Less than 2% abandoned children, adopted in Romania last year

Only 846 children in those 57,646 in foster homes have been adopted last year, which means less than 2 percent. The main cause of the low adoption rate in Romania seems to be the slow legislation.

According to statistics provided by the National Authority for Adoption and Protection of Children Rights, only 3,436 minors have been declared “adoptable” last year and only 846 have eventually found a family, with half of them being younger than 3 years old. Only nine children over 14 have been adopted in 2015.

The law says that a child becomes adoptable if parents and shirttail kins won’t or cannot take care of the child and if this is established within a year-time. The new adoption law that is to be enforced in August cuts this deadline to six months. The procedure also says that the natural parents must be summoned in court to give their Ok on the adoption. If they don’t agree, the Direction for the Child Protection must prove that for a month no parent visited the child in the foster home and neither the other relatives are interested in taking over the fosterage. In case adoption is Okayed, the natural parents are totally grown out of their rights.

Over 100 institutionalized children out on those 20,291 in the Romanian foster homes have been victims of the abuses, neglecting or exploitation last year, read the Labour Ministry’s data to Mediafax.

In March this year there were 1,477 residential-like services intended for the child temporarily or definitively separated from the family. These units sheltered 20,291 children last year. Only 32 of them have been adopted.

Among the problems that hinder adoption in Romania there are the administration red tape, bad laws and also the lack of transparency of the authorities. Many foster parents also complain that they are seldom lied related to the child’s health condition. While the children’s medical records reveal no medical issue or disease, in reality many children given to adoption have disabilities or a certain illness.

Regarding the problems that foster homes are facing, one of them is the poor training of the staff.