The Hindu : National : Call to put in place central adoption registry

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Friday, Dec 14, 2007
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National

Call to put in place central adoption registry

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: A central adoption registry to keep track of in-country and inter-country adoptions should be maintained, Andal Damodaran, vice-president, ICCW, and former chairperson, Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), said on Thursday.

She urged adoption agencies which decided to pull out of the sector to ensure that their records and documents were transferred elsewhere. The information must be digitised and stored for future reference. She also suggested that a centralised storage space be created to keep these records, which might come in handy when children came back to trace their biological parents.

Speaking at the two-day State-level orientation programme on adoption, sponsored by the CARA and facilitated by the Adoption Co-ordinating Agency, Tamil Nadu, and the Directorate of Social Welfare, Ms. Damodaran spoke of the evolving rights’ perspective to adoption. All parties involved, including the State co-ordinating agency, the child welfare committee, the ACA, courts and the government must be aware that the rights of children, birth parents and adoptive parents must be protected.

Financial help

Since it was essential to keep the child within his birth family as far as possible, birth parents could be given financial help to bring up the child. An agency in Bangalore had set up short-stay homes for mothers, where they could have time to decide if they wanted to keep the child. The birth and adoptive parents must be told about the implications of adoption.

Ms. Damodaran urged placement agencies to maintain records of the child they were placing in adoption and document the instances in which the children were prevented from being abandoned. The medical and psychological assessment of the children should be true and communicated to the parents. It also helped to have the mother’s medical history record. Similarly, home studies, done in the adoptive parents’ homes before the adoption came through, should be truthful, and the reports should be drawn up after a number of visits. They should also carry the perspectives of the joint family or extended family the child was likely to go into.

Clear rules

Adoption agencies must be given clear operation rules by the government, and their licences and registration must be scrutinised from time to time through a transparent process.

R. Saroja, deputy director, Social Welfare Directorate, said there were still a number of doubts about adoption and hoped that the conference could clear some of them.

Rangashree Srinivas, honorary secretary, ACA, explained the aims of the conference.

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