Save the children

From India with love

Millions of homes are needed for India's abandoned children. The government wants to make it easier for foreigners to adopt. But huge obstacles remain - not least British red tape. Viv Groskop talks to parents whose determination has won through

Thursday July 26, 2007
The Guardian

Liz Burchell, 60, a retired nanny from Birmingham, has just come back from volunteering in an orphanage in southern India. "There are these beautiful children there and they are never going to be adopted. There was one girl who called all the helpers 'mama' and hung on to you all the time. She was obviously so used to being in a family. She was perfect and utterly beautiful. If Madonna or Angelina saw her, they would be straight on to her."

Almost all the 40 children at Burchell's orphanage were girls - from newborns to age four. The only four boys were severely mentally or physically disabled. The conditions were dire. "There were rats running around," says Burchell. "The children's nappies are rags, changed every four hours - they are constantly lying in wet patches. The staff do their best, but they are very limited in what they can do. I came back home and thought, 'What do I do now?' I was told not to give money because it just disappears."

In April, India's Central Adoption Resource Agency (Cara) announced that it wants to promote adoption, especially to British parents. "Our procedures are too cumbersome," said its chairman, JK Mittal. "It takes more than a year to adopt an Indian child from overseas. But it should be done within a couple of months." In fact, it takes most British parents an average of three to four years to adopt from India, and six years is not unheard of. As well as possessing extraordinary reserves of patience, foreigners must meet the eligibility criteria. Couples must be financially secure and must have been together for more than five years. They must be between 30 and 55, with a combined age of less than 90. Single people are eligible but not same-sex couples.

The adoption drive comes at a desperate time. In February, India announced the new "cradle scheme": babies can be left anonymously in cots outside the gates of orphanages. Baby girls are the ones most likely to be left in these cots, instead of being killed at birth or left somewhere to die. It is a well-intentioned move that is designed to deter female infanticide, which remains a grisly problem: this month, police in the eastern state of Orissa discovered body parts from three dozen aborted female foetuses and murdered girls in a disused well. But it has dramatically increased the number of baby girls in care. It is estimated that there are over 11 million abandoned or orphaned children in India, an extraordinary 90% of them girls. This figure includes thousands of children in institutions, as well as countless railway and street children.

The homeless have little hope of ever having a family life. But those in many children's homes or orphanages also have no chance of adoption - unless they are lucky enough to end up in one of the 59 institutions licensed by Cara. Licensed institutions have to meet Indian government guidelines; the rest are considered too unhygienic, too disorganised or poorly staffed. One approved orphanage was recently struck off the register for child trafficking. The orphanage where Burchell worked is not on the Cara list: the 36 girls and four boys she knew have no chance of being placed with a family.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the demand for overseas adoption has never been higher. Every time Madonna or Angelina Jolie appears in the headlines, the volunteer organisation Intercountry Adoption Centre (IAC) registers a 25% rise in calls to its helpline. Since April, it has logged another extra 100 calls a month asking solely about India.

Mary Buckley, 28, an administrative assistant, and husband Edward, also 28, an IT programmer from Swindon, have no children of their own and would like to adopt an Indian girl. "Out there you've got orphanages overflowing with children. It's about giving a child a chance," says Mary, who has seven siblings and grew up around foster children. But, as they quickly discovered, the situation in India is not the only problem. After an initial home visit from social services, the Buckleys were told the approval process would not start until December because of their local authority's caseload.

This is typical. India is the first difficulty: despite the recent statement, nothing is happening on the ground to make overseas adoption any easier. Last year, a little more than 800 Indian children were placed overseas, down from over 1,200 five years ago. (This compares with China's 20,000 adoptions.) But the UK system also represents a hurdle: British adopters face an approval system that is overburdened and understaffed.

Success stories are hard to come by. A tiny number of Indian children - between 20 and 30 a year - come to the UK annually, almost all of them girls. The majority are adopted by British Asians. The process of adopting from an orphanage is not user-friendly to anyone, regardless of racial origin, but it is marginally easier for British Asians with a family link, especially if they have a parent who was born in India. The figures are not broken down, but the number of genuine orphans coming to families that are not classed as British Asian must be tiny - perhaps as few as four or five a year.

In this climate, the Cara announcement is just wishful thinking, says Yvonne Baker, 47, the adoptive mother of a three-year-old Indian boy (she is a second-generation British Asian). "This is just someone saying what they would like to hope for," she says. "Friends in India have told me that orphanages don't know anything about this." Baker, 47, and her partner, Chris Berry, 49, are both lawyers from Hampstead, north London, and adopted Kuber from an orphanage in Pune in western India. The process took three and a half years. When they first met Kuber, he had never travelled in a car and was terrified of having a bath because he had only ever washed under an outside tap. He would not play with toys because he did not understand what they were for. Now he is an ordinary little boy with only one daily habit left from his old life. "He still drinks chai every morning," says Baker.

Kuber is a rare case in that usually only girls go abroad: only children who cannot be adopted domestically are offered to foreigners. Numbers for domestic adoptions have been static since 2001 (there are about 2,500 a year), but a state publicity drive is targeting Indian couples and there are claims that growing numbers of urban middle-class single Indian women are considering adoption.

This is also making it more difficult for foreigners. There are reports of British parents revisiting the approved orphanages where they found their adopted children a few years later and finding them virtually empty. (They do not seem to take on the overspill of children from less fortunate institutions.) Baker estimates that 90% of children in Kuber's orphanage are now allocated to Indian nationals. "Of course they should be brought up in their home country," she says. "But what about the children who are not made available?"

The reasons that children are rejected for adoption by Indian parents mirror the reasons that they are in institutions: because they have dark skin, physical or mental disabilities, or simply because they are female. This creates a pecking order, says Hitesh Patel, 45, the adoptive father of twin girls from an orphanage in Mumbai. "The order of placement of the children shows a trend of boys being adopted in India," he says. "Non-resident Indians get the second choice, which tends to be girls, then mixed-race couples, followed by Caucasian couples and the single parents."

Originally from Crawley, West Sussex, and now based in Houston, Texas, Patel, a financial controller, and his 43-year-old wife Madhvee adopted Priya and Karishma, now aged three, in 2004. The Patels consider themselves lucky: although they are British citizens, they were fast-tracked because they both have a parent born in India (the adoption still took more than three years to complete). One international adoption expert says off the record that they tell British couples with no links to India not to bother: "They would have a very long wait to get matched with a child."

The nutritionist Jane Clarke, who adopted her four-year-old daughter Maya as a single parent three years ago, says that in India there is an inherent unhelpfulness towards anyone British - because of our bureaucracy. "If there is a nationwide decision to make it easier for British people to adopt, then that has to help," she says. "Scandinavia and America are leagues above us because they have agencies. No one in India wants to deal with a Brit. It's down to the individual to keep it going."

There were about 350 children adopted to the UK from abroad last year, compared with 8,400 in Spain and over 20,000 in the United States. In India only around two dozen of the 59 approved institutions will deal with UK applicants - and even that is only in theory. Liz and husband Andy (they prefer their surnames not to be known) adopted their daughter Shravani, five, from an orphanage in Mumbai in 2005. A professional white couple in their 40s from Islington, north London, they chose India because they had both travelled there extensively and felt a bond with the place. "I worked in India 20 years ago and maintained relationships with the people I worked with, and we have friends there," says Liz. "We felt that if we were going to adopt from overseas, we wanted to understand the culture, so that our child could be brought up to understand where they came from."

On their first research trip, in 2003, they worked their way exhaustively through a list of institutions. "The 18th was the one we felt we could work with and would work with us," says Liz. It still took a year for them to be matched with their daughter. "It is easier if you are from, say, Norway, Denmark, Italy or France," she says. "None of those countries has the cultural links with India that we have in the UK. But all of them seem to have an adoption process which is more straightforward."

Coverage of Madonna's and Angelina Jolie's adoptions - both have also expressed an interest in adopting Indian girls - has given a misleading impression, says Stevan Whitehead, a spokesperson for Oasis (the Overseas Adoption Support and Information Service). "It's easier for Americans to do intercountry adoptions," says Whitehead. "In the States, they are more supportive and they are more switched on." In the US, home studies - the approval process for prospective adopters - cost several hundred dollars and take two to three months. In the UK, a home study costs between £4,000 and £6,000 (paid for by the prospective parents) and takes anything from eight months to three years to complete.

Compared with other international adoptions (the most common in the UK are Chinese, Russian and Guatemalan children), issues of racial and cultural difference are arguably less marked in cases of Indian adoption. This is because so many of the parents are British Asian, often with family links in India. But even those parents with no links to India generally make huge efforts to keep their children in touch with their heritage: many undertake annual trips, revisiting orphanages or foster parents (orphans are often fostered to prepare them for adoption). Baker regularly shows Kuber pictures of his orphanage and foster family. Most of the parents attend regular Intercountry Adoption Centre courses to learn how to help children from developing countries adapt to their new lives. The centre also has an annual India Day, when adopted children can meet each other: often they are from the same city or even the same orphanage.

Adoptive parents argue that the UK is an excellent environment for adopted Indian children because they will fit in easily. With British Asian parents, it is usually assumed that the children are their own: Madhvee Patel is often asked whether she knew she was expecting twins. For white British parents, the experience is different, but no one reports having had any negative reactions. Clarke says that when she is out with Maya, she is constantly asked questions about adopting from India. Liz, mother of Shravani, says she is occasionally asked at playgroups whether her daughter is a friend's or a neighbour's child - or if the child's father has very dark skin. Only if both parents are with her will people ask if Shravani is adopted.

One thing parents do report is being asked why they didn't adopt a British child. Rejecting UK adoption is rarely a conscious choice, says Whitehead. Many will have tried this route and failed, often because there is not a suitable match for their cultural and ethnic background: "An awful lot of people simply won't even be assessed by the local authorities because there are too many white people who want to adopt." Even British Asians may find it impossible. Before deciding to try India, the Patels had spent 18 months attempting to adopt a British Indian boy in the UK. After a high court battle, it was ruled that he should be adopted by his Caucasian foster mother. Before this, the Patels had been through five failed rounds of IVF. "If you're the type that will give up easily, then it's not for you," says Madhvee of the process. "You have to be a very strong couple."

Many parents who have adopted from India have similar stories. They have to live with the assumption that they have taken a short cut and "bought" their child. In theory it does not cost anything to adopt a child from India. In reality, however, parents spend upwards of £10,000 on legal and home study fees, preparation courses and visits to India.

Why go through all this? Hitesh Patel argues that India is a reassuring prospect for adoptive parents. Many Indian babies, he says, will have been abandoned purely for sociocultural reasons, not because of psychological or medical problems. Baker stresses that adoption is a practical solution to an urgent problem: "It's not just a question of completing your family. It's giving a child a chance in a country where they could die or be put through prostitution." Others are more wary. The picture in India is very complicated, says Liz, Shravani's mother. "Just because a child is in an orphanage, it doesn't mean that they are there for adoption," she says. One of her daughter's friends in the "orphanage" was regularly visited by her birth parents. "They were a street family and they just couldn't look after her. Not all the children are there because nobody wants them."

One of the worst things you can ask parents who have adopted from India is the advice they would give to others. Most will give practical hints: go to the Cara website; use the "iChild" talkboards to find other parents who have successfully adopted; register with your local authority for your home study; save up £10,000. Few will actually recommend it. Clarke says that the adoption process is like a bad labour; you forget the pain. "I say to anyone who is half-heartedly thinking about it, 'Think more than half-heartedly, because it will push you emotionally to places you can't imagine.' Unless you've got cast-iron resolve and amazing friends and family support, you'd find it really difficult." Baker stresses that it is absolutely worth it. "Our lives have changed so much because of Kuber," she says. "He is a godsend, a beautiful child. Sometimes I think: if we had had our own children, could they possibly have matched up to him?"

Only a fraction of India's 11 million abandoned children - more than nine million of them girls - will ever have a parent to speak like this about them, says Burchell. She asked what happened to the children in her orphanage once they turned five. "I never found out. They clam up. You get told very little. And these are really nice people I am talking about. One baby with a heart problem just disappeared one day. They just said, 'She has gone to hospital. She might go back to her family. We don't know where she is'."

· For more information on adopting from India go to Cara's website at www.adoptionindia.nic.in or try the talkboards at www.serve.com/ichild

· The best resource for prospective British parents looking at India is www.icacentre.org.uk The Intercountry Adoption Centre - helpline 0870 516 8742 (donations welcome). For international adoption in general, call Oasis 0870 241 7069.