Adoption anguish

Long delays and policy nuances in the local adoption process are reportedly forcing more and more aspiring parents to conduct “private adoptions” with some reportedly offering to purchase children from their parents.

These adoptions are reportedly arranged between individuals hoping to adopt a child and biological mothers who have expressed difficulties in providing for their babies. The transaction ultimately circumvents the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), the state agency tasked with overseeing all adoptions in Jamaica.

The CPFSA’s adoption process often takes years, causing frustration and anxiety for many aspiring parents and children in state care.

Several persons on the CPFSA’s adoption waiting list have bemoaned the challenges, following a recent Sunday Gleaner story noting that some 245 adoptions were completed in 2021 and 2022 combined. The would-be parents claimed those numbers are misleading as the majority were adopted by biological relatives, and not by outsiders, some of whom wait for years without a call from the agency regarding their applications.

There are reportedly some 1,600 children living in Jamaica’s children’s homes, but the CPFSA declined a Sunday Gleaner interview with its adoption coordinator, Maxine Bagalue, to get details on the number of those children eligible for adoption, the number of adults currently waiting to adopt, the availability of caseworkers, and challenges in the process.

Sources close to the entity, however, have painted a dire picture of adoption challenges that have persisted for years, over various administrations, and still dog the system today, ultimately forcing persons to initiate their processes.

Sharon Small* is one such person. She claims that to this day, she has not received a call from the CPFSA, although she applied to adopt a child and was put on a waiting list in 2011.

Small, who is middle-aged, decided to adopt after doctors warned of possible pregnancy complications and informed her of a multimillion-dollar cost for in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

FROM HEARTBREAK TO HOPE

But after getting nowhere with the CPFSA, she finally became a mother after arranging a private adoption with a pregnant woman who had two other children and feared the financial burden of taking care of a third. Reaching that point, however, was not easy, she said.

Using benevolence as a shroud, a desperate Small said she visited almost all of the island’s children’s homes, including those housing physically ill and HIV/AIDS-affected youngsters, in search of an available child. She was soon advised by authorities that that method would not work. This was after being told she was among at least 140 persons on the list.

“It was extremely emotionally taxing for me because my now husband and I would visit these places and children would shout, ‘Lift me, lift me up’. And you just had to walk out in every case without any of the children,” she recalled.

“You would hear stories that a child’s birth parents had not visited in four/five years, but the system is hoping against hope that the child’s parents will return. So they don’t make the child available,” Small explained. “And then you go back ... bawling because you see the children in the homes desperate for a forever home and you know that you can’t get one of them. It is very emotionally taxing.”

At some children’s homes she visited, the authorities did not even have records to show that some wards were being housed there. They also could not say how frequently they were being visited by parents or relatives, she continued, also alleging nepotism and favouritism within the process whenever a child became available.

Small said she was so desperate that she printed flyers which she posted in clinics and other prenatal facilities requesting struggling pregnant women to contact her. For the most part, nothing fruitful became of those endeavours, she relayed.

Her misfortunes changed, however, after she contacted an anti-abortion organisation that worked to dissuade pregnant mothers from terminating their pregnancies. They put her on to one pregnant mother who was willing to turn over the child to them at birth.

Small noted, however, that she had to hire an attorney, who filed for her to be the child’s legal guardian, or otherwise the CPFSA, which scoffs at such arrangements would have stepped in.

“If we hadn’t gotten legal representation, wherein we were the legal guardian before applying for adoption, they (CPFSA) could have and most likely would have taken that child from us and put him in a children’s home or would have given him to some other couple,” she stressed, adding that throughout the private arrangement, no money changed hands between her and the pregnant mother.

“I am very upset because there is a need at these children’s homes for families and there are children there who are ageing out,” she fumed. “They remain at these homes until they are 18 years old believing that nobody wants to adopt them, and that is not the case!”

Andrea Beckford*, another person on the adoption waiting list, said she no longer has any interest in securing a child for adoption after finally getting pregnant almost two years after applying.

“I had been on the list for six years. I used to get a letter every six months from the CPFSA that they were considering my application but those letters stopped after two years,” she noted, adding that while the interviewing staff were polite, the adoption process felt somewhat degrading. Three times her application was said to have been lost in the system.

“The staff were pleasant, and I don’t know if they have changed the process now, but when I applied the interview process took place in some cubicles on the outside. I had to answer some very personal questions outside in the open,” she said, noting another issue of concern.

“There is another policy where children who are being visited by biological relatives are not available for adoption. I have a problem with that; because if these relatives were able to take the child, they wouldn’t remain at the children’s home. So why not make them available so that persons who want to adopt them can do so?” she argued.

MISLEADING DATA

A source close to the CPFSA blasted the entity for giving misleading data regarding adoptions, fomenting the perception that the children are being placed with new families as opposed to biological relatives.

“It is a very different picture. When we think of adoption, we think of children being adopted by a childless couple, but that is not the case. Only about 10 children a year are adopted in that kind of scenario,” said the source. “Most family adoptions go through with no issue, a lot of times, it’s literally a formality where, for example, aunty had the child from a young age because mommy couldn’t manage or daddy died.”

But that is not the area of concern, charged the source.

“There are several children in facilities, many of them available for adoption, and they are in the facilities for years, and that is the worst place for a child to be.”

The source argued that the biggest problem is that there are not enough social workers in the children’s homes to process and make the children available for adoption. This means that files are not properly updated to reflect which child has parents or relatives visiting them and which child does not – and over what period.

“If you take one of the children’s homes with the older kids, you have several sets of children there whose family members have never come to visit them ever, and there is no hope of unification for this child,” the source explained. “But finally, a social worker will pick up the file, go and visit the mother, and make a plan for the mother to reunite with the family.

“Of course, the mother is going to say yes, but then nothing happens. Then another year passes and there is no reunification. Then after some time, the social worker picks up the file again,” the source charged. “A lot of the times, the child doesn’t even want to go to their biological parents because they were removed from them for abuse and neglect in the first place. That’s one scenario.”

Another scenario involves babies who are left at the hospital, the source continued, noting that it can take up to two years for that child to be placed with one of the persons on the waiting list, within which time the baby would have been denied the warmth and love from an adopted family.

NOT A PRIORITY

A social worker in Jamaica has roughly 150 cases, a stark contrast to the 25-30 which is the global standard, and many times adoption does not count as a priority for these workers who handle other children’s issues within the CPFSA.

“This has been the case for many years and all the efforts that have been made, including lobbying ministers and changing of the CEOs, have brought nothing. If anything has changed, it would be the bureaucracy of family adoptions that has changed drastically. But the problem with outside persons trying to adopt remains the same,” pressed the source, adding that the CPFSA has been operating without any efficient oversight from authorities.

According to the CPFSA, for a child to be adopted he/she must be more than six weeks old and under 18. The application must be received at least eight months before the child turns 18 and overseas applicants must check with their immigration department for age limits.

Applicants are limited to persons who are 25 years old and over. If they are related to the child, they can be under 25 years old but over 18 years old. “However applicant would be approved based on the age of the child being adopted, medical conditions of the applicant, and family support available for the child being adopted,” it noted.

“If you are applying with your spouse to adopt your biological child (who is not the child of your spouse), you will need to satisfy the court that the other biological parent has died or that the other biological parent is unfairly withholding consent,” related the CPFSA in a media release.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com