Can a child be abandoned when things do not go as expected? It seems incredible, but yes. A total of 72 adopted children have been abandoned in Catalonia by their families adopted in the last decade, most of them over 10 years old and foreigners, according to the report prepared by Social Welfare on this phenomenon.
The Generalitat, on whom the guardianship of these minors now depends, is studying the legal responsibility of the families. These homeless children are mostly (66%) older than 10 years, which hinders their future in a foster family.
23.7% of the children were between six and ten years old, and two of them were not three years old at the time of their abandonment. The fact that there is a majority of children over ten years old is explained because it is at this stage of pre-adolescence when the children generate greater problems, and the parents choose to give up their guardianship.
But it is not a complicated stage for adopted children: this abandonment of boys in adolescence also occurs in biological families.
63% of "returned" children come from international adoptions, while the remaining 37% are minors adopted in Catalonia.
When abandoned children do not reach 10 years of age they are usually transferred to a residential educational action center (Crae), where they are trying to find a host family, a task that gets complicated when they reach this age.
As these are especially vulnerable minors, the authorities seek special protection for them and for that purpose changes in adoption regulations are intended.
Changes to grant eligibility to adoptive parents
The cases of abandonment have led the Government to rethink the criteria that are currently being followed to grant the suitability to the adoptive families, something that is currently denied only to 3% of the parents. The administration "must be demanding" when granting suitability, putting the best interests of the child before any other aspect.
The possibility that adoptive families bear the cost of child support for abandoned children has been raised.
We want to seek greater follow-up of the families that adopt, in the long term, to analyze their integration into the family environment and avoid new abandonments.
Training hours for families will also be extended, going from an intensive weekend to four hours during four Fridays. Everything will be done from March 1 in a pilot program that aims to put an end to these cases of abandonment of adopted children.
It is difficult to understand that some people who have gone through a generally long and complicated process of adoption arrive to the extreme of abandoning his children, in the same way that it is incomprehensible if they are biological children, although in these cases they can fit unwanted children from the beginning. But unfortunately they are not unreal stories.
