Special Needs Adoption Promoted

From Vietnam News:

Viet Nam had been slow in dealing with overseas adoption cases for orphans and abandoned children with special needs, experts said at a workshop on a pilot programme to support overseas adoption for children with special needs yesterday.

Binh specified four groups of children under the “children with special needs.” The first are children with disabilities; the second are children with serious chronic health conditions, including HIV; the third are “older children” who typically not targeted by potential adoptive parents; and the fourth are biological siblings who need to stay together.

In 2011, the programme is being implemented primarily in four big cities and provinces, including Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. These places already have a lot of experiences in dealing with overseas adoptions, according to the department.

The programme will help ease adoption procedures and take advantage of support from international adoption organisations in the search for suitable parents.

Read all of the article here.

The editors/contributors of VVAI have no specific knowledge of any pilot program starting.  In Pearl S. Buck’s April Newsletter there was a report of talks that that agency attended on the topic in March.

Hang, our program director in Vietnam, attended a meeting in March at the US Embassy in Hanoi.  The meeting included the participation of US, Belgium, French, and Ireland embassies, one staff person of DIA, UNICEF, Holt, PSBI and a few other NGOs from France. This was the second meeting to discuss adoption of children with special needs.

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