Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / August 2006

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.

http://www.hindu.com/2006/08/15/stories/2006081510130100.htm