Here is good news for people wanting to adopt a child with the entire process being put on an online platform to make it expeditious, smooth and transparent. It will also help in increasing accountability on the part of the adoption agencies and creating a national database of the children available for adoption and the number of parents wanting to take children as their own legally.
As per the latest statistics, adoptions showed an uptrend at 6, 286 in 2010, compared to 2,518 in 2009.
Launching the web-based Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System (CARINGS) for the autonomous Central Adoption Resource Authority of India (CARA) here on Monday, Minister of State for Women and Child Development Krishna Tirath said adoption guidelines were being amended and would be notified soon, to streamline the process further and make it more transparent. The fee was proposed to be raised from Rs.25,000 to Rs.45,000 for in-country adoptions and from $3,500 to $5,000 for adoption by foreign parents.
“Online tracking and monitoring will not only help prospective parents register online but also create linkages between the availability of adoptable children and the number of people waiting to adopt.” As of now, there was a huge gap between the number of children available for adoption at the agency and the long queue of those wanting to adopt. “And by the time the prospective parents reached the children, a majority of the children were found to be too old for adoption,” Ms. Tirath said.
Developed by the National Informatics Centre, the CARINGS will provide all information on adoption — including eligibility, the documents required and the laws guiding adoption. The process is time-bound and the prospective parent/parents can log in for registration and enquire about the progress of his/their request. Post-adoption monitoring reports will also be fed into the system for the first two years but much of the information will not be made public for ethical reasons.
Of the 326 adoption agencies in India, only 72 are registered with CARA. Now 154 agencies have applied for registration, and the others will also be taken on board shortly. Once the entire process was fully functional, with the States also creating their own online information management system, the number of complaints and delays would come down substantially, Ms. Tirath said. The Integrated Child Protection Scheme , meant for rehabilitation of children in distress and hostile environment, will also be integrated with CARINGS to ensure that they get a caring home and safe future.
