Adoption monitoring agency `should be given more powers’
Special Correspondent
| It should be allowed to investigate surrender documents: ICCW |
CHENNAI: The recent expose on the involvement of Malaysian Social Service in an inter-country adoption racket has again highlighted the need to examine the role of the scrutinising agency (S.A.).
Representatives of the Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW), one of the two scrutinising agencies in the country, admitted that lack of adequate powers put limitations on its functioning.
Entrusted with scrutinising documents (surrender document, Voluntary Co-ordination Agency certification, Central Adoption Resource Agency NOC) and seeing whether the placement will be in the best interests of the child, the S.A. is literally the last mile verification agent, before a child is cleared for adoption.
There are handicaps in this process that bind the hands of the S.A., according to them.
For instance, the S.A. is forbidden from contacting the biological parents to investigate the surrender document, a clause incorporated in the Central Adoption Resource Agency guidelines to protect the privacy of single/unwed mothers.
However, this loophole is exploited by the agencies, as was revealed in the recent case.
Malaysian Social Service fudged a number of surrender documents that went undetected during scrutiny.
“The scrutinising agency should be allowed to investigate the surrender document to establish its authenticity,” Chandra Thanikachalam of the ICCW told presspersons here on Friday.
Whenever suspicious facts were detected in the surrender document, the S.A. filed a complaint. In the case of the Malaysian Social Service, a discrepancy in the facts of the surrender document prompted the ICCW to file a complaint in 2000. However, police verification cleared the same child for adoption.
Usually, the documentation was done professionally, leaving no room for suspicion, Ms.Thanikachalam said. In this case, verification would be possible only if the S.A. was allowed to interact with the birth mother or parents. Yet another way of making the surrender document tamper-proof was to find at least one witness from an external agency, the Child Welfare Committee, for instance.
Ms. Thanikachalam, an advocate of several years of experience in child law, also recommended that the mandatory waiting period for the adoption agency to find Indian parents be extended from four to at least eight weeks.
While the total number of inter-country adoptions has come down over the years, several agencies were still operating with a business motive.
The ICCW was “uncomfortable” with and “apprehensive” of the functioning of several other adoption agencies and forwarded complaints to the licensing agency, CARA, Ms.Thanikachalam said.
Repeat offenders such as Malaysian Social Service must not be re-licensed for either in-country or inter-country adoptions.