Taiwan Adoptions Drop ‘Drastically’

No Craig Juntunen, this is not a call-out for you to send your BEB Solutions to conduct onsite visits in Taiwan.  You do not need to have an in-country visit or “undertake process mapping, root cause analysis and needs analysis” like you plan on doing in 2012. The article explains why. It is quite simple, really.

“According to Bai Li-fang of Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) , 20 years ago around 4,000 children were adopted annually, now the number has dwindled to a mere 2,600, in which over half were adopted by their step-parents or family relatives.”

“According to Bai, many adoptive families are looking for healthy children with “clean backgrounds,” but due to the increase of social problems in Taiwan, most children up for adoption have complicated backgrounds, such as being conceived out of wedlock, with their parents dead, missing, or currently behind bars.

Such mismatch between adoptive families’ expectations and the reality contributes to the drop in successful adoptions, she said. Even if the child is lucky enough to be adopted, the possibility of being returned to the orphanage lingers.

Although data demonstrates stagnation in adoptive families, many single, widowed or divorced women have applied to adopt. Same-sex couples also express high interest in adopting children.

However, as many of these children come from incomplete families, their biological parents have expressed wishes for their offspring to be accepted into a traditional family rather than raised by a single parent, explained Bai. Furthermore, as same-sex marriage is not yet legalized in Taiwan, children adopted by same-sex families also face the potential danger of discrimination.”

Number of adoptions drops drastically: CWLF
[China Post 8/30/11]

REFORM Puzzle Piece