Empowering Futures: Adoption Awareness Month 2024 Highlights

Adoption Awareness Month, celebrated every November, aims to educate on the legal adoption process and highlight the importance of fostering. In 2024, the focus is on older children and those with special needs. Interactive events and online activities are planned to engage and inform prospective adoptive families.

Adoption Awareness Month, observed every November, serves as a key initiative to educate the public about the legal adoption process, orchestrated by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and allied stakeholders. This initiative is championed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, emphasizing the significance of legal adoptions nationwide.

The theme for 2024, 'Rehabilitation of Older Children through Foster Care and Foster Adoption,' is centered on securing homes for children in foster care, particularly older ones and those with special needs. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is set to mark the occasion with a celebration in Lucknow on November 21, 2024. A combination of offline and online events is planned across various Indian states as part of this year's campaign.

These events will include interactive sessions, cultural programs, competitions, and Q&A opportunities with prospective adoptive parents, adoptive families, and relevant stakeholders. CARA, in partnership with MyGov India, is also organizing online activities like storytelling, poster creation, slogan contests, and surveys to engage the audience. Social media will be leveraged to disseminate critical information, focusing on the importance of legal adoption and foster care in cultivating promising futures for vulnerable children.

As an authoritative body under the Ministry of Women & Child Development, CARA is pivotal in ensuring ethical and legal adoption practices in India, with the children's best interests at heart. It governs both domestic and international adoptions in alignment with the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption, acknowledged by India in 2003. CARA collaborates with accredited adoption agencies to facilitate the adoption of orphaned, abandoned, and surrendered children, ensuring transparency and efficiency through the CARINGS portal initiative.

The CARINGS portal, launched in February 2011, functions as a comprehensive framework for adoptions, adhering to international and national regulations. Since 2015, it has enhanced the facilitation of domestic and inter-country adoptions. The latest version, operational since November 2022, encompasses new features consistent with the Adoption Regulations 2022. This includes modules for in-country relative adoption and post-adoption procedures, as well as foster-care and foster adoption portals.

New capabilities include digital DM modules for online adoption orders and prioritized referrals for RI/NRI/OCI prospective adoptive parents. The adoption process involves various stages, such as registration, home study, matching, completing legal formalities, and post-adoption monitoring. Understanding adoption—and by extension, foster care—reveals it's a legal mechanism to permanently place a child with adoptive parents who assume full parental rights and duties, providing a stable, loving home for children in need.

Adoption is a transformative journey that offers love and security to children, while simultaneously enriching adoptive families. Initiatives like Adoption Awareness Month are vital in demystifying this process, inspiring more families to open their spaces and hearts. Raising awareness and comprehension is essential to guarantee that every child enjoys the prospect of growing up in a nurturing setting, forging a promising future for everyone involved. (ANI)

(With inputs from agencies.)