Govt decides to relax adoption conditions in certain cases

With more than 6,000 parents waiting to adopt children, government has decided to relax certain conditions on humanitarian grounds including for those who have lost their child to sickness or accident and people who want to adopt children with special needs.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development, in a recent circular, has announced forming a committee to look into the cases of exceptions or relaxations in the revised adoption guidelines.
"The upper and lower age criterion in case of PAPs/PAP (prospective adoptive parents) desiring to adopt special need children or very sick children as also children above five years with siblings," the circular says.

Currently, to adopt a child up to four years of age, the composite age of the parents must be 90 years or below while for single parent it should not be more than 45 years.
Similarly, for child between four to eight years, the composite age is 100 years and 50 years in case of single parent. Child above eight years can be adopted by parents with composite 110 years or below and 55 years individual parent.
The committee to be headed by Chairperson Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) will also include Secretary and Director of the organization as well as one representative from AIIMS.

The others exempted include PAPs who have been in the waiting for more than three years without getting the child as they were with the wrong agency, those leaving abroad for long term assignments, parents who have lost their child to sickness or accident and parents who could not finalise adoption due to upgradation of website of CARA, the nodal agency for adoption.
The circular also says it will refer prospective parents to those children who have not been adopted even after 10 referrals.