Adoption: disabled children are shunned
Anasuya Menon Though pre-adoption counselling is given to couples, none of them is open to the idea WAIT IN VAIN? A visually impaired child at Families for Children in Coimbatore. - Photo: K. Ananthan COIMBATORE: One-year-old Sharika (name changed) is among the 30 children at the Families for Children, a home that receives abandoned babies, waiting to be adopted by a couple. But at least half of them in the home may not be as lucky as her. Congenital They are children with congenital, mental or physical deformities. They stay on in the home even as many others who are normal find new families. They may have been abandoned for various reasons; but 30 per cent of the male children received from child reception centres all over the State have some kind of disability, says V.S Gandhinathan, Senior Adoption Coordinator of Families for Children and a member of the Child Welfare Committee at Coimbatore. Seventy per cent of the abandoned babies are girls, he points out. Two children received at the home were also HIV positive. "We have almost 150 couples that are waiting to adopt children from here. But, all of them want only normal children," he laments. Different attitude The attitude of couples from other countries is different. They are willing to adopt children with physical deformities. The centre is an authorised adoption agency that has couples from the U.S., Canada and Finland visiting them. Out of the 106 children adopted from the home since 1987, almost all have physical disability, Mr.Gandhinathan says. Some couples from abroad even wanted to adopt children with mental disability; but it is not easy to obtain a visa for such children. Though the home gives pre-adoption counselling to the couples, none of them is open to the idea of taking in children with disabilities. "This is more common with the visually impaired. Those children are not even looked at," he says. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
