ACT | Documents

Home

Wanted: Special families for special children from China

Wanted: Special families for special children from China
By Ella Johnson
Posted August 22, 2010 at 11:48 p.m.

A local nonprogit has a chance to change the life of 40 special children
Families Thru International Adoption is facing a daunting task that could change the lives of 40 special-needs children from China.

Adoptions
- For more information on adopting a special-needs child from China, call Families Thru International Adoption at (812) 479-9900 or toll free (888) 797-9900.

- To watch video clips of the 37 Chinese children still up for adoption, visit www.ftia.org and click on the Journey of Hope icon.

The nonprofit child placement organization, headquartered in Evansville, has one year to find families in the United States willing to open their homes to children with medical and physical disabilities.

Betty Betz, the international adoption group's coordinator for the China program, said the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs invited the organization to participate in the pilot program Journey of Hope.

Betz and Families Thru International Adoption Director of Social Work Services Cindy Scheller traveled to China last month with two doctors, including Dr. Julie Keck, medical director of the International Adoption Clinic at Riley Hospital for Children, to meet the children and prepare medical assessments.

"Typically when a family is considering a special-needs child, all they have is the medical report and some pictures from China," said Betz, the adoptive mother of 13-year-old Sela from China. Betz said the Journey of Hope program allows Families Thru International Adoption to provide interested families with first-hand information about the children.

"They can talk to us and we can say, 'Yes, I've seen that child. This is what his personality is like,' Betz said. "By having a physician who has examined the child as well makes a big difference in the physician being able to give their opinion on the child's medical condition."

The Families Thru International Adoption team spent two days in Jiangsu province at an orphanage in the city of Nantong getting to know the children and learning more about their limitations. The children range in age from 3 to 12. Their medical issues varied from cleft palates and cleft lips to clubfoot, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, heart disease and developmental delays.

"It's so much different looking at a child in person and trying to get a handle on how they are doing as opposed to looking at a child on paper," said Keck, a pediatrician specialized in neurodevelopment disabilities.

"What I am hoping is that the families get a more thorough understanding of how the child is doing now, what we think the future medical issues are that may need to be evaluated once the child is home and a better look at how we think that child is doing developmentally and cognitively," Keck said.

Scheller said parents interested in special-needs adoptions should not have preconceived expectations for the child.

"It's important for families to be prepared and understand the adoption-related issues and the medical needs of the child they are interested in. When they have set expectation, the adoption may not be as successful," she said.

The International Adoption Clinic at Riley offers a program for parents and children to help children ease into their new family structure.

"That's really designed to teach children what it is to have loving parents and to belong to a family, if that has been a new experience for them," Keck said. "Some children don't quite know what to do with themselves when they're in a family, if they have lived all of their life in an institution."

Betz and Scheller said all of the children they met were excited about the possibility of living with an adoptive family in America. Some sang songs and performed in groups or individually in hopes of making a good impression on their visitors.

Scheller said during a practice performance an older boy reminded a younger boy to smile and do his best.

"They almost felt like they had to prove to us that they were worthy of a family," Scheller said. "It's heart-wrenching to think that a child has to try to prove they deserve a family."

One little girl asked Scheller what she was going to do for her when the Families Thru International Adoption team returned the United States. Scheller explained she would try to find the child a home.

"She said, 'How are you going to reach me? I don't have a cell phone.' She said, 'I knew I should have gotten a cell phone,'" Scheller said. "These kids are sitting there wondering, 'Is today going to be the day somebody calls and says I was chosen?'"

© 2010 Evansville Courier & Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Organizations: Families Thru International Adoption

Countries: China

Kids For Sale...By Orphanages

Date: 21-Aug-2010

Some orphanages in the country are said to be engaged in the illegal sale of children under their care to wealthy foreign buyers.

The officers in charge of Orphanages at the Department of Social Welfare, Ms Helena Obeng-Asamoah, said the department was investigating a number of such cases and warned that it was illegal for orphanages to charge money for the release of children under their care.

Condemning the phenomenon, she said, “Orphanages have no right to collect money from any individual who expresses interest in a child,” adding that various education programmes had gone o to educate orphanage officials on such negative practices, the last one being about a month ago.

Persons: Jill Wiggins Smith

Countries: Ghana, United States of America

Preet Mandir gets new managing trustee

Preet Mandir gets new managing trustee
TNN, Aug 20, 2010, 01.47am IST

PUNE: Following the resignation of Joginder Singh Bhasin as managing trustee of Preet Mandir adoption agency, the board has unanimously agreed to appoint D P Bhatia as the new managing trustee.

A sitting trustee for the last decade, Bhatia is a 1952 graduate in electrical engineering and belongs to the Indian Inspection Service-Engineering Service Cadre, Government of India. On his appointment, Bhatia said that he had accepted the responsibility of running the activities of the foundation at this critical juncture' with great humility.'

Former managing trustee Joginder Singh Bhasin was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged involvement in an inter-country adoption racket', though he was subsequently released on bail. It is not known as to why Bhasin resigned.

Read more: Preet Mandir gets new managing trustee - Pune - City - The Times of India

Persons: Sardar Joginder Singh Bhasin

Organizations: ACT CASE Preet Mandir

Family's 14 year long trauma ends (video)

Family's 14 year long trauma ends 20 Aug 2010, 0907 hrs IST
14 years after they were separated, teenagers Miquel & Melissa were re-united with their parents in Kanyakumari. They were given up for adoption illegally by an agency in Chennai in 1996.

Dekla Selvan has spent the last fourteen years in agony... waiting for this one moment to get a glance of 19 year-old Melissa and 18 year-old Miquel, her two children who were given up for adoption illegally.

Talking about the incident, Dekla Selvam said, "My children were sent to Netherlands without my knowledge. We have been searching for them ever since. We are so happy that they have come to meet us now."

Deklas children were amongst the 300 odd children given for illegal adoption by an agency in Chennai. After 14 years of relentless battle by their mother, the children have to come to meet their family.The only communication all these years was a letter written by Melissa to her mother.

Perhaps more than the mother, it is the children whose heart wrenching ordeal has to be heard to be believed.

Organizations: ACT CASE Declah

Dutch teenagers reunite with mother in TN hamlet

Jaya Menon, TNN, Aug 20, 2010, 04.19am IST

CHENNAI: "I am happy. I am with my real family now," 18-year-old Miquel said on Thursday after an emotional reunion with his family in Kootapuli, a fishing hamlet near Kanyakumari. It's a far cry from the beautiful seaside town of Middelburg in The Netherlands where he lives with his 19-year-old sister. But for Miquel and Melissa it was an homecoming they had been dreaming of since they came to know they had a family in India.

Residents of Kootapuli gathered outside Dekla's humble one-room house in the colony, rebuilt after the 2004 tsunami, as the two teenagers arrived from Kanyakumari, accompanied by their Dutch mentors. They arrived in Tiruvananthapuram on Wednesday before driving down to Kanyakumari for the grand reunion. With tears pouring down her face, Dekla greeted her two children with the traditional aarti', hugging and kissing them. "I am so happy. They are gifts from god," she said. While Miquel could speak English reasonably well, a tearful Melissa could communicate only in Dutch. But everything her children spoke was translated into Tamil for Dekla.

In 1996, Dekla, unable to fend for seven children, her husband having deserted her, handed over two of them, five-year-old Amala Loody Lisa (Melissa) and four-year-old James Kapil (Miquel) to an orphanage run by an adoption agency, Malaysian Social Service in Chennai, on the assurance they would be sent back to her when they turned 18. But, the agency gave the children in adoption to a Dutch couple in Netherlands without informing Dekla. Subsequently, their foster parents separated legally and the children were placed in a government home. After a child trafficking scandal linking the adoption agency broke out in 2005, for Dekla it became a desperate search for her children. She finally heard from them two years ago with the help of activists. It took another two years for her to see her children again.

Organizations: ACT CASE Declah

Preet Mandir: mother says gave child for institutional care, not adoption

An HIV positive woman from Pune has approached the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), alleging that her 11-year-old child was given up for adoption from Preet Mandir even as she had not relinquished the child. The CWC will submitting the affidavit to the CBI for further investigation. The woman said she had given her child for institutional care and not adoption.

Indian Express 20.08.2010

Organizations: ACT CASE Preet Mandir

Oh baby - Authors call for international reform in an assessment of Vietnam’s adoption system

Oh baby

Last updated: 8/20/2010 9:00

Authors call for international reform in an assessment of Vietnam’s adoption system

Two foreigners carry Vietnamese children down De Tham Street in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1. Experts have called for increased efforts from Vietnamese and foreign authorities to the ensure legality of Inter-country adoptions.

Experts have called on international authorities to reform Inter-country adoption practices to ensure their legality.

The recommendations were made following an assessment of Vietnam’s adoption system released on August 11. The assessment was carried out by Hervé Boéchat, Nigel Cantwell and Mia Dambach of International Social Service (ISS).

The study was commissioned by UNICEF Vietnam and by the Department of Adoption of the Ministry of Justice of Vietnam. The study was commissioned to identify and address problems in both the domestic and Inter-country adoption processes, with a view to assisting Vietnam in its preparations to accede to the 1993 Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption.

Inter-country adoption from Vietnam began in the 1970s and an average of 1,000 Vietnamese children have been adopted each year by families in the US, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland, according to ISS.

In June, the central legislature passed adoption laws scheduled to take effect in January of 2011.

The authors of the ISS study, which began in May 2009, have made detailed recommendations to Vietnamese and foreign authorities as well as international adoption agencies.

The findings urged Vietnamese authorities to establish a proper system of data collection for children in need of adoption and undertake an assessment of the root causes of child abandonment, relinquishment and separation. The causes should then be addressed through social services such as support for single mothers, family counseling, and social assistance.

Laws regarding parental consent for adoption should be clarified, the researchers found. Fees charged by official entities in Vietnam throughout the adoption process should be clearly itemized, regulated, and placed in the public domain, the researchers advised.

The report further urged increased involvement on behalf of adopting countries.

The researchers found that the governments and the central authorities of “receiving countries” have not effectively committed themselves to applying the basic principles of the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-country Adoption (ICA).

The convention, which went into force in 1995, was aimed at the prevention of child trafficking. All signatory and ratifying members agreed that adoption should be a last resort. Every effort should be made to keep a child with its family before putting it up for Inter-country adoption, the Convention agreed.

But the ISS team found that authorities in “receiving countries” routinely fail to uphold the Hague principles when dealing with non-Hague countries such as Vietnam.

Procedures for ensuring free and informed consent for adoption are inadequate and inconsistent, the researchers found. They further recommended that the embassies and central authorities of “receiving countries” enhance their contacts and cooperation with the Vietnamese central authority to determine the number and characteristics of children requiring adoption abroad.

Adoption agencies working in Vietnam have been urged to refuse to process Inter-country adoption applications for babies whose age at referral makes it improbable that sufficient care solutions for them have been sought out at home.

According to the assessment, the overwhelming majority of adopted children in Vietnam are under one year of age — the age-group most sought by prospective adopters. Vietnam belongs to a small and ever-decreasing number of “countries of origin” that offer children of this age for adoption abroad.

Organizations: International Social Service (ISS), International Social Service (ISS) - Germany, Unicef New York

Countries: Vietnam

Sieg für Schweizer NGO im Kampf gegen Pädophilie

19. August 2010 - 13:43

Sieg für Schweizer NGO im Kampf gegen Pädophilie

In Kolumbien ist ein Sextourist aus Italien von einem Gericht wegen Kindesmissbrauch zu 15 Jahren Haft verurteilt worden. Es ist das erste Urteil dieser Art in Kolumbien und ein Erfolg für die Schweizer Kinderschutz-Organisation Terre des hommes.

Der 72-jährige Pädophile muss zudem eine Strafe von gut 30'000 US-Dollar bezahlen, wie Terre des hommes (Tdh) mitteilte. Zwei Komplizen des Italieners wurden zudem zu 10 Jahren Gefängnis und 14'000 US-Dollar Busse verurteilt.

Der Italiener hatte sich an mehreren minderjährigen Knaben vergriffen und sie mit Alkohol und Drogen gefügig gemacht. Ein 15-jähriger Junge kam nach einer Überdosis Kokain ums Leben, die er beim Sextouristen zu sich genommen hatte.

Countries: Colombia

Organizations: PEDOS/PERVERTS, Terre des Hommes Switzerland

WA government apologises to unwed mums

Angie Raphael

October 19, 2010 - 5:29PM

A woman who was handcuffed to a bed, drugged and forced to give up her newborn baby for adoption says an official apology has helped her regain her "selfhood".

The West Australian government on Tuesday issued a public apology to women who had their babies taken from them by authorities from the 1940s to the 1980s because they were unwed.

Countries: Australia

New Special Needs Policy from CCAA

From the CCAA:

In order to improve on our online special needs program and focus on the placement of special needs children who have been on the “shared list” for over two months, CCAA decides to group some of the special needs children as “special focus children” (with a tag of “Special Focus” on their names in the shared list) so that special attention would be drawn to these children by adoption agencies and adoptive families. This will come into effect since September 1. Here are some clarifications on relevant issues:

Adoption agencies will be able to search and retrieve information of special focus children through the online system, such as name, gender, age, province and welfare institute where they are from, and pathology categories. Agencies can also enquire children’s information based on their pathology and look for suitable families for them.
After locking the file of special focus children, adoptive families have six months to prepare application files and send to CCAA.
Adoption agencies may recruit families for special focus children according to families’ needs and the child’s health status. After getting the approval from CCAA, the file of special focus child will be posted on the individual list for the agency, who will be allowed three months to find families.
Children who take part in Journey of Hope will all be included in the Special Focus category. Name list of these children will be decided based on discussions between CCAA and adoption agencies, or proposed by agencies and approved by CCAA. Children taking part in Journey of Hope basically come from the same orphanage, sometimes several orphanages as needed. Each session of Journey of Hope includes no more than 40 children. CCAA will post files of these children on the individual list of the agency and allow six months for placement.
When the adoptive family is eligible for adoption, they are allowed to adopt two children within one year simultaneously or successively. They may apply to, as situations vary, adopt a healthy child and a special focus child, or a special needs child and a special focus child, or two special focus children, simultaneously or successively.
When a family intends to adopt special needs children, especially special focus children, adoption agencies shall convey the true information of the child to adoptive families, help families prepare for the adoption, keep close monitoring on the adoption procedure and provide better post-placement tracking services, so as to protect the interests of adopted children and avoid occurrence of tragedies.

———————

Now, as to the interpretation of it. My interpretation, my best attempt at moving it from translated legalese to regular English:

The children who wait longer than two months on the shared list become Special Focus Children. A few requirements will be relaxed for these children.

Families now have 6 months instead of 3 to get a dossier together and to the CCAA after matching.
An agency can request to have a “Special Focus” child assigned to them so that they can actively search for a family for that particular child. The agency will then have that child’s file for three months. I assume this means the child will be removed from the shared list for those three months. I do not know what the agency will be allowed to do in order to “recruit” a family for this child.
I don’t believe this makes changes to the Journey of Hope program, but it is noted that the children in this program will be classified as “Special Focus” children. The biggest benefit that this classification will give is probably the ability to be able to adopt children closer than a year apart.
Families who adopt a Special Focus Child are allowed to adopt two children at the same time. The other child can be healthy, special needs, or special focus. They can adopt them at the same time, or they can do so within a year of each other, which is normally not allowed.
Agencies are tasked with making sure the family is prepared to parent the child, with closely monitoring things, and with providing better post placement services to protect the interests of the children.

I think this is a positive step to work towards helping the harder to place children find families. Agencies have argued that it is hard for them to focus on finding parents for a particular child because if another agency is doing so as well then by the time they find a family the child may no longer be available. They’ve argued that it is a better use of resources for agencies to not focus on the same hard to place children, that it would be better for each agency to focus their efforts on different children, as that gives a larger number of children a chance at a family. It appears the CCAA is responding to this, and I’m impressed.

There have also been the complaints that families in the NSN program often see a child they would be interested in adopting, but can’t be sure it will be a year before they get their referral. It will probably be a year, but who knows for sure? This will allow some of those families a little more leeway, and that is also a good thing. As a general rule the “wait at least a year before you adopt again” rule is a good idea, but to put it in place with no exceptions…. not so much. Especially when there are so many unknowns, timewise, in the program as it stands now.

I am very happy to see the last point, tasking the agencies with making sure the family is prepared to parent this child, and then keeping an eye on things, and offering more post placement services in general. I have a feeling that at some point we’ll see some official changes in this regards that will affect all adoptions, but for now I’m happy to see that this is on their mind.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 8:48 am and is filed under Facts, Rumors - New Regulations, Rumors - Special Needs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

-->

Organizations: China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA)

Countries: China