Adoption is one chance for the children who do not have the luxury of a home to experience the love and care of parents. And for couples without children, it is a chance to brighten up their world.
However, with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a statutory body of Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, issuing new guidelines for adoption in 2017 and making the existing laws more stringent, agencies are finding it difficult to prepare a child for adoption. “The greatest hurdle is to ensure that a child is ‘legally free’, said Sr.Agnes Augustine, the Superintendent of St. Vincent’s Home, the only specialised adoption agency in Kozhikode district, registered under CARA, which is the nodal body for adoption of Indian children mandated to monitor and regulate all kinds of adoptions. “The process is easy for children who have been orphaned or surrendered. But if the child was found abandoned, we have to make sure that there are no relatives who would claim the child,” she said.
The procedure is to advertise in a national daily about the child. The agencies that have been getting away with advertising in local newspapers so far were put in a spot after the law was made stringent recently. “Also, we cannot afford to place such costly advertisements,” Sr.Agnes said. Once the advertisement is placed and nobody claims the child in one month, the child will be declared legally free so that a couple could adopt him/her. “The rules have been made stringent to avoid misuse and to ensure the safety of children,” said Sheeba Mumtaz, Kozhikode District Child Protection Officer.
Centralised system
“With the centralised system in place for adoption anywhere in the country, agencies can no longer select the prospective parents. They are selected on first come, first served basis as they register in ‘Carings’, the adoption portal under CARA,” Ms. Mumtaz said. The adoption process is further monitored under the child protection scheme, she said.
For prospective parents, the chances of getting a child is inversely proportional to the number of specifications. “Some people are ready to accept any child from anywhere in the country. Some others want only from a particular State. Recently, there has been a rising demand for girl children. Age is also a factor,” Ms. Mumtaz said.
With the number of couples signing up to be adoptive parents rising day by day and the system unable to provide as many children, every orphaned, abandoned or surrendered child in the country has a chance to experience family life, only if it was as easy as it sounds.
