By Lucy Mathews | Sr. Program Officer
Background
With 25million orphans, the adoption rate in India is 0.2% - one of the lowest rates in the world.
Nearly half of the districts in the country do not have a single adoption agency.
Orphanages and Adoption Agencies are two silos - very few orphanages are given an adoption license
The number of adoptions has declined over the years – from a high of 6953 in 2012, the number has steadily dropped to less than 4500 in 2015. This decline is not due to lack of parents willing to adopt but due to the shortage of children available for adoption. This White Paper therefore responds to one key question - where are the children that are eligible for adoption and what can be done to bring them into the adoption stream.
CSA is focused to work in and around below action points.
Training and capacity building of rural adoption agencies
Move eligible children from orphanages to adoption
Enlist adoption agencies in every district
Sensitization of all stakeholders
Training and revamping of CWC functioning
In the process of our work with CCIs, we came face to face with another shocking reality. Working with an orphanage in Odisha, we found first, that the orphanage was not registered-neither as an NGO nor under the State. Second, that there were a handful of children who were orphans below the age of 6 years and were without any parental contact and should have been in adoption stream.
Based on the experience with adoptable children in orphanages, we conducted a need based study of orphanages and get a status of parental contact or lack thereof. Focusing on the states of Odisha, Goa and MP, we selected a sample of 63 CCIs across 5 districts in 3 states supporting a child-population of 2341 children; 54% of the children are boys and 46% girls. 3% are under the age of 6 years and 23% between the age of 6 and 10 years. Thus close to 30% are under the age of 10 years.
In this population we tried to identify children who had no parental contact for prolonged periods. A qualified Social Worker did a detailed study through interviews with the Institute authorities, checking their records and, with each individual child. It also included a preliminary search for the parent/relative or any other contact at the address as per the official records. The results of the study are summarized below:
To summarize the study, 22% of the children are with no parental contact or irregular parental contact. Of these, 35 children, 1.5% of the total orphanage population are below the age of 6 and another 114, i.e. 4.8% are in the age group of 6-10 years. This means that 6.3% of children could potentially be in the adoption stream! Of these about half (3.2%) have no parental contact and the remaining half would need a careful investigation and decisions made in the “Best interest of the Child. We are convinced that between 2% and 3% of the children in orphanages at a minimum should be and can be put in the adoption stream.
Our effort to bring the children eligible for adoption in Adoption Mainstream is triggered based on this study and with your help and cooperation we are going to rehabilitate the Children with no parental contact by opening doors of the most complete form of rehabilitation i.e Adoption.
By Lucy Mathews | Sr. Program Officer
By Lucy Mathews | Program Officer
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