KEVON FELMINE
Senior Reporter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
While the Children’s Authority rolls out its Kinship Foster Care and Foster to Adopt policies to move more children from State care to family homes, it has confirmed it had to remove two children from homes in 2023 following reports of abuse.
General manager of Child and Family Reintegration Services Vandana Siew Sankar-Ali yesterday told the Joint Select Committee on Local Authorities, Service Commissions and Statutory Authorities that there was an alleged sexual abuse of a girl and a case of reported physical abuse last year.
Siew Sankar-Ali said the authority subsequently removed the children from the foster care providers, placed them with alternative caretakers and provided psychological support. She said a police investigation is ongoing.
“Once we have identified those cases and substantiated at least from the perspective of the authority, those foster care providers have been removed from the register of approved foster care providers. Of course, that would mean stipends and all other support ends, and the authority also provides reports to police to conduct their follow-up criminal investigations,” Siew Sankar-Ali said.
She said the authority is implementing its Kinship Foster Care policy with nine approved partners with 10 children in their care. The Foster to Adopt policy governs the candidacy for a child’s adoption and the prospective foster parent. The authority trains foster carers on meeting the child’s needs and provides a stipend ranging from $2,000-$5,000 to meet the children’s financial requirements.
Meanwhile, Adoption Unit manager Renee Neptune said less than 800 children are in State care. She said nine children are in various stages of being freed for adoption, including two sets of siblings awaiting matches. She said the authority always tries to keep siblings together. It is also in the process of freeing another three children for adoption. However, Neptune said the unit realised that most people do not wish to adopt older children, which is why they are still in community residences.
“A lot of people wish to adopt babies or toddlers, very young children. We have been in our sensitisation sessions, informing the public that there are older children who can also be adopted and need a loving and caring home. We have three children in the process of being freed for adoption to subsequently be matched to persons who have been approved on our list,” Neptune said.
Neptune said children in community residences are not available for adoption. However, the authority embarked on a Community Residences Reintegration Project to determine candidates for adoption. It involves searching for the children’s parents. However, Neptune noted that not all of them have family members.
“A lot of them are older children, but we are still working with them because, far and few in between, we do receive applications for older children,” she said.
The authority received some family members’ names and addresses and is acting on the information. Neptune said the team identified 125 children as possible candidates for adoption in the first phase and, so far, 73 in the second phase.
The authority received 535 applications for adoption between 2015-2024, with 124 adoption orders granted. However, some applicants no longer wish to adopt, and some were not approved. Siew Sankar-Ali said the figure also includes some people who already have a foster child in their care but were seeking to formalise the adoption.
Neptune said children in the adoption pool come from community residences and birth parents who indicated they would like to place their child (born or unborn) for adoption because they are unable to care for them. She said there are also children abandoned at the hospitals and referred to the authority.
There are also cases where a child’s family member wants to adopt them. The authority has seen many T&T nationals residing abroad who wish to adopt relatives living in T&T who are orphaned or can get external educational opportunities.
Regarding the adoption process, Neptune said it took approximately one to two years before applications reach a caseworker before 2021. Due to the implementation of new methods, an application can now get to a caseworker immediately, with a determination in approximately six months. She said 89 applications are in a queue and with caseworkers.