Do you know this?

There are approximately 18000 parents registered with CARA, while the number of children in the Government's adoption pool is less 1800.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Economical impact of adoption

I have said this before many times that adoption must be promoted in a large scale in any society because it is in its own interest. I have made such statements with my gut my feeling in a subjective manner but never had any kind of objective data to back up my stand.

In recently released “Adoption Quarterly” (Volume 10, Number 2 2007), there’s a research article titled “The value of adoption” published by Dr. Mary Eschelback Hansen of American University.

This article has objectively shown what adoption can do to a society. Article had studied children being adopted from a foster care system of the United States of America. It has compared the costs of taking care of a child in a foster care system to the benefits that the society derives by promoting a home through adoption.

By placing a child in adoption, government not only saves money (on foster care system) but by having a home, a child is expected to be well placed in life and become a productive citizen to the society for his/ her entire lifetime. Author has shown that a dollar spent on the adoption of a child from foster care yields about three dollars in benefits.

It is in any community’s economical interest to promote adoption by extending incentives. Such incentives are questioned by many stating “When one has a biological child, they don’t have the luxury of such benefits, so why should the adoptive parents be given such incentives”. I say the incentives ought to be looked in the context of a child and not parents. Incentives are not given for parents adopting a child but for a child having a home.

Do you have any thoughts? Write in the comments section.

Ruby

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