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IMPORTANT MEETING ON ADOPTIONS IN BULGARIA

Last Monday, February 12, 2018, in my capacity of one of the three representatives of the Bulgarian adoption agencies, I took part in a forum entitled "Adoptions and Children at Risk" took place in the premises of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy.

First of all, I would like to emphasize that this is the first time (since adoptions are made in Bulgaria) that a debate of that kind is being held at such a high level.

The debate was opened and led by the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, Ms. Rositsa Dimitrova, who in her introductory speech highlighted several fundamental issues: the need to modify the legal framework in a way that facilitates its interpretation and compliance by the social workers; unification of the guidelines and way of working of the different regional social services; performance of training workshops in order to raise the qualifications of the social workers; to put in place mechanisms to expedite the registration of the children in the national adoption regional registries and their subsequent transfer to the international adoption registry of the Ministry of Justice; to work more actively with the children, both social workers and foster families in order to motivate the children for the future adoption by clarifying their doubts and fears. Also, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy announced that they would send shortly specific instructions on how to carry out the registration of the children in the registers and under what circumstances this registration could be ignored.

The Executive Director of the Social Assistance Agency (AAS) presented the statistics for 2017 regarding the number of abandoned children and the protection measures adopted.

- number of children adopted in Bulgaria (national adoption) - 578 (of which 22 had some kind of health issues);

- number of children adopted abroad - 306 (103 of whom with special needs);

As of 31 December 2017, 2,127 children were entered in the national registry; 1,047 of them had some more serious special need (medical issue). The rest, 1,080 children, were all healthy.

The representative of the AAS also gave us information about the age of the abovementioned 2,127 children:

0 - 3 years: 316 children;

3 - 5 years: 123 children;

5 - 10 years: 350 children;

Over 10 years old: 1,338 children.

AAS representative also provided information on the ethnic origin of the healthy children registered in the domestic adoption registry (1,080 kids):

- Bulgarian ethnic group - 203 children;

- Gypsies - 694;

- Turks - 49;

- another origin - 56;

- unknown origin - 78.

At the end of February or beginning of March, the Ministry of Justice will publish on its web page detailed reference of the international adoptions made in 2017. I will inform you on that as well.

In summary, this meeting has several very positive aspects:

1. There is definitely a political will in Bulgaria in favor of national and international adoptions;

2. The Bulgarian agencies facilitating international adoptions can from now on deal directly with the decisions-makers whenever there is an issue and thus to seek a more proactive solution to it; we have been allowed to have access to information and statistics that were previously not available to us.

3. The Vice Minister promised to inform us about the results of the work of the social workers; in this way, we can intervene whenever necessary and influence the processes; the problems will be analyzed on a monthly basis and concrete measures will be taken to resolve them;

4. Three working groups have been created to present their draft amendments to the current law. Each of these groups will deal with specific aspects in the field of child protection: significantly reducing time for trying to reintegrate the child into the biological family; speeding up the registration of children in the registers; preparation and motivation of the children for the adoption;

5. A unification of the practices of the different regional social services will be sought.

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