Interested applicants for aupair care and adoption in the Bratislava region
Introduction
Before we talk about foster care or adoption, it should be mentioned that there is a list of applicants for substitute family care (hereinafter referred to as "NRS") and a list of children who are included in the overview of children who need to be provided with one of the forms of NRS. These lists are maintained by the Office of Labor, Social Affairs and Family (hereinafter referred to as "ÚPSVR"), a specially designated office within each region in Slovakia. ÚPSVR Bratislava is one of those designated offices within Slovakia.
The first list consists of applicants for NRS who are registered according to § 73 par. 3 letters a/ point 2 and according to § 39 of Act NR SR no. 305/2005 Coll. on social protection and social guardianship, while in accordance with the law they must fulfill the conditions set for substitute family care. The second list is a list of children who are included in the overview of children to whom it is necessary to convey one of the forms of NRS. Applicants for NRS and children are mediated through the relevant authorities.
As mentioned at the beginning of the post, people's interest in foster care or adoption has been growing recently. If we were to find a common characteristic of adoption and foster care, we could start from Matějček et al. (2002), which states that a child is raised by people to whom it was not born. Since the surrogate parents have not yet formed a close bond with the child, the child is to some extent "unknown" to them after arriving in the family. The task of surrogate parents is therefore to learn to understand the child and to adjust their way of life so that it suits not only themselves, but also the children who are already growing up in their family, as well as the child they have adopted into their family. Unlike foster care, adoption is a permanent solution for a child. Despite the common philosophy of both forms of substitute family care, we can observe large differences in the interest of applicants for the preference for foster care and adoption.
Foster care is the creation of a substitute family background (short-term, medium-term or long-term) for a child who, for various reasons, cannot be temporarily or long-term raised by his parents, or other family members or relatives.
In our country, foster care is regulated by Act No. 36/2005 Coll. on the family § 48, if the child's parents do not or cannot provide personal care for the child, the court may decide to entrust the minor child to the care of a natural person who is interested in becoming a foster parent and is entered in the list of applicants for substitute family care. The foster parent has the right to represent the child and manage his property only in ordinary matters. In order to carry out unusual matters, he is obliged to request the consent of the child's biological parent, or the court, if the decision of the child's legal representative is not in accordance with the child's interests. Then the foster parent can demand that this compliance with a specific decision of the parent, or the legal representative was examined by the court. Under normal circumstances, foster parents' care for a child ends when the child reaches the age of majority, but in exceptional cases, with the consent of both the child and the foster parent, the court can extend the care for up to one year after reaching the age of majority.
A child placed in foster care by the court may or may not be adoptable, may or may not have contact with their own parents. In the form of foster care, foster parents take on certain parental obligations, but the child's legal representative remains the child's biological parent. The child usually retains his first and last name, but in exceptional cases foster parents can request a change of first or last name. Several authors (Mačkinová, Musilová, 2013; Matejček et al. 2002; ) state that foster carers often informally create and maintain a relationship very similar to their own children. It often happens that even after reaching the age of majority, children remain in a foster family until they become independent. And it is not unusual for such a child to maintain contact with foster parents, even when he himself already has his own family.
The reasons why applicants for NRS choose foster care are mainly:
- The waiting time for a child, when they learn during the first information interview that they will have to wait much shorter for foster care than for adoption, since there are comparatively fewer foster parents than adopters in the Bratislava region. However, this argument only works in some cases. Applicants choose foster care only in cases where there is no real risk of the child returning to the biological family (biological parents are homeless, drug addicts, etc.).
- For the form of foster care, the state contributes a financial contribution: for the child, a foster contribution and for the foster parent, the foster parent's remuneration. In addition, the foster parent also receives child benefits. Applicants for NRS are mostly well-off financially, but there are certainly cases where the reason for preferring foster care is also financial reward.
- Interest in a larger sibling group of children, where the possibility of adoption is lower due to the preservation of sibling ties. This reason is rare or rare.
- Applicants who already have their own biological children and want to help children in institutional care.
In rare cases where a child is placed in foster care, the child may become legally free and the child's status may change to "adoptable". Then a new permanent solution can be found for the child - adoption, and the new adoptive family becomes the foster family, where the child grows up and where often strong relationships are formed.
Adoption
Adoption is a relationship that arises between an adopter and an adoptee. The relationship that arises between them during adoption is the same as that between biological parents and children. Adoption creates a kinship relationship between the adoptee and the adopter's relatives. Adoptive parents have the same rights and obligations as parents.
In order for a child to be adopted, it must be "adoptable", which is decided by the court. In order to declare adoptability in the case of a minor child, the legislator remembers the conditions that must be met by law. Economic lack, as well as inadequate housing conditions, or poverty of parents cannot be a reason for declaring a child adoptable. The court can start proceedings on adoptability on the proposal of the body of social legal protection of children and social guardianship, or even without a proposal, if it finds that the prerequisites for adoption are met.
Conditions for declaring adoptability In some cases, a minor child can be declared adoptable by the court even without the consent of the parents. These are exceptional cases if the parents:
- They do not show real interest in the child for at least 6 months. At this point, we encounter the problem of what is the real interest of the parents, or parent for the child, because from the point of view of experts, the real interest in the child is perceived differently. For example some biological parents have a precisely mapped period of 6 months when they should show interest in the child so that it does not become adoptable. They show interest in the child in some way, even though they know that they will never realistically take it home. The older the child is, the more difficult it is to place him in a foster family, as most applicants are interested in younger children.
- They have not shown any interest in the child for at least 2 months after the birth of the child, unless there is a serious obstacle preventing them from doing so (if the biological parent is in prison or is seriously ill, etc.).
- They will grant advance general consent to the adoption of the so-called "general consent" (without specifying specific adopters), before a court, or in writing before a social protection authority, or before an authorized employee of social protection in the health facility where the child was born. Both parents must agree to the adoption, as long as they are registered in the child's birth certificate. Almost all children that the ÚPSVR Bratislava keeps in the overview of children do not have a father listed in the birth certificate, therefore the declaration "Permission to adopt a child" is signed only by the mother, thereby giving her consent to his adoption.
- According to the Family Act, only a minor child can be adopted, and only if the adoption is in his interest.
The adoptability of the child is declared in the form of a judgment and the child becomes legally free, adoptable. At the same time, the parent(s) of the child are deprived of the exercise of parental rights to the minor child.
The ÚPSVR, which maintains the child's file documentation, closely cooperates with the facility where the child is placed and the return of the child to the biological family is not possible, looks for the most suitable form of substitute family care for the child, i.e. foster care or adoption. The ÚPSVR, which maintains the file documentation of the child, submits the file documentation of the child to the designated ÚPSVR for the purposes of mediation of NRS and also indicates the form of NRS, (foster care or adoption). In the event that the child is adopted by the court, the relevant ÚPSVR submits this information together with the file documentation of the child to the designated ÚPSVR for the purposes of mediation of substitute family care.
Another case of inclusion of a suitable child in the list of children who need to be referred to NRS is the case where the child was left by a woman after giving birth in a medical facility, the so-called "anonymous birth". According to § 34 par. 2 of Act no. 305/2005 Coll. o SPOD and SK if it concerns a child left by a woman after giving birth in a health facility, if neither parent is known, the child social protection and social guardianship body will send basic data about the child according to part of the documentation to the designated child social protection and social guardianship body no later than the next working day after the day on which it became aware of this fact. These children are immediately included in the list of children, but they are not yet legally free, because the court has not yet pronounced adoptability.
The pronouncement of the adoptability of the child connected with the deprivation of parental rights and obligations and the appointment of a guardian for the child has recently been lengthy and can be extended, and has been extended for up to several months, especially since the repeal of the Civil Procedure Code from 07/01/2016.
After receiving the child's file documentation, the designated ÚPSVR looks for suitable applicants for NRS for the child in its region, and it will contact the applicants from the list of applicants no later than two weeks after the child is registered in the child overview. If there are no such applicants, then after two weeks, the child's file documentation must be sent to accredited entities within the region and to all designated authorities in Slovakia. If the designated ÚPSVR finds suitable applicants for a minor child, it will inform them about the possibility of prolonging the proceedings connected with the declaration of adoptability, if the child has not yet been declared adoptable. When the applicants decide to go through the adoption process, they contact the child, but they have to wait for the child's legal freedom. They take the child from the children's home for visiting stays, which are constantly being extended. Some orphanages will not release the child for a visiting stay until the applicants submit a proposal to entrust the child to pre-adoptive care (the court will reject it because the child is not adoptable) or at least to entrust the child with an urgent measure (the biological mother of the child, unless the child has been declared adoptable and is not deprived of the exercise of parental rights, is still a participant in the proceedings and the decision to entrust the child with an urgent measure is delivered to her by post, which applicants usually don't want to). As a result of the aforementioned complications in the NRS mediation process, applicants from various parties are pushed into foster care, even if they are internally set up for adoption. Applicants, under the threat of revealing their anonymity, prefer to wait for the child to be adopted, although this brings insoluble problems for them:
- They cannot officially go on maternity or parental leave from work because they do not have a court decision to entrust the child to their care. Since most of the applicants are properly employed (they are not SZČO, they cannot work from home), they solve the time until the child's adoptability is pronounced at work in various forms, vacations, unpaid leave, etc., while they can endanger themselves by losing their jobs.
- They feed the child at their own expense, they only receive so-called "food allowance", which is a negligible amount. Despite this, the applicants show interest in the child with love and willingness and, above all, patience in waiting for the child to officially join their family.
- Until the child is entrusted to them, the biological parents can still think about taking the child back if they have adjusted their family circumstances in the meantime. For the applicants, this alternative is unimaginable and unacceptable, since in the meantime they got used to the child and a mutual relational bond began to build between them.
The main reasons why applicants for substitute family care are afraid of foster care are:
- The possibility of returning the child to his biological family. In this case, the motivation of applicants for substitute family care should be evaluated. According to Zezulová (2012), incentives for foster care can merge with the motivation to adopt, but the decision to foster differs from more altruistic motives, to which she includes the motive of helping abandoned children. These are primarily applicants who already have a child and can more easily accept the child's return to their biological family, since the entrusted child is not their only child. However, requests for substitute family care are dominated by people who do not yet have any children, so foster care is unacceptable for them, and these people almost always choose the form of adoption. Despite the stated risk of the child returning to his biological family, such a return is rare.
- Revealing the anonymity of foster parents in relation to the child's biological family. In the procedure for entrusting a child to foster care, the biological parents are parties to the proceedings, and the foster parents can actually meet the biological parents of the child in person in court, the judgment on entrusting the child to foster care is also delivered to the biological parents.
- Doubts about proper upbringing by foster parents and contact with children - some biological parents may express reservations about the upbringing of the child, they also have the right to meet the child(ren), which can then cause problems. In this case, the regulation of the child's contact with the parents is not an exception, while the foster parent is obliged to properly prepare the child for the meeting with the parent. The court decides on the regulation of contact.
- Possible blackmail, threats and intimidation of foster parents and children by the biological family. At this point, people forget the fact that the body for the social protection of children and social guardianship, as well as accredited entities, are helpful in difficult situations.
The following graphs provide an overview of the number of applications for adoption and for foster care over the last 5 years in the Bratislava Region:
Graph no. 1: Interest in adoption and foster care in 2013 in the Bratislava region
Graph no. 2: Interest in adoption and foster care in 2014 in the Bratislava region
Graph no. 3: Interest in adoption and foster care in 2015 in the Bratislava region
Graph no. 4: Interest in adoption and foster care in 2016 in the Bratislava region
Graph no. 5: Interest in adoption and foster care in 2017 in the Bratislava region
Conclusion
According to the above graphs comparing interest in adoption and foster care in the Bratislava region, we can see that there is much more interest in adoption than in foster care. Both forms of substitute family care are of great importance in our society. The paradox is that orphanages are full of children who are only suitable for foster care. Perhaps if adults looked more at this problem through the eyes of children, there would be more interest in foster care in the Bratislava region.
Even if applicants for NRS feel afraid to get to know the child's biological family, it is always by mutual agreement, possibly also in cooperation with the body of social legal protection of children and social guardianship. Despite the fact that the same relationship arises between the adoptee and the adopter as between the biological parent and the child, the adopted child will eventually be interested in his biological family and it is not excluded that he will search and look for information about them.
In the beginning, we mentioned that applicants for NRS choose a form of foster care or adoption during psychological preparation, although often already at the time they apply for NRS, they are internally set on one of the forms of NRS, more often adoption.
It would be desirable if the content of psychological training was expanded to include the possibility of foster care, to pay more attention to it, to go into more depth about the advantages and disadvantages, as well as the pitfalls of this form of care, to explain that over time they will become close people with a relationship for the children and that is what the children need most. Because children do not perceive forms of care: foster care or adoption, children need a family that accepts them as they are, that provides them with a sense of home, security and safety. Of course, the age of the child also plays an important role, the younger the adaptation is more acceptable and less demanding.
In conclusion, "what should be changed"? Paying more attention and perhaps "advertisements" to foster care in the media will provide information to the general public, hold meetings with experts and pay more attention to the issue of surrogate parenting.
Author: Mgr. Zuzana Haťapková The author of the post works at the ÚPSVR Bratislava, department of social legal protection of children and social guardianship. REFERENCE LIST:
MAČKINOVÁ, Monika – MUSILOVÁ, Eva. 2013. Children and seniors as clients of social work. České Budějovice: Forma, s.r.o., 2013. 178 p. - ISBN 978-80-7453-310-5.
MATĚJČEK, Zdenek - KOLUCHOVÁ, Jana - BUBLEOVÁ, Věduna, KOVAŘIK, Jiří - BENEŠOVÁ, Lucie. 2002. Adoption and foster care. Prague: Portal, 2002. 155 p. ISBN 80-7178-637-3.
ZEZULOVA, Dagmar. 2012. Foster care and adoption. Prague: Portal, 2012. 200 p. ISBN 978-80-262-0065-9.
Law no. 36/2005 Coll. on the family and on the amendment of some laws.
Law no. 305/2005 Coll. on the social legal protection of children and on the social guardian and on the amendment and addition of some laws.