Abandoned children, more easily adopted

Saturday becomes effective the changes within the adoption law, voted by the Parliament at the end of last year, through which it is shorted the period in which an abandoned child can be declared adoptable and can enter a family.

Authorities and potentials parents altogether consider that the new legal framework offers an important help, the main purpose is to reduce the number of 67,000 children who are presently in the protection system, as well as of those who reach the majority age without having the chance to be adopted.

The Romanian Office for Adoption promises also a specialized stuff who offers legal and psychological counseling, as Bogdan Panait, the head of the institution and the initiator of the new law, explains.

“We requested from the beginning that the structures that functions at social assistance directions level to have a standard composition: two social assistants, two psychologists and a jurist.”

“Maybe we have overcome a little the usual custom of promoting a law, but we assumed, by government decision, the compulsoriness to prepare the stuff from these structures and, presently, we are in the second year, the final year, year in which we will accredit these structures and will professionally attest the three professional categories which work within this system”, has declared Bogdan Panait.

In the new formula, the law establishes definite periods for a child to enter the adoption procedure: 60 days from the birth registration –if the birth parents agree with, 30 days if the child’s parents are unknown and no more than a year if their parents are not interested on their children anymore.

The court could override the parents’ consent

Moreover, the court could override the parents’ consent, if these does not present repeatedly at the hearings on the proceedings.

And for those who want to adopt a child, whom they declare to have a degree of kinship, will be imposed the genetically testing, with the purpose of removing any eventual abuses.

There are, also, included, specific provisions for Romanians established abroad and who have kept Romanian citizenship.

The state secretary, Bogdan Panait, sustains that these could adopt children from Romania.

“A lot of Romanians who are established abroad asks us data about this thing, many Romanians who are married with foreign citizens ask us data about this law”.

“It is an interest that we did not anticipate as being so important and surely that the following period will be a very difficult period, because we will have to demonstrate that the law is reliable”.

“The law says very clearly that a child who have been through the national adoption steps, barely that child can be internationally adopted, so the children will have 3 years and more”, has declared Bogdan Panait.

The non-governmental organizations which support adoptions and offer counseling were consulted in order to elaborate the law, also states the adoptions official.

In fact, the “I love children” association from Timişoara, very active in this domain, has saluted the adoption law.

Its representatives say that the interest of those who want to adopt a child has increased lately, in the perspective of the new law applying.

In Romania, the Non-Governmental Organizations (ONG) calculations show that every day are abandoned, even since birth, 3-4 children and the adoptions annually ended are between 1,200 and 1,700, which is almost 10 percent of the potential foster parents’ intentions.

Translated by Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University