Do not aban­don your ba­bies or chil­dren at hos­pi­tals, in the streets or in any oth­er area which may lead to their harm. The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ap­peal­ing to par­ents to come to them to work out the best al­ter­na­tive care for those chil­dren in­stead.

The Au­thor­i­ty is con­tin­u­ing its month-long spe­cial pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign on Fos­ter Care and Adop­tion. Through tra­di­tion­al me­dia and sev­er­al vir­tu­al ses­sions to NGOs and faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er groups, the Au­thor­i­ty hopes to en­cour­age mem­bers of the pub­lic to join its pool of 52 fos­ter care providers in Trinidad and four in To­ba­go.

Peo­ple con­sid­er­ing giv­ing up their chil­dren, those seek­ing to adopt or any­one find­ing an aban­doned child are urged to con­tact the Au­thor­i­ty, the spe­cialised agency in this coun­try re­spon­si­ble for the care and pro­tec­tion of chil­dren, and the sole agency charged with mak­ing arrange­ments for adop­tions. The Au­thor­i­ty is al­so ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to help de­fend and sup­port chil­dren's rights.

In T&T, the charge of child aban­don­ment car­ries a penal­ty of up to five years in prison. That penal­ty in­creas­es if any harm comes to the child af­ter he or she is left alone by a par­ent or guardian.

There are no le­gal reper­cus­sions for women seek­ing to give up their chil­dren for adop­tion as long as they come to the Au­thor­i­ty, Act­ing Adop­tion Man­ag­er at the Au­thor­i­ty Re­nee Nep­tune in­formed Sun­day Guardian.

She said the Au­thor­i­ty does not ask peo­ple to prove their eco­nom­ic, emo­tion­al, men­tal cir­cum­stances. She ex­plained that mat­ters were dealt with on a case-by-case ba­sis and en­cour­aged peo­ple to call or vis­it the Au­thor­i­ty lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Dere Street and Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain, to dis­cuss their sit­u­a­tion and op­tions, no mat­ter how des­per­ate.

If no oth­er suit­able rel­a­tive is found, the Au­thor­i­ty may place a child in need of care in a chil­dren's home, or with fos­ter care providers with the hope of rein­te­grat­ing the child back with his or her par­ents if and when deemed suit­able by the Fam­i­ly Court.

In Part One of this sto­ry last week, the Au­thor­i­ty on Fos­ter Care and Adop­tion, Fos­ter Care Team Lead at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, An­juli Tewari-de Fague en­cour­aged mem­bers of the pub­lic to come for­ward to be­come fos­ter care providers as chil­dren ages six to 17 and those with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, de­vel­op­men­tal needs, ed­u­ca­tion­al needs and be­hav­iour­al chal­lenges were des­per­ate­ly in need of place­ments.

The oth­er al­ter­na­tive of the Au­thor­i­ty in plac­ing a child would be adop­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Nep­tune, fos­ter care and adop­tion are not the same and peo­ple should not see be­com­ing fos­ter care providers as a route to adopt­ing a child.

While fos­ter care is a tem­po­rary liv­ing arrange­ment for chil­dren who have been re­moved from the care of their par­ents for var­i­ous rea­sons, adop­tion is a per­ma­nent and le­gal arrange­ment. It is the le­gal trans­fer of all parental rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for a child from that child’s le­gal par­ents (birth par­ents or adop­tive par­ents) to an­oth­er per­son or peo­ple.

The “adopter” is the le­gal term used by the court to de­scribe the per­son who adopts, while “prospec­tive adop­tive par­ents” and “adop­tive par­ent” are terms used by the Au­thor­i­ty for peo­ple seek­ing to adopt and when they are fi­nal­ly suc­cess­ful.

The process

Un­der the Au­thor­i­ty, adop­tion and fos­ter care are two sep­a­rate process­es. One may ap­ply to be­come an adop­tive par­ent re­gard­less of mar­i­tal sta­tus or gen­der. Sim­ply con­tact the Au­thor­i­ty, as­sess the in­for­ma­tion of­fered and sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion form. A thor­ough psy­cho-so­cial process is car­ried out to de­ter­mine suit­abil­i­ty to be­come a par­ent. Ap­pli­cants are as­sessed on their abil­i­ty to ad­e­quate­ly care for a child's phys­i­cal, ed­u­ca­tion­al and so­cial needs.

This takes the form of back­ground checks, psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ments, clin­i­cal in­ter­views and the sub­mis­sion of var­i­ous doc­u­ments. An adop­tion com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of sev­en mem­bers from the Board of Man­age­ment of the Au­thor­i­ty, rang­ing from lawyers and doc­tors to psy­chol­o­gists and so­cial work­ers, makes rec­om­men­da­tions to the court. The court then grants an adop­tion or­der.

Nep­tune said once the court grants the adop­tion that child be­comes a full mem­ber of the adop­tive fam­i­ly.

“A new birth cer­tifi­cate–we call it a Cer­tifi­cate of Adop­tion–is giv­en to that child, their birth cer­tifi­cate is sealed by the courts and the child as­sumes the same rights and priv­i­leges as a birth child. They would be en­ti­tled to an in­her­i­tance from the par­ents,” she said.

It would, there­fore, be more ben­e­fi­cial for the birth par­ents to give up their parental rights to al­low their child the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ceive love, pro­tec­tion and care. They will al­so en­joy fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits prospec­tive adop­tive par­ents may be will­ing to of­fer.

She said in some cas­es where par­ents re­fused to give up their parental rights in the best in­ter­est of the child, ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 24 (2) of the Adop­tion of Chil­dren Act 2000, the court could re­voke such rights.

Giving up a child for adoption is always better than abandoning him.

'Do not feel ashamed or in­tim­i­dat­ed'

Nep­tune said de­spite the stig­ma of­ten at­tached to adop­tion in this coun­try, birth par­ents should not feel ashamed of re­lin­quish­ing their parental rights.

“There are the birth par­ents who may not want to give con­sent (al­though their child would have been in the sys­tem for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time). We want to re­as­sure them that this would be a very self­less act as they would be pro­vid­ing their child with a sec­ond chance at life; a sense of be­long­ing and a sense of per­ma­nence in a fam­i­ly,” she urged.

She said this ex­tend­ed to par­ents who had left their child/chil­dren for pro­longed pe­ri­ods in in­for­mal arrange­ments with fam­i­ly or neigh­bours.

Nor should prospec­tive adop­tive par­ents feel in­tim­i­dat­ed to adopt, Nep­tune added.

“There are per­sons who are seek­ing to adopt and in Trinidad and To­ba­go who may not want oth­ers to know they are adopt­ing, you are giv­ing a child a lov­ing home, feel free to come to us. There is no judge­ment from us,” she said.

She said at present there were more peo­ple will­ing to adopt than there were chil­dren who were avail­able to be adopt­ed. She en­cour­aged those in­ter­est­ed in adopt­ing to ex­pand their op­tions to in­clude old­er chil­dren, rather than sole­ly ba­bies.

Reach out to the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty

The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty can be reached at 627-0748; web­site: www.ttchil­dren.org

Fos­ter Care: ext.40988; Adop­tion: ext. 40023 to 40025; Face­book: Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad &To­ba­go; In­sta­gram: Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty of T&T.

Peo­ple des­per­ate­ly in need of al­ter­na­tive care for their chil­dren or those wish­ing to adopt can al­so con­tact the Au­thor­i­ty on Hot­line: 996 or 800-2014, or email adop­tion@ttchil­dren.org