SASCHA WIL­SON

With more than 600 chil­dren wait­ing to be adopt­ed in T&T, an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor is sug­gest­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of an adop­tion grant to as­sist po­ten­tial par­ents.

Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, a psy­chol­o­gist, was speak­ing at the Rapid­fire Kidz Foun­da­tion’s Eyes Right func­tion at the con­stituen­cy of­fice of the MP for Fyz­abad on Sat­ur­day.

He re­called the re­cent ap­peal to the pub­lic by at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram, the foun­da­tion’s pres­i­dent, to con­sid­er adopt­ing chil­dren at com­mu­ni­ty homes.

Deyals­ingh said the adop­tion grant will as­sist po­ten­tial par­ents who are will­ing to adopt, but don’t have the fi­nan­cial means to cov­er all ex­pens­es in­volved in car­ing for the child.

Ask­ing for the sup­port of his col­league Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, an ob­ste­tri­cian gy­nae­col­o­gist, Deyals­ingh said he in­tends to raise the is­sue of an adop­tion grant in the Up­per House.

He said, “Some of these par­ents may not have the mon­ey to car­ry these chil­dren to school, to car­ry them for coun­selling and if they are af­ford­ed a grant they may now be able to say let me take that chance, it is harsh eco­nom­ic times, but now they will be able to say ‘I will be able to take’ a child.”

He lament­ed that so­ci­ety con­sid­ers these chil­dren to be the un­touch­ables, dam­aged good and the for­got­ten chil­dren.

Point­ing out, how­ev­er, that while most peo­ple pre­fer to adopt ba­bies, old­er chil­dren just need­ed love and guid­ance to be­come pro­duc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

“We have to con­vince par­ents that old­er chil­dren can be adopt­ed and be pro­duc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety. We have to con­vince those par­ents that we have the sup­port ser­vices to help them,” he said,

Through the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, he said psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port and treat­ment can be pro­vid­ed to both the par­ents and child.

Deyals­ingh said adop­tion can al­so help with the crime sit­u­a­tion as crimes are of­ten com­mit­ted by youths who come from bro­ken homes.

He al­so en­cour­aged cou­ples who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­fer­til­i­ty prob­lems to con­sid­er adop­tion as an op­tion. Both Deyals­ingh and Bo­doe, how­ev­er, called for the adop­tion process to be fast-tracked.

Forty six pri­ma­ry school stu­dents from Dehli Road Hin­du School and Fyz­abad Pres­by­ter­ian School were giv­en free eye glass­es at the func­tion.