Child Protection India Project #7716

Move Abandoned Children into Adoption in India

by Catalysts for Social Action

Move Abandoned Children into Adoption in India

Project Report | Dec 5, 2012
Adoptive parents gettogether-more to adoption

By Lucy Mathews | Program Officer, CSA

How to talk about adoption with adoptive child?

Finding a home/family, though a very important milestone in the rehabilitation of an abandoned child, is nevertheless, only the beginning of a process- one that calls for care and guidance in bringing up the child. Invariably confronted with the question of ‘identity of the child’, how the fact of adoption is to be shared, handling adolescence, and most importantly, the search for roots, aparents seek opportunities to share experiences, exchange views and receive expert guidance from professionals.

Catalysts for Social Action being the channel for a family for every child, we realize that only the child reaching to the family is not enough; post-adoption issues need to be addressed particularly since many Indian Aparents are still inclined to be secretive about the fact of adoption.

Adoption Awareness Week is celebrated internationally during the week 14^th Nov. to 21^st Nov. Using the opportunity, we organized an AParents’ Get-together in Bangalore. For us, Bangalore is a unique choice of location since 52 children from rural Odisha and Maharashtra, have found homes in Bangalore. Also, Vathsalya Charitable Trust-one of the best Adoption agencies and our “Friend-in-need” agreed to join hands with us in this initiative. Mary Paul from Vathsalya Charitable Trust and Brajesh Mishra, CSA Managing Committee member and an adoptive aparent himself, moderated the day’s discussions.

The highlight of the day was the presence of the adopted children who had also, been invited. Those happy faces reflected the transition from orphanage life to family life. For us, that was the key motivator! And of course, the parents were delighted!

Learning disability to be aware about children!!!

Happy to see these blossuming flowers........

Which one is adopted child? Kids are same!!!

Links:

CSA Annual Report 11-12

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Sep 6, 2012
From Banglore to Maharashtra.............

By Rituparna Maji and Rajat Mathur. | Adoptive Parent- adopted through CSA

CSA helped to complete the family..........

Rajat spoke about his desire to adopt ever since we were dating. His reasoning was simple - "If educated, financially stable people like us from the society do not adopt, who else will?" Though it took a while for me to understand the depth in his thoughts, I eventually did. And with that, our hearts and mind stood united on our decision to adopt.

As a first step, we spoke to parents who adopted among our family and friends. The biggest hurdle (read most time consuming part) in the adoption process, we were told, was the wait for a healthy child, especially in the most sought after < 1 year infant category (which was our preference). It so turned out that in big cities, the queue of parents wanting to adopt was long (waiting list ran in hundreds!) whereas orphanages in these cities had few to no children to offer for adoption, probably due to increased awareness levels about aborting unwanted children. So the demand supply ratio was quite skewed indeed! We were given to understand that we would need to wait anywhere between 2 to 5 years - an information we gathered by making calls/visiting orphanages in the cities of Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, and Kolkata where our family and friends were located.

Aggressive net surfing made us stumble across 'Catalysts for Social Action'. Through the CSA website, we were amazed to know that there are lots of children waiting to be adopted - all that adoptive parents need to do is be open to the idea of adopting from orphanages in smaller towns and rural areas, that's about it! With renewed hope in our hearts, we made a call to Ms. Lucy Mathews, the Program Coordinator in CSA. Within a day, Lucy promptly gave us the lead to Vihaan, a 7 month baby boy who met our preferences. And within a week of our call to Lucy, we met Vihaan for the first time! It sounds unbelievable but it is true - it took less than 4 months to bring Vihaan home from the time we initiated our paperwork to adopt! And this was only possible because of CSA bridging the vital gap between us in Bangalore (Karnataka) and Vihaan in Nanded (Maharashtra) over a simple STD call!

Vihaan has been with us for 5 months now. He is an extremely active, cheerful and friendly child with absolutely no stranger anxiety whatsoever. We are learning a lot of things from him these days, like living in the moment, making do with whatever is available, the joy one spreads by staying cheerful all the time and so much more. We are truly blessed to have Vihaan in our lives.

Team CSA, yours is the hand of God! Thank you is too small a word to be used in this context. I sincerely hope and pray you continue the amazing work and bring joy to many many more families.

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Jun 6, 2012
"A family for every child"

By Rammohan Thyagrajan | Adoptive Parent

Rammohan with his wife and daughter

Yes we feel that adoption is the most complete form of rehabilitation as all the needs of the child are taken care in the way it should be. We get immense pleasure when our efforts unite children with their parents and they make a family. Here is what one of the adoptive parents Mr. Rammohan Thyagrajan has to say………

"It was with a sense of cautious optimism, that I sent a mail to CSA in January 2012. Over the previous week, I had actually cold-called close to 100+ agencies throughout India requesting to be enrolled and I had faced a closed door every single time. Every agency was interpreting CARA guidelines in their own ways (some support inter-state adoption and some didn't). Overall I was reaching a sign of desperation when I came across CSA through a facebook group. I immediately cold-called and received a pretty warm response. I was asked to send out an email to CSA following which things started moving quickly. A couple of days later, I got a call from CSA's Orissa Project officer, Pritikanta who told us about a 6 month old girl who has been declared legally adoptable. We were overjoyed & gladly expressed our interest and were immediately put in touch with Nehru Sevak Sangh at Bhawanipatna. Within a month from then, we had taken our angel Anwesha into foster care and exactly a month later, we got summons from the court in Bhawanipatna to complete our legal processes. Last week, we received our birth certificate and our registered adoption deed. The agency followed the CARA guidelines to a T and we were completed amazed by their honest/earnestness. In addition, the journey for us, (thorough city breds) into the interiors of Orissa was fascinating, to say the least. We also became aware of the terrific job that Nehru Sevak Sangh has been doing in this area, not to mention their association with CSA. Overall the experience was incredible and our lives have been enriched with the arrival of our little angel. We look forward to talking to CSA again in the next couple of years as we get ready to adopt our second child. I have already referred CSA to dozens of people. It is not a exaggeration when I say that CSA offers a lone hope amidst the gloom that hangs over the adoption scene in India."

Links:

CSA news letter

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