Adoptive parents are not allowed to have a photo taken with the kid, this is ridiculous!

Ilonka Raychinova, Deputy-minister of Justice:

 

- Mrs. Raychinova, what children do foreign nationals most often adopt?

- In principle, they prefer healthy kids of up to 3 years of age, however the number of such children in the international adoption register is the smallest. It is children at the age from 3 to 7 years and with certain health conditions that will primarily succeed in finding new parents. The good piece of news is that there are already candidates for children with extremely severe diseases and of greater age – some 104 applications have been submitted in relation to such children.

Having read in the web site of the Ministry of Justice that they could adopt a 6-year-old boy with congenital anomalies of the excretory and sexual systems, who has had four surgeries so far, an US family applied for it. The couple received some additional information about the child, came and visited the boy, and his adoption is forthcoming. All of this has happened in the promptest manner possible, within some four months. Another American family is willing to adopt an 8-year-old girl, exceptionally beautiful, however she was born blind. Again an US couple wishes to adopt two little brothers showing mental delay.

The special procedure, determined by the Ministry of Justice in relation to these kids, is important because this is, I should better say the only, instead of the last chance for them.     

 - What makes the procedure more special, apart from the fact that the ministry posts information about such children on its web site?

- After the accredited organizations in our country read about a child with severe conditions, they request and we provide them with much more detailed medical information and the kid’s photo. They will send the said information and photo to some colleagues of theirs, in USA primarily, where there are plenty of applicants wishing to adopt even kids with serious health problems. Most often the adoptive parents will choose a far more seriously sick child in comparison to what their initial intention has been, only because they have started to like the child after having seen his/her photo. It is for this reason now that we are trying to reach an agreement with the Social Assistance Agency to grant permission to accredited organizations to take short videos because such materials are very informative about the child’s condition, and it is after seeing such video that a family may choose to adopt the child. We are trying to find our way between the agency and the directors of childcare homes, according to whom taking videos of the children is prohibited.

- Is there any guarantee that such videos will not be misused?               

- If the agency grants its principal consent to the children’s filming, the accredited organization will enter the childcare home and will take a video of a specific child, only subject to a letter by the council and against a declaration that it will use the video solely for the purposes of adoption. Thus directors of childcare homes will know that they have to permit the filming. Only special licensed facilitators and families, which have been approved to adopt, including from abroad, will be granted access to the video material. Such approvals are difficult to obtain and easy to be withdrawn.

It is one matter, if you know that the child has a problem with his/her hand, and quite a different matter if you may see how he/she moves the hand and whether he/she can use it. Suppose, a child has problems with his/her legs – but can he/she walk or stand up?! It is not the cool diagnose, but the frames that could strongly touch the emotions of the adoptive parents. Our children live in childcare homes and have serious health problems, therefore it is our task to draw the applicants’ attention in order to come to Bulgaria, to see them and choose to raise them as their own children.

There are some other absurdities as well. For example, a foreign family will come and stay with the child for some time, they like the child and wish to adopt him/her. They want to have a photo taken with the child in order to show him/her to their relatives and friends, until the adoption procedure is over and the family can take the child with them. They are refused to do so. They feel sad and ask why, and cannot understand why they are not allowed to have a photo with the child, who is going to live in their home in a few months only.             

- Have only Italians lost their interest in adopting Bulgarian children or there are refusals on the part of other countries as well?   

- Yes, there are, however the percentage is small. Some of them are unjustified – having waited for five years, a family has become panic-stricken whether it will succeed in coping with the two children requested by them. Usually, they refuse to adopt if it turns out that the child’s condition is much more serious than it has been specified in the medical documentation.

According to law, directors and general practice physicians at childcare homes should send us, on a quarterly basis, updated information about each kid’s health condition. However, this rule is not always observed, this is why we will request from the health insurance fund to take some measures.

The kids’ medical files are neither complete nor updated. It may specify that the child is very sick, with suspected Down syndrome or cerebral paralysis. Nobody wants such child, however there appears someone to assume the risk, and it turns out that there is nothing wrong with the kid, a safe, sound and clever kid. It is because the doubts date back to some 3 or 5 years ago. And vice versa – according to the documentation the child’s condition is good, however it turns out that the child is virtually so sick that he/she has not even the chance to survive.

There are kids about whom we have not been provided with an updated photo for years, nothing to mention about medical information. The child is already 8-year-old, however the photo shows him/her standing up in a crib.       

- Are there any other problems you have encountered?

- Yes, there are, and I hope that we will be able to overcome them by means of the new family Code. We envisage that the child could be adopted if within 6 months from its placement with the childcare home, he/she is not sought by his/her parents. Now one may wait for an indefinite period, and the kids are growing up and their chances to be adopted by Bulgarian of foreign nationals decrease.

Another omission in the law should also be adjusted, e.g., the mother withdraws her consent to the child’s adoption, we delete the child’s name in the registers and the child stays at the childcare home, however she does not appear there at all and does not take any care of her child. Why then is withdrawal of consent permitted, if the mother fails to undertake anything whatsoever?!   

 

Pictures:

In July, Angela will be 16 years old. “She is a very talented young lady, although she does not think so. She feels embarrassed with her appearance. But if one comes to know her better, he will find out that she is the most beautiful young woman he could ever meet. We are doing our best to encourage her, said Kenny and Debbie, Angela’s parents. They have adopted her some 11 years ago. On the picture Angela is with her brother Christopher.   

 

I have been almost 3-year-old when I have been adopted, and before that, they say, I have rarely smiled. My future parents sent me a Pooh teddy bear at the orphanage in the town of Targovishte. Then I became aware that somebody was interested in me. I am one of those few children who are blessed in many ways, wrote the 12-year-old Maxon Sevret of USA.

 

If I was not adopted, I would slowly die and I would not have the possibility to live in a ranch and do everything I love to do, wrote Ezra Macguffie, adopted by an US family some years ago.