India's orphans

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A friend sent me the article below about a possible relaxation of India's intercountry adoption process.

It's so painful to think that there are 11 million abandoned children in India, who "face a bleak future as beggars, prostitutes or menial labourers", and only 4,000 are adopted annually, while there are so many families waiting years to be allocated a child for whom they can provide a loving and secure home.



"India opens way to more British adoptions"
The Telegraph
By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:11am BST 09/04/2007

Barriers to adopting the thousands of children abandoned every year in India could soon be lifted for British families.

The Indian government intends to increase the number of children available to overseas families and place thousands more in homes in Europe and the United States.

Such adoption usually drags on for more than a year but New Delhi's proposals call for a maximum wait of 45 days. Ministers say the process must be accelerated so homes can be found for the babies before they become institutionalised.

Campaigners welcomed the news yesterday. "This is fantastic as far as it goes," said Stevan Whitehead of Oasis, a group which supports those wanting to adopt from abroad.

He said Britain was a good country for Indian children to thrive in because there was a "better infrastructure here than in many other countries to support that child, and his or her ethnicity. In Hounslow for example, where I live, there are more Indian festivals than Christian ones".

He said there had been stories of the Indian system being corrupt and incompetent.

Mr Whitehead said investment would be needed to make a "creaky" system effective, transparent and fair, and proper checks would need to be in place to make sure children were freely given up to overseas families.

Adoption abroad was not a long-term solution to India's problems, he added, but it would mean some children acquiring a family "and every child has a right to a family". Britain trails behind other countries in the number of children adopted from overseas. Last year the figure was around 350, against 8,400 by Spain and 5,000 by France.

Most of the children come to Britain from China, followed by Guatemala and Russia. At present, only 20 to 30 come from India, and they are usually adopted by relatives.

Yet there are more than 11 million abandoned children in India, where a growing number of babies are dumped in cots outside orphanages in an initiative to deter infanticide.

About 90 per cent of those abandoned are girls whose mothers cannot afford to keep them. They face a bleak future as beggars, prostitutes or menial labourers if not adopted. Last year only 4,000 such children in India were adopted, of which 1,000 were placed abroad.

Recently British couples have found that countries such as Romania and Vietnam have introduced curbs on adoption, led in part by fears that it was being used as a cover for child trafficking.

The British government warns prospective "inter-country adopters" that the process can take three years.

David Holmes, the chief executive of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, a charity that helps to find families for hundreds of children every year, said: "It's important to remember that even if India relaxes the rules these couples will still have to go through the same process that couples adopting within England go through."

But he added: "Foreign adoption in India might be a little girl's only chance and so we can see why getting a child into an adoptive family quickly is immensely important." J K Mittal, the chairman of India's central adoption resource agency, which oversees all the adoptions, admitted: "Our procedures are too cumbersome. It takes more than a year to adopt an Indian child from overseas. But it should be done within a couple of months."

To adopt an Indian child, couples must be financially secure and must have been together for more than five years. They must be between 30 and 55, with a combined age of less than 90. Single people are eligible but not same-sex couples.

"Parents should educate the child about its own background and culture because when they're older they will want to know about India," Mr Mittal said.

"But the basic requirement is love - they must be able to love and care for the child."

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Comments

[Katrena]

Madness
It seems incredible, given the huge need for loving families, that the processing at our end can take so long. I know there has to be protection from unscrupulous sorts but to take so long is not only at the expense of the adopters but also the children in need. I know firsthand how ridiculous public servants can get with their need for hoops and paper work but this is now so extreme - who would ever have thought you'd be waiting nearly 5 years!