Adoption home scams give rise to a legit worry...
Adoption home scams give rise to a legit worry...
By: Alifiya Khan
Date: 2010-06-21
Place: Pune
Children with medical problems will not find parents if scandals keep foreigners and NRIs away from city, fear adoption centres
As the authorities turn the heat on orphanages and adoption centres that violate rules, adoption homes that say everything is above board with them are worried NRIs and foreigners may not approach them now after the scandals surfacing in the city.
And the reason it is a big worry is that it affects children with the least likelihood of being adopted by Indian couples, such as children with medical problems. Counsellors say only NRIs or foreigners have been coming forward to adopt children with special needs or medical problems.
At the Sreevatsa adoption centre attached to the Society of Friends of Sassoon Hospital (SOFOSH), 20
children with medical problems, such as thalassaemia and a hole in the heart, found NRI parents in a year.
"After these scandals that have placed our city in the eye of a storm, we are quite worried as such things inevitably affect our work. What about those kids who don't find Indian parents? Only foreigners or NRIs are known to adopt kids with medical problems and we don't want the cascading effect of these orphanage scams to be felt by legitimate work done by centres like ours," said Sangeeta Pawar, adoption counsellor at SOFOSH.
NRIs open-minded
Madhuri Abhyankar, director of social services, SOFOSH, said people from foreign lands looking to adopt were a blessing for kids with special needs.
"NRI or foreign couples are the ones who adopt these kids as they are more open-minded," she said. "It is also easier for them as many foreign governments support child care and medical treatment of such kids."
Americans to rescue
Two years ago the centre could find no Indians willing to adopt Devashree, a child with dystonia syndrome. But within a few days of sending her photographs to US writer Sarah Thomson, Devashree had found a mother.
"Thomson is so delighted to have Devashree that she is considering a request from us to include a fictional story on adoption and how a child's life changes through it in her children's book," said Pawar.
The wait for Aishwarya, a child with a brain disorder called hydrocephalus, ended when US-based couple Donna and David Cessant decided to adopt her. The couple has two sons and a girl, and Donna is trained in teaching children with special needs.
.