Foreigners who adopt must pay $500 to kids fund

Foreigners who adopt must pay $500 to kids fund

Swati Deshpande

Mumbai: Foreigners who wish to adopt a healthy child from India might have to contribute $500 towards a national adoption and rehabilitation fund to ensure that such children, if repatriated later, have a fund to fall back on. This was the radical suggestion accepted by the Central Adopton and Resource Authority (CARA) on the basis of discussion emanating before the Bombay high court in a foreign adoption matter. On Friday, the HC was informed that draft guidelines for adoption from India could also include prior psychological evaluation of children.

A little girl adopted by a US citizen was sent back to India in 2008 after developing behavioural problems. The adoption agency, Family Services Centre, that processed her adoption took over and the child now 15 is under institutional care at NIMHANS in Bangalore for behavioural disorder. Justice D Y Chandrachud before whom the matter came up, looked at the larger picture this case evoked — of children adopted by foreigners being sent back or abandoned.

“Do they become no one’s children?” That was the question that disturbed the judge.

Justice Chandrachud had called for a doctor’s report in the girl’s case and it clearly said that she still needed constant monitoring. A request to shift the child to Gurgaon to an NGO premise was being considered on Friday but the judge said he would first await the doctor’s green signal in the child’s interest.

The court had set up a committee and sought the assistance of additional solicitor general Darius Khambata and Asha Bajpai from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to frame guidelines for such eventualities.

After much brainstorming aided by suggestions from the judge, CARA accepted certain draft amendments to the adoption guidelines including the setting up of a National Adoption and Rehabilitation Fund for disruptive or repatriated adoption cases in inter-country adoption. T he amount will not be payable for adoption of children with special needs. The $500 amount suggested is only “the cost of a day at an amusement park in the US” said the judge when some members from the Federation of Adoption Agencies objected saying it might dissuade foreigners from adopting Indian children. Jamshed Mistry, a lawyer for Sakhee, an NGO, at the hearing in the judge’s chamber, said the amount was justified and in fact essential to tackle the problem of malpractice and abandoned adopted children.

The judge also said the amount was nothing when compared to thousands of dollars spent for coming to India to adopt and added that adoption agencies were not just doing charity work. The adoption fee for foreigners works out to $3500, an agency said later.

Bajpai noted that huge funds from the National Children’s Fund remain untouched in India.

The court also directed CARA to furnish statistics for the last three years on the number of inter-country adoptions of children with special needs.