The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has termed media reports about figures of disruption in adoption cases during last five years as incorrect. It said that in recent days, there have been a number of media reports giving the figures of disruption in adoption cases as 1100 during the last five years. In a clarification issued in New Delhi, the CARA saidthat the actual figures are 246 cases of disruption and 10 cases of dissolution over the period of last five years.
The Central Adoption Resource Authority said that it appears thefigure of 1100 has been misquoted from the RTI response given by it, which also included the figures of withdrawal from the adoption process. It further stated that disruption implies returning back of the children to the institution after being placed with a family and is not a happy situation as the children face rejection and are scarred for a long time. There have also been 10 cases of dissolutions during the last five years, where the parents returned the child after concluding the legal adoption process through adoption order by the court. The total number of disruption and dissolution reported have been less than 2% of the total adoptions under the JJ Act, 2015 and not approximately 6% as has been reported by the print media.
There is a difference between parents withdrawing from the adoption process after accepting the profile of a child referred for various reasons, and those who return the child after taking them in pre-adoption foster care, which is called disruption. While the former is about helping parents take an informed decision of adopting the child, the latter is completely detrimental to the best interest of the child which is the guiding principle for any organisation working for children. In order to check this trend, CARA has formed a sub-committee of experts who have been travelling to different States to help them in building the capacity of social workers at the gross root level.