The New Adoption Law

The New Adoption Law

Last updated: 2012-05-28 12:42 EET Print

We start with a point of view recently voiced by the head of the Romanian Adoption Office, Bogdan Panait: Bogdan Panait: ”We badly need to raise the awareness of all families; we seriously need to raise the system’s awareness, but when things are not going well in the family we need to find a solution so that children may live a normal life. Nowhere around the world can a protection system provide a normal life. A normal life can only be family life.” A normal and caring family that really wants you and where you can feel safe; that’s what any child around the world wants. Recently, Romania has taken yet another step further to make such a wish come true, passing a new adoption law. And, as “no one can live a normal life in the system”, as the State Secretary with the Romanian Adoption Office Bogdan Panait said in the beginning, the new law is trying to speed up the entire procedure setting up clear deadlines. Speaking now is Ramona Popa, a Cabinet Manager with the Romanian Adoption Office. Ramona Popa: “For children whose parents are unknown, the file can be submitted to court within 30 days since the birth certificate was issued. For children whose parents say from the very beginning they do not want to look after them and want to give them up for adoption, both they and their relatives up to four times removed can submit the file to court within 60 days since the parents or the relatives issue their last statement.” Although statistics mention around 67 thousand institutionalized children, the old legal provisions allowed for a limited number of those children to be eligible for adoption. However, in Romania there are around 1,700 families who want to adopt a child. Dina Pluhovici is the president of the Bucharest Branch of the ADOR Copiii Association, the community of adoptive families. She will now be sharing with us her experience of adoptive parent. Diana Pluhovici:” Under the old law, if we wanted a child to be declared eligible for adoption we needed the consent of the relatives up to four times removed. Now let’s be honest: I myself don’t know who my relatives four times removed are, let alone the institution who goes at all lengths to dig into the family history. A provision of the new law states that the very moment a social protection measure is stipulated for the child, and if for a whole year the family as well as the identified four-times-removed relatives do not wish to get involved in the upbringing of the child, that particular child should become eligible for adoption. My little girl became eligible for adoption almost four years ago when she was about three years and eight months old. Three years and eight months of doing nothing and letting that child in the system, depriving her of the right to be raised in the middle of a loving and harmonious family! And also with no balanced upbringing. Especially from an emotional point of view, as these children have already been going through a trauma. The trauma of being abandoned.” Now Diana Pluhovici is the mother of Antonia, a little girl of Rroma origin, whom the old adoption law had her spend almost five years in the system before she was entitled to having a family. Diana Pluhovici:” When I met her, my daughter was 4 years and 9 months old. A rather old child who, according to the statistics of the Romanian Adoption Office was a child hard to adopt. However, her age did not bother us. It was all we wanted: to become parents. We were not particularly interested in her condition or her ethnic roots, I just said I wanted to be a mother. I wasn’t interested in anything else. And that despite the fact that the moment I was shown her file I saw she was a child with an Apgar 1 score, a resuscitated child with a neurological condition. But that didn’t matter at all. I said I wanted to see the child. And the moment I saw that little browned eyed wonder, who was trying to draw your attention, all those things didn’t matter at all.” Even though the diagnosis proved not to be accurate, and Antonia turned out to be a perfectly normal child, there still was a problem: the new family had a period of accommodation, with psychological blocks and fits of rage. This is often encountered in families that bring in a new child all of a sudden, and some time is needed for things to settle. From this point of view, the law omitted a very important aspect, according to Diana Pluhovici and the ADOR association. Diana Pluhovici: “Since we adopted an older child we got no parental leave for raising and caring for the child. This is a problem, and it persists. You can’t tell the child ‘Well, we’ll spend this weekend with you, but on Monday I’m going to work, you will go to kindergarten, your babysitter or grandma will pick you up and that’s it.’ You cannot that, because then it’s a failed adoption, and no one wants that.” The good news is that the law allows changes as long as they support and speed up the adoption procedures. Here is Bogdan Panait, undersecretary with the Romanian Adoption Office: Bogdan Panait: “We are open to amendments. The law in its present form is a living law, meaning it is undergoing changes, so that whatever we didn’t take into account from the very beginning can be regulated as things go along, so that in the next three years we have a law that is completely in line with the interests of the child and totally meets the needs of this nation”. The most important thing for the institutionalized child is to have a family, even if he or she lives in another country. The new law on adoptions, which came into force on April 7th, opens the door for international adoptions. Not for foreign citizens, but for Romanians living abroad. Here is Ramona Popa, cabinet manager for the Romanian Adoption Office: Ramona Popa: “We have expanded the range of persons who may adopt a child in Romania to Romanian citizens residing abroad. So far, the means by which a national or international adoption was defined was country of residence. Now the principle is where one’s usual residence is. We have widened the range of people who may adopt children to Romanians whose primary residence is abroad”. The new law, which is child oriented, brings about another interesting change: the family adopting the child must tell them the truth in order to avoid future trauma. Here is Diana Pluhovici once again: Diana Pluhovici: “I actually encourage families to tell, and the new law makes it compulsory to tell children the truth, and that is a good thing. It is true that you can’t tell a three year old, ‘you’re adopted’, but you can tell him or her your family’s history, at least that’s what I did. I told her when I met my husband, when I got married, and Antonia really wanted to hear it. A few days ago she herself told me that she’d adopt a child, too”. As she waits for Antonia to grow up, Diana Pluhovici and the ADOR association have one more wish: for Romania to declare June 2nd National Adoption Day. If that happens, we hope as many children as possible will celebrate this day within their own families, which is where they really belong.