Adoption can be a wonderful experience. On the one hand, you have orphaned children; on the other, you have infertile couples who long for a child. The needs of both the child and the prospective parents can be fulfilled through adoption. This marks the beginning of a relationship where needs are met beautifully like a key turning in a lock.
In fact, Parenthood is more a function of the heart than biology and adoption is a viable and excellent option available, for expansion of the family and not necessarily only for the childless …
Sudatta- Adoption Support Group enlightens the readers on ‘Adoption’…
The adoptive families in Chennai are many in number and the need for a common platform to meet and discuss was strongly felt and thus Sudatta was started. Sudatta- Sudatta in Sanskrit means Good (Su) Adoption (datta). It is the attempt of Sudatta to make every adoption a pleasurable experience.
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Building happy adoptive families is often extremely satisfying – for the family members, for the adoption agencies and all the other stakeholders including the birth parents. The gratification and the associated pleasure comes in a manner unique only by adoption and constantly grows. The ‘growth by grafting’ has got three distinctive stages:
The Aspiring stage – the stage before the child is adopted by a family. This involves value addition in terms of parent preparation. Here childless couples have to decide and fix limits on expenses and time spent on infertility treatment, even though their desire to have a biological child may normally be high. Aspiring adoptive parents have to be realistic in their expectations. The child we bring home may not be as healthy as we desire. After all, the child is coming to us only because it requires more attention. Also, there is a waiting period to get a child after registration and this may be quite a few months. Adoption is not instantaneous!
The Waiting stage – the stage where the process laid down are followed. This involves paperwork required for long-term benefits.
The Parenting stage – the stage where the settled life’s journey of the new family is continuously on. This involves adjustment to attachment to adolescence to adulthood. The adopted child has to be told about its adoption story. No genuine relationship can be based on fears of being found out. The child has a right for information. The child may also have a desire to search for its roots. The right of adopted children to find out about their biological parents is equivalent to the parent’s right to confidentiality.
While there is enough support available for the waiting stage, lot needs to be done for the first and third stages. There is a perceptible gap in the professional support services that is available today in creating happy families. Hence these areas require a lot of emphasis to address the unique needs in adoptive families. All stakeholders in adoption especially parents need information on the emerging newer dimensions in this family building process.
Hence Sudatta conducts learning and development classes exclusively for aspiring parents and for adoptive parents.
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Sudatta’s main focus is the family unit built around the adopted child. Adoptive families realize the need for being together to make possible sharing of experiences and discussion on challenges within a group that can understand and be of mutual help.
The following are the benefits the members of Sudatta enjoy, which are also the aims and objectives of the support group:
– Continuous inputs on parenting from various experts (to be better parents)
– Access to child behaviour specialists (to understand children better)
– Access to child psychologists (to understand telling, search and other subjects)
– Workshops for parents on all aspects of adoption (to understand adoption better)
– Workshops for children on creativity (to bring out the most out of children)
– Formal and informal interaction between adoptive families (to mutually help each other)
– Interaction between adopted children (to ensure that the child does not feel it is alone)
– Family meets and picnics (to also have some fun and feeling of togetherness)
– Monthly newsletters (to share thoughts and be updated on the latest happenings)
– Access to a library on adoption in the future (to satisfy the information hunger)
– Advocate rights of adopted children and parents, and liase with the concerned authorities on related issues (to take up issue which individually it is impossible)
– Interact with schools of Social Work (to confer and disseminate information)
In addition, Sudatta holds awareness campaigns for the following adoption stakeholders:
– Aspirant adoptive parents (helping couples to plan their family well and in time)
– Social workers (enriching the most important parent-preparation process)
– Doctors (enabling proposal to adopt early instead of encashing on hope)
– Attorneys (possibility of providing user-friendly decrees instead of detailed judgement)
– Teachers (extra care while preparing the adopted child for the future)
– Society in general with the support of CARA (Central Adoption Resource Agency), VCA (Voluntary Coordinating Agency), Child Welfare organizations, Governments, etc.
Contact Sudatta at No: 18, Sriram Nagar Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai –41, Ph: 4916854 or 98400 23810.