Bulgaria: legal changes aiming to encourage adoption

New law introduced in Bulgaria allows children who have spent more than six months without their parents taking them back, can be put up for adoption without the parents' approval. The law was passed with an aim to reduce the number of children growing up in institutions. Another obstacle for increasing adoption, apart form biological parents unwillingness to give up their parental rights, are prejudice against Roma minority. Some prospective parents suspect them of abandoning children at a young age only to claim them back when they are old enough to earn money.

The practice of leaving children to the state's care due to poverty or a child's disability goes back to communist times. As a consequence Bulgaria now has one of the highest rates of abandonment in the European Union, with some 6,730 children left to the care of state institutions. New measure to diminish this phenomena is creation of daycare centres where teams of nurses, psychologists and teachers can take care of children with disabilities during the day, allowing the parents to go work. Some 1,200 children aged 12 and above, or with grave disabilities, have been put on a special list for adoption abroad, mainly in the United States, Canada, Sweden and Italy, where families are more open to adopt these children. In 2009, 536 Bulgarian babies were adopted domestically and 103 abroad, including 23 percent who had some sort of disability.

Almost 98 percent of abandoned children in Bulgaria still have parents somewhere and social workers are seeking to encourage them to take their children back or place them in foster care.

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