IN CONSTANTA COUNTY ONLY 18 ABANDONED CHILDREN FOUND A FAMILY IN 2006

Translated from Telegraph on line--May 27, 2006

IN CONSTANTA COUNTY ONLY 18 ABANDONED CHILDREN FOUND A FAMILY IN 2006
By: Paula Anghel

Institutionalized children are hard to adopt. Hundreds of children from Constanta county live in orphanages or with foster parents. Many of them have never seen their biological parents, while others only have a vague remembrance of them. Although over 95% of the children who are under the care of CPS Constanta are abandoned, from the strictly legal point of view, they cannot be considered abandoned or considered for adoption because someone has not shown up in court to sign a paper declaring agreement with this. According to the director of CPS Constanta, Mirela Gene, only 18 of the children in the whole child protection system have been declared abandoned and have a chance to find a family. Of these 18, four have been entrusted for adoption. This means that they will spend 3 months with a family to see if they can be integrated in this adoptive family. Another four were placed in families as emergency placements. Mirela Gene said, "We have 10 children who, although they have legal abandonment were not given for adoption because they are more than 5 years old and not one family from among the 22 who are interested in adopting a child wants a child this old." Additionally, from the beginning of this year to the present, there were 18 families which were able to adopt a child.

EVERY CHILD NEEDS A FAMILY

In order to adopt a child, a family must go through many, many stages. This begins with the submission of a file and then a social and psychological evaluation as well as receiving authorization to adopt. Only after this can an adoption finally take place. This process lasts between 6 and 18 months. After an adoption has taken place, the family is monitored for 2 years with quarterly post adoption reports. According to the law, adoption is a form of protection which responds to the needs of a child to grow up in a family. But who can become an adoptive parent? Persons or families who fulfill and provide moral guarantees and the necessary material conditions for the full and harmonious development of the child. Adopters must be at least 18 years older than the child they wish to adopt.