forgotten, also thanks to the fact that we finally managed to return to Italy.

The husband of the adoptive couple blocked for days in India is serious for Covid

But the question is far from closed, indeed: it is news these days that the couple's husband is hospitalized in serious conditions at the Careggi Hospital. If in India, in fact, it was the wife who caused the greatest concern, once they returned to Italy it was the husband who worsened. “My daughter tested positive for Meyer - said her adoptive mother Simonetta Filippi to la Repubblica - but she has always been asymptomatic. She's fine, the Meyer's staff have been wonderful with her ”. The husband, on the other hand, causes concern. Al Careggi arrived in respiratory block and is now undergoing various therapies to try to improve the situation. “Fortunately - continues Simonetta - we returned to Italy just in time".

Waits, bans and special permits to go home as a new family

KALYAN: A former social worker has been arrested in connection with an

illegal adoption racket along with the parents of a seven-month-old child.

The Thane police, with help from the child protection officer of Thane

district, arrested 28-year-old Manshi Jadhav, who worked with a child care

centre in Dombivli, where she would conduct surveys of parents wanting

For the greater part of the 20th century, Ireland was marked by a culture of shame that separated thousands of women from their children, many of whom were forcibly given up for adoption. The trauma inflicted by these separations was compounded by legal barriers that prevented adopted people from accessing information about themselves.

However, on 12 May, the Irish government published a draft bill that would give those adopted the right to access their birth information. This comes in the wake of decades of activism by adopted people and their supporters and has the potential to significantly reform an adoption system historically marked by secrecy, shame and the trauma arising from institutionalisation.

In modern Ireland, institutions such as mother and baby homes and the Magdalene Laundries were tasked by the state to deal with “fallen” women who had transgressed ideals of Irish femininity, especially by becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Their children were either boarded out to foster parents, institutionalised, or adopted by families of the same faith, some as far away as America, and – as survivors, advocates and researchers have long maintained – often under questionable circumstances.

Many searches by birth parents and children have been thwarted (as poignantly captured in the Oscar-nominated film Philomena), and adopted people in Ireland have been denied information about themselves – if it still exists – that is readily available in other jurisdictions. Although there have been media investigations and the government commissioned a 2019 review into a small sample of illegal adoptions, and published its mother and baby homes investigation in March, there has never been a fully fledged investigation into adoption practices in Ireland.

The information we do have, including testimony from adopted people and their birth parents, calls into question the legality and morality of such practices. A recent RTÉ Prime Time investigation showed how familial relationships were deliberately and systematically severed, with children taken and given away – all to enforce a particular moral code.

Kolkata: The detective department has launched a probe into social media posts appealing for adoption of children orphaned

during the pandemic. The probe was ordered by joint CP (crime), Murlidhar Sharma, after a Twitter user lodged a complaint in

this regard and shared a contact number with him.

Activist Sumita Dutta Basu lodged the complaint on May 20 through Twitter. She said that the adoption message had been

circulating on social media for about a month even though it was illegal to adopt children in such a manner. “The message is

Itunu and Samuel Oremade say video calls with their son Andrew bring pain as well as joy.

That's because the three-year-old keeps asking a question they are also desperate for an answer to: why can't their family be together in Canada?

The Oremades live in Airdrie, Alta., and their adopted son is being cared for by Itunu's 79-year-old mother in Lagos, Nigeria.

The first stage of Andrew's citizenship application was approved Dec. 7, 2018. But the second part, which would grant him Canadian citizenship and the ability to enter Canada, has been in the processing queue for 22 months with no updates to the file.

'It's so painful'

Actor Mahhi Vij has said that she, and husband Jay Bhanushali did not legally adopt their foster kids Rajveer and Khushi, but "they are family" and have been living together since their birth. Mahhi and Jay have a biological daughter, Tara and have also been fostering their caretaker's children, Rajveer and Khushi since 2017.

Earlier this year, reports claimed that Jay and Mahhi had "abandoned" their foster kids, because of the birth of their own daughter. However, Mahhi later slammed those reports in a social media post.

Talking about Rajveer and Kushi, Mahhi told Zoom in an interview, "We have not adopted them (Rajveer and Khushi). They have parents. The father is still working with us. They have a mother. It is just that they have stayed with us since the time they were born. They call me mumma and Jay dadda. We were all together. We were like a happy family. There is nothing like legal adoption. I do not know where that came from."

She added that the children have returned to their hometown as their grandfather believed it is safer for them to be at their hometown. In March, Mahhi wrote a long Instagram post in response to rumours that she had abandoned her foster children.

“A lot of you have been questioning, a lot of you have been assuming, a lot of you have been writing anything and everything and it's just FAIR! Yes we are parents, FOSTER Parents! Tara entered our lives as a beautiful blessing but that doesn't change our feelings for Khushi and Rajveer. When Khushi came into our lives, we became parents but a part of us knows that the decisions and the first rights belong to her father and mother. They had always wanted the kids to spend some time in Mumbai but eventually return to their hometown and be with their extended family and grandparents. And we feel that there is no one who can judge what is better for a child, than their parents,” she wrote.

With Covid claiming many lives, people are trying to get foster parents for children who have lost parents to the pandemic. Experts warn child trafficking rackets can take advantage of such a situation

KOCHI: Have you received a WhatsApp forward like this: “If anyone wants to adopt a baby girl, please contact 0971******* (Priyanka). Three-day-old and six-month-old girls available. They lost their parents recently to Covid. Please help these kids get a new life, spread the word.” Many similar broadcast messages are making rounds, where ‘good Samaritans seem to be seeking help to arrange adoption of children, especially girls, orphaned during the pandemic. Experts claim that even though some of these efforts are genuine, they may trigger child trafficking.

Dhananjay Tingal, executive director of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, said the messages spreading on social media calling for prospective foster parents could be an attempt to traffic children and misuse the intention of those genuinely trying to help children. “Ideally, anyone willing to help should be calling government helplines to report on orphaned children,” he said.

“When a child is orphaned, he/she becomes vulnerable. Many kids are suffering because they lost their parents to the pandemic and their caregivers are hospitalised. There is no one to take care of them. Their neighbours or extended families keep away out of fear of contracting the virus,” he said. Dhananjay added that there are no relaxations in the adoption procedure due to the pandemic.

“People can’t just go and buy/take these children because their parents are dead. We have been receiving so many calls regarding adoptions related to Covid deaths of parents/caretakers. Prospective foster parents still need to register with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) to become eligible for adoption. Though no cases of Covid death-related trafficking have been reported so far, we fear these types of forwarded messages are an indication, and even educated people are not aware of adoption laws,” he said.

"The guy diverts resources meant for vulnerable children to his family."

Limbe First Grade Magistrates Court will on May next week Wednesday make its ruling on whether or not to discharge a case against former Finance Director at Timotheos Foundation, Wim Akster, a Dutch national, who was arrested over indecent assault charges.

According to a police statement in our possession, Akster was arrested in September 2020 on two counts - trafficking in persons and unlawfully and indecently assaulted Alice Mataya from Namikasi in Blantyre.

The statement, signed by sub-inspector FTK Dzimbiri, indicate that the offences were committed in 2019, but the victim only reported the matter in 2020.

Some insiders believe that the stories was fabricated to bring Akster down considering what has been between the suspect and officials from Timetheos Foundation, who are believed to have schemed the allegations.