Blog
“Adoption is not about finding children for families; it’s about finding families for children.”
Joyce Maguire Pavao, founder of the Adoption Resource Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also the CEO of the Center for Family Connections in Cambridge and New York.
For most children who are orphaned, abandoned, or surrendered, finding an adoptive family provides the sense of belonging everyone yearns for in life. However, this is not easily achieved for all and remains a distant dream for many.
The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) apprised the Supreme Court in 2023 that nearly 70% of prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) opt for adopting children in the age group of zero to two years, and notably, very few PAPs go for children above six years of age. As per the central body’s statistics submitted to the apex court, “69.4% of registered PAPs select children in the age group of zero to two years; 10.3% in the age group of two to four years; and 14.8% in the age group of four to six years.”
However, as of September 2022, of a total of 1,802 children who were legally free for adoption, only 2% of children from the ages of zero to two were healthy. These numbers were made available by the not-for-profit organisation Families of Joy (FoJ), which brings together all stakeholders for adoption. This was concluded by FoJ after an analysis of data on the Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System, which is developed by CARA in conjunction with the National Informatics Centre.
The most glaring takeaway from CARA’s data is that rarely do married couples and those who are single choose to adopt an older child. One such child is 14-year-old Ankush.
One day, he was engrossed in a science fiction novel when his reading was interrupted by Jui Didi, who frequents a Child Care Institution (CCI) in Ahmednagar. Didi works with Catalysts for Social Action (CSA) and regularly goes to the District Probation and Aftercare Association Children Home, where Ankush lives with many other boys. She had gone there to tell him that a family wanted to adopt him.
The parents got matched with the child’s profile on the CARA website and had reached out to the CCI to meet Ankush. This news made the teenager emotional. He was an orphan and was elated to know that a family wanted him. He was curious to know more about the family and when he could start living with them.
So Didi, who has been working with this CCI since December 2019 and has facilitated many adoptions, explained that once the children were identified through CARA, the parents were called to meet the children. An adoption committee, which consists of the District Child Protection Officer, medical examiner, lawyers, CCI representatives, and the adoption agency representative, meets. They verify the paperwork of the family and have a discussion with the parents to check their intent on the adoption. Once the committee approves the file, the parents are allowed to meet the child.
Like Ankush, nine-year-old Roshan and Mansi, 15, from the girls’ home were also adopted in quick succession. CSA’s role in this process is to prepare the children for adoption because, for them, CCI is their home. They have lived there for most of their young lives and look up to the caretakers from CCI and CSA as their parents and family.
Didi counsels these children so they can accept their new family and not resist change. Didi also gets written consent from Ankush, Mansi, and Roshan that they are willingly being adopted.
Hari Bhaiya does the same work with CSA in Madhya Pradesh. Jamas Bal Grih, a CCI in Chhindwara, helped Pran and Neetu Bhahchandani adopt Ganesh last year in June. Ganesh was 12 years old then and was very anxious about leaving the only place he knew to be his home and moving to an unknown place far away, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. But Bhaiya made sure that he counseled the child at every step so that Ganesh could understand how the love, affection, and care of his new family would completely change his life for the better.
The Bhahchandanis are very happy that Ganesh entered their lives. They say he completes their family. “We adopted Ganesh because my daughter wanted an older brother. She was praying that we would adopt a boy, and they are both inseparable today. They go to school and tuition together, and they play together. Do all the chores together. We had no hesitations about adopting an older child. Even our friends and family members were very supportive of our decision,” said Neetu.
