As per the Juvenile and Justice Act, 2006 (JJ Act) any individual can be recognized by his/ her respective state government as a ‘fit person’ under whose care children can be placed by the government for a temporary period of time while the permanent alternatives are explored.
You may have heard questions like “when orphanages are full of kids why does adoptions take so long”? The answer to it is this: Not all those children are eligible for adoption. For example, some may not have been relinquished/ abandoned and some may have been attempted to be placed in homes through adoption but couldn’t find one. In circumstances like these, children end up spending most part of their childhood in orphanages or JJ Act refers to them as ‘child care institutions’.
So to discourage institutionalization of children, government of India had incorporated a concept of a home in JJ Act where an individual can apply to the government to be recognized as a ‘fit person’ and then the government will place a child/ children under their care. It is something similar to ‘foster care’ in the western world. This can be a temporary arrangement while the permanent plans are being made for the child or can be an arrangement for an extended period of time.
This is not to be mistaken for an easy way of adoption. This is not an adoption and it means that a family will have no legal documents of any kind on this particular child except for the documents to indicate that the child is being placed in a ‘fit person’s home.
You take care of the child as your own.
If I may paraphrase the question in the third paragraph above, I would like to ask, “When there are so many homes, why does children continue to live in institutions?
Do you want to be recognized as a ‘fit person’? Check with your state.
No comments:
Post a Comment