Meeting with the Ministry of Justice on 9 of June, 2015

A meeting between the Deputy Minister of Justice, the Department of child international protection and international adoption with all Bulgarian NGOs was held on 9 of June, 2015.

A detailed statistic which reflects the actual condition of the Register of children for International Adoptions and the Register of candidate-adopters to May 30^th 2015:

• To May 30^th 2015 there are 1824 profiles of children in the Register, 1584 of them are of children with special needs or at higher age, for which there aren’t prospective candidate-adopters waiting in the register and their profiles are published on the website of the Ministry of Justice. Only 187 children are inscribed for adoption under the common order, 121 are already in a procedure, and 66 are in a process of waiting for referral. Very few of the waiting children are healthy and up to age of 5 years old.  For the period of 1^st of January to 30^th of May 2015 in the Register are inscribed only 79 children to 5 years old, 10 of them are healthy and 25 with light and correctable health problems or hereditary defectiveness.
• To May 30^th 2015 there are 1518 active dossiers of candidate-adopters in the Register. 1376 of the adopters /67%/ are waiting for a child to 5 years old and 243 for a group of two brothers/sisters. Considering the decreasing number of the inscribed children to 5 years old into the Register, the Ministry of Justice asked the accredited organizations strongly to limit the number of new applications for children with those characteristics, at least by the end of the year.

The actual situation of the results of the national strategy of deinstitutionalization children care in Bulgaria was also discussed. At the moment are conducted national programs under which significant European resources for accommodation to the children in foster families and Centers of family type are absorbed. According to information of the Social Assistance Agency to Mart 30^th 2014 there are 2362 foster families inscribed. They are caring for 2304 children, 129 of them are voluntary foster families, and 2175 are professional foster families. The number of children accommodated in Centers for placing from family type is also increasing.

We observe worrying tendency in the execution of those European programs which is expressed in delaying the inscription of the children into the national and international adoption Register. This is classified like a hard violation of their human and children’s right to have a home and a forever family.

At the meeting was decided to gather and summarize, the good and bad practices about the inscription of children into the Registers, by the accredited organizations according to their experience in the different regions. The collected information will be presented to the Ministry of Work and Social Assistance and the Council of Ministries to find some decision in favor of the best interest of the children. There was expressed the readiness to signal the national and international institutions working in the area of human rights and child’s protection.

Association AMOR