A record 50 children have been adopted from the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare in the past six months. Of them, 10 children have been adopted by couples abroad, and this too is a record. Eight children adopted by foreign couples this year are differently abled, council general secretary G.L. Arun Gopi has said.
He was speaking at a press conference here on Wednesday to announce the launch of Tharattu, a campaign at the district level this month and the next to create awareness on adoptions with the goal of making the State adoption-friendly.
Mr. Gopi said these children had been adopted from the council’s adoption centres/child care centres after completion of formalities in the six-month period from March to November this year. The 50th child had left the Malappuram adoption centre of the council with its adopted parents on November 18 for Tamil Nadu.
This was the first time that such a large number of children had been received by families from within the country and outside in less than a year. Children received in the council’s Ammathottil (electric cradle) and through other ways were cared for in the council’s centres and their adoption completed online in a transparent manner through the Central Adoption Resource Authority so that they could be sent with childless couples without delay.
The children—six boys and four girls—who had been adopted by couples from abroad had gone to Italy, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., and the UAE.
While 24 of the children had been adopted in the State itself, 10 had been handed over to couples from Tamil Nadu, three from Karnataka, and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Goa. Twenty-three of the adopted children had been cared for at the council’s Thiruvananthapuram adoption centre. Of the total number of children received in the council’s Ammathottil units, maximum were received in the Thiruvananthapuram Ammathottil—eight children in the past four months, he said.
Mr. Gopi said that with adoption proceedings going online, more applications were being received from abroad. Couples from abroad were also showing interest in adopting differently abled children. There were more than 3,000 applications from within the country and abroad for adopting children from the council, he said.
As many as 164 children were being care for at the council’s adoption centres in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Malappuram, and Kasaragod; child care centres in Ernakulam and Palakkad; a centre for differently abled children in Kozhikode; and the Veedu Balika Mandiram in Thiruvananthapuram. Twenty of them will soon be adopted after completion of procedures.
The current council had given priority to ensuring families for the children under its care through cooperation and support. Then Tharattu campaign was a step in this direction. It would be inaugurated at the State level by High Court judge N. Nagaresh at the council here on November 26 morning. Kadakampally Surendran, MLA, would preside. This would be followed by one-day adoption awareness seminars in the district centres in the first week of December, Mr. Gopi said.
