New Bill gives foster parents right to adopt care children

A GROUNDBREAKING Bill has been passed in the Dáil which will allow children to be adopted by their foster families after they have been in their care for just three years.

Last night, the chairman of the Adoption Authority of Ireland, Dr Geoffrey Shannon, described the legal framework as the most ‘significant piece of legislation since the Adoption Act in 1952’.

The Adoption (Amendment) Bill 2016, a radical overhaul of the law involving children in care, was first introduced in 2012. However, it has taken six years for it to be passed into law.

It means up to 2,000 children in long-term care will be now have the option of staying with their foster families permanently.

The latest figures from Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, show that in April of this year there were 6,291 children in the care system in Ireland.

It’s estimated there are between 1,600 and 2,000 children in long-term care, meaning five years or more.

Dr Shannon told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘The adoption of children in longterm foster care offers some children a second chance to enjoy the stability of a caring and loving family. It is imperative that this is done at an early stage so that children can benefit from the permanency that adoption offers.

‘This legislation is about hearing children and putting them at the centre of adoption, and not leaving them hanging in the system, it’s going to change the adoption landscape forever.

The legislation means that children can now be adopted within three years if the State can prove they have been abandoned by their birth parents for that time.

Previously, only a handful were eligible for adoption because the current law states that a child has to be abandoned for 12 months and that the abandonment was expected to continue until the child reached 18 years before it could be adopted.