The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty (CA) has is­sued a call for par­ents and rel­a­tives of chil­dren cur­rent­ly liv­ing in chil­dren’s homes across the coun­try to come for­ward.

This as the Au­thor­i­ty seeks to iden­ti­fy which chil­dren can be el­i­gi­ble for adop­tion.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the El Tu­cuche Room at the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, CA chair­man Hanif Ben­jamin said ad­ver­tise­ments ask­ing par­ents/rel­a­tives to come for­ward have al­ready been placed in lo­cal news­pa­pers.

“There is a mis­con­cep­tion that chil­dren re­sid­ing at chil­dren’s homes are or­phans and can be eas­i­ly adopt­ed, in many cas­es chil­dren at homes have par­ents and/or fam­i­ly mem­bers,” Ben­jamin said.

He said the au­thor­i­ty’s pri­or­i­ty has al­ways been for the re­uni­fi­ca­tion of chil­dren and their par­ents so many chil­dren may not be el­i­gi­ble for adop­tion at all.

But giv­en the num­ber of chil­dren liv­ing in homes and a large num­ber of peo­ple wait­ing to adopt chil­dren, Ben­jamin said the au­thor­i­ty start­ed a so­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion to iden­ti­fy those chil­dren who can be adopt­ed by try­ing to reach their par­ents and rel­a­tives.

“There­fore I am ap­peal­ing to those per­sons who see their name in the news­pa­pers or who we have con­tact­ed, who may know of peo­ple we are seek­ing, please chat with us so we may de­ter­mine the next step for you and your child. As part of the adop­tion- if no rel­a­tives can be lo­cat­ed or no one is will­ing to care for a child, the au­thor­i­ty will seek to have the child freed for adop­tion by the court, in some in­stances where par­ents are lo­cat­ed and they in­di­cat­ed an un­will­ing­ness to care for the child, the au­thor­i­ty will seek to have the par­ent legal­ly give up their right for the child.”

Ben­jamin said while the au­thor­i­ty was en­cour­aged by the num­ber of peo­ple try­ing to adopt chil­dren, po­ten­tial par­ents must re­mem­ber there is a le­gal process that must be sat­is­fied be­fore an adop­tion takes place.

If par­ents come for­ward and ex­press no de­sire to care for their child but refuse to give up their parental rights, CA Adop­tion Man­ag­er, Meli­na Humprey said the au­thor­i­ty can pe­ti­tion the court to have those rights re­moved.

CA Adop­tion Man­ag­er, Meli­na Humprey said the au­thor­i­ty would wait for par­ents or rel­a­tives to come for­ward but she added once the ads have been pub­lished for two weeks in dai­ly news­pa­pers and no one re­sponds, the child’s case will be sent to a com­mit­tee who will de­ter­mine whether the court should be ap­proached to have parental rights re­voked.

How­ev­er, she said the pub­lished ads are not the on­ly means by which the au­thor­i­ty tries to reach par­ents. She said let­ters are sent to last known ad­dress­es, calls are made to what­ev­er num­bers pro­vid­ed to the homes and checks are made with area po­lice sta­tions.

If you would like to be­come a fos­ter par­ent, you can con­tact the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty at 627-0748/623-7555/625-7151 ext 40988 or via email at fos­ter­care@ttchil­dren.org.

All these at­tempts would be doc­u­ment­ed to the court as well when an ap­pli­ca­tion is made to free the child for adop­tion.

The au­thor­i­ty’s Fos­ter Care team leader, An­juli Tewari al­so ap­pealed for the pub­lic to be­come fos­ter par­ents. Tewari said there are cur­rent­ly 36 ap­proved fos­ter par­ents. The au­thor­i­ty pro­vides fos­ter par­ents with a stipend when a child is in their care to off­set the fi­nan­cial bur­den of car­ing for the child.