Adoption In India — What to expect after Child Referral

Adoption across India is managed by a central agency called CARA. As of 2020, these are the high-level steps Prospective Adoptive Parents (PAPs) go through:

• Apply on the website — you choose the age, sex of the child
• You are assigned an NGO which is responsible for guiding you and evaluating your readiness to adopt
• A Home Study Report (HSR) is done by the NGO (~ few weeks). You will be asked for several documents at this point to certify your financial and medical health.
• Join a queue and wait till a child that meets your criteria is available (~2–3 years)
• Attend counseling sessions — these are to help you understand what to expect during and after adoption and how best to bring up the child
• A child is referred to you. You should now reserve her within the prescribed time limit (Typically 72 hours. 96 during the pandemic). If not, she is referred to the next parents in the queue
• Visit the NGO and bring the child home within 20 days
• While there is good documentation and support for all the steps, now the NGO where the child is present becomes your primary contact and will begin to guide you. Publicly available documentation is sparse about this stage. This blog details what we went through and is meant to help others who may find themselves in a similar situation.
• You are now her foster parents (~2–3 months)
• Court hearing and completion of adoption at the end of which you will be given a birth certificate documenting your names as the parents of the child

Referral Intimation

After an approximately two and half year wait, we received an intimation by SMS (we had been tracking our position in the queue and had reached ~300 for in that state at this point). The SMS said:

Congratulations! Profile of child/children have been referred. Kindly reserve within 96 hours using your User ID and Password on www.cara.nic.in. Please ignore if already reserved. CARINGS

On the site, the profile included her photo and details such as her age, weight, when she was made available for adoption, etc. A “Child Study Report” was attached and contained reports from a doctor on her medical condition.

 You may want to download the child study report and consult a pediatrician to understand the child’s health and what to expect once you bring her home. Ensure the reports contain all the important tests such as HIV, etc. In our case, we had mentally accepted her by this point but you can also use these to decide if you’d like to proceed.

 Keep these reports. The pediatrician you pick for your child will need them to understand her history

A contact number for the NGO where she was available was also provided. We called the number immediately. We were told a little about her and that they would tell us how to proceed once we’d made up our mind and reserved her.

After Reservation

We reviewed the reports, thought over it for a day and a night and decided to proceed. After we reserved her on the site, we were contacted and asked to prepare the following documents:

For all of the below, prepare originals and 2 copies

• Original Home Study Report
  • This will be available with your local NGO which originally did the report.
  • They will provide it in a sealed envelope.
  • You may also need to pay a fee at this point.
• 6–8 Photographs (of the couple)
• PAN cards
• Proof of date of birth
  • Birth certificate/10th, Degree certificates
• Proof of residence
  • Aadhaar/Voter ID/Passport/Electricity/Telphone bill
• Proof of income for the previous year
  • Income tax returns for at least 2 years
• Medical Fitness Certificate
  • Our NGO clarified that the original medical fitness certificate we’d given during the Home Study Report was sufficient
• Marriage Certificate
• Divorce Certificate (if applicable)
• Two reference letters from acquaintances or relative
  • You would have provided these during the Home Study Report. Request the originals or get new ones.
• Consent letter from older children in the family (if older than 7 years)
• Undertaking of responsibility as guardian of the child in the event of your demise by a relative
  • This had to be notarised on stamp paper of 100/-. We were required to provide an undertaking letter from a younger relative.
• Covid-19 negative medical certificate
  • The NGO asked for a Covid-19 negative report. Since these were not easily procured, we made do with a letter from a doctor. The letter stated that he had examined us and that we did not have any travel history to affected areas or show any symptoms.

Get details about the child

Depending on how accessible the NGO is, you can now choose to visit the child. During the pandemic, CARA recommended online video calls. In our case, we were sent several photographs and a video. We asked to speak to the caretakers but the NGO was not net-savvy enough to accommodate this.

Some parents we spoke to during this time suggested requesting additional (independent) medical checks — we decided to not do these. By this time we’d made up our mind to adopt her and had decided we’d just treat any problems if/when they came up.

 This is a good time to ask about the child’s diet and stock up on the food she is being given.

 Your pediatrician may recommend another diet once you bring her home but you’ll need to try and not change too much of her schedule for the first few days

Block a date

Once the child has been reserved, CARA gives you 20 days (30 during the pandemic) to complete the process. Once we had all the documents available and had arranged for leaves, we coordinated with the NGO on a date when we would visit. We were assured that they would try to close all formalities in one day — however we were advised by other parents that it could take longer and planned accordingly.

 Depending on the NGO and people involved, the process may take one day to several. Your contact is the best person to give you additional details based on the situation there.

Decide on a name

You will need to share your child’s name for the legal formalities to begin. Be prepared beforehand.

What to carry

• Documents requested by the NGO
• Identity Proofs
• Clothes for her (the NGO will change her into the clothes you’ve brought)
• Sweets (for after the adoption)
• Money — cheques for the fees to be paid to the NGO and cash to pay the lawyer, miscellaneous expenses and as tokens to the child’s caretakers.
• Bowls, Spoons, Bottles, etc. which she might need during feeding
• Milk substitute — we were told that she was being fed Lactodex
• Pacifiers
• Napkins
• Diapers

Day-0

We arrived at the NGO early in the morning and met our child and her caretakers. They told us about her schedule, her portion sizes and how she was fed.

 If possible, watch the caretakers and learn how they take care of her. We learnt more from observing than through explicit questions

 You will have a lot on your mind on this day. It’ll help to bring someone else along and/or to have a checklist of what you’ll need to ask/do.

Submission of Papers

Our papers were examined and accepted by the NGO.

A schedule for the day had already been prepared. First on the schedule was the Family Court

Family Court

The NGO had briefed a lawyer the previous day with our details and the name we had chosen for our child. He was ready and waiting for us at the family court. We signed papers which attested that we were taking responsibility for fostering her until adoption was completed. My wife and I then were produced before a judge where we took oaths. Afterwards, we paid the lawyer his fees.

Notary

We then met a Notary. Again, since this was a well-established routine, all we needed to do was to give our address and pay the fee. The Notary knew what documents needed to be prepared and went ahead.

Doctor Consultation

We then met the pediatrician who had been seeing our child. He counseled us on his opinion of her overall health, what tests and vaccinations had been done.

The vaccination sheet and other doctor’s reports may be in the local language. Request the doctor and ensure you get them in a language your pediatrician will understand

Interview Panel

The next step was our interview by 3 panelists including a police officer and a representative of the Women and Child Welfare Committee. All documents we had submitted earlier were examined closely. We were asked questions to evaluate our readiness and eligibility. Some of the questions we were asked were:

How did you hear about adoption?

Do your parents support you in this decision?

Who will help you take care of her once you go back?

Fees

Finally, we paid fees to the NGO itself (40K, amount mandated by CARA) by cheque and gave small tokens to all the caretakers. We had also brought along items such as sanitizers, diapers for the NGO’s use which we handed over.

 Before you leave, request a letter from the NGO stating that they are giving you the child for fostering. This may be necessary if you are asked for the child’s identification papers during travel

As promised, the whole process was done by 16:00 hours. This even included lunch at the caretaker’s home prepared and served to us by his family. We said our goodbyes and brought our daughter back home with us to the hotel.

Next Steps

Legally, we are now her foster parents. Within a month or two, we will have to appear before a judge. At that time we will also receive birth certificates which mention us as her parents. That will mark the end of the Adoption process. The NGO allotted to us will also periodically contact and visit us to ensure the child is being taken care of.

This was our experience. Hope it is useful to you if/when you are at this stage and wondering what to expect. Best of luck!

Vivek

This article was originally posted on medium