Carisa Lee

A man­age­ment mem­ber at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is urg­ing peo­ple to con­sid­er adop­tion as an op­tion.

Her ap­peal comes as the coun­try has seen two in­ci­dents re­cent­ly in which chil­dren suf­fered as a re­sult of the cir­cum­stances in which their par­ents found them­selves.

In the last week, lit­tle McKen­zie Hope Rechi­er was stran­gled to death while a days-old ba­by was aban­doned in a garbage bag at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

De­spite this, act­ing Adop­tion Man­ag­er at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, Re­nee Nep­tune, said as of yes­ter­day, there were no chil­dren wait­ing to be adopt­ed.

“Right now, we don’t have a big pool of chil­dren read­i­ly avail­able for adop­tion,” Nep­tune told Guardian Me­dia.

Since the Au­thor­i­ty’s in­cep­tion in 2015, 83 chil­dren have been adopt­ed and cur­rent­ly, there are 200 ap­pli­ca­tions pro­cess­ing. “For this year so far, in terms of adop­tions, we’ve had let’s say 15, 16 adop­tions grant­ed by the court thus far,” she said.

She said in the last sev­en years they have not had any failed place­ments and she en­cour­aged par­ents to con­sid­er adop­tion as an op­tion.

“We can as­sure them that the per­sons who­ev­er the child would have been placed with, those fam­i­lies would have gone through our process...they can rest as­sured that this child will be placed in a home that is safe, car­ing lov­ing a sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment,” Nep­tune said.

Nep­tune said this process may be emo­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing for a par­ent and may re­quire a lev­el of self­less­ness but not­ed that the au­thor­i­ty walks the par­ent through the process.

“We do pro­vide that sup­port for them, where­as if they need to get coun­selling be­fore they make that de­ci­sion...they have that time pe­ri­od where they can de­cide,” she said.

She said there are three ma­jor stake­hold­ers in­volved in the adop­tion process—the prospec­tive adop­tive par­ent, the adoptee and the birth par­ent. And there are two pri­ma­ry types of adop­tion—open and closed.

Open adop­tion is a form of adop­tion in which the bi­o­log­i­cal par­ents and the adop­tive par­ents know each oth­er, or the child knows the adop­tive par­ent and in­volves the adop­tion of an iden­ti­fied child.

A closed adop­tion is a form of adop­tion where the bi­o­log­i­cal and the adop­tive fam­i­ly do not know each oth­er and nei­ther has any iden­ti­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion about the oth­er, so there is no con­tact. In a closed adop­tion, the child is matched with a prospec­tive adopter based on their re­quest­ed child pro­file.

“Some­times, it’s a mix­ture of both open and closed adop­tions, where we get ap­pli­ca­tions not just for per­sons to have a child placed with them but there al­so have fam­i­lies, let’s say a neigh­bour who has been car­ing for the child from birth,” she said.

There may al­so be oth­er op­tions such as fam­i­ly sup­port or tem­po­rary fos­ter care.

Nep­tune said if a par­ent feels like they can­not take care of their chil­dren any­more, they can email the au­thor­i­ty at adop­tion@ttchil­dren.org or call 627-0748 ext. 40023-40025. If this is not pos­si­ble, they can vis­it the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty and re­quest to speak with a med­ical so­cial work­er, doc­tor, or nurse.

She said ac­tion will be tak­en based on the ur­gency of the case.

“It will be re­ferred to our emer­gency re­sponse team and our reg­istry unit who will act on this mat­ter...so chil­dren can be placed in tem­po­rary fos­ter care or in a com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dence,” she said.

She con­firmed that the adop­tion process is lengthy but said this was to en­sure that chil­dren are placed in fit homes. Nep­tune said there is no time­frame for the process, as each ap­pli­ca­tion is dif­fer­ent.

How­ev­er, she as­sert­ed that they want to en­cour­age peo­ple to adopt and al­so to con­sid­er adop­tion for their chil­dren.

“It’s a very thor­ough process, so we con­duct sev­er­al in­ter­views, they have to un­der­go psy­cho­log­i­cal screen­ing as­sess­ments, se­cu­ri­ty back­ground checks, they have to bring in doc­u­ments for us ... let’s say med­icals, fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments,” she ex­plained.

For ap­pli­cants keen to adopt a child, Nep­tune asked that thee bear with the au­thor­i­ty be­cause they want to en­sure the place­ment is not on­ly good for the child but for the ap­pli­cant (prospec­tive adop­tive par­ents) as well. Sep­tem­ber is al­so des­ig­nat­ed as Adop­tion and Fos­ter Care Aware­ness Month and Nep­tune said the au­thor­i­ty will host sev­er­al aware­ness cam­paigns so the pub­lic can learn more on adop­tion as an op­tion.