Missionaries of Charity to return to govt adoption body
NEW DELHI: Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity (MOC) will be returning to the government’s Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) system, Union minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi said on Monday.
The announcement came after a meeting Gandhi had with a MOC delegation led by Sister Mary Prema Pierick, who heads the organisation after Mother Teresa and requested them to come back into the CARA system of adoption.
CARA functions as the nodal body for adoption of children in the country and is mandated to monitor and regulate in-country and inter-country adoptions.
“Met the delegation of Missionaries of Charity (MOC) led by sister Mary Prema Pierick... I requested them to come back into the CARA system of adoption so that children in the 79 MOC homes can go into family care. Sister Prema agreed to my request to work jointly on each of these homes so that the children can be on-boarded into CARINGS expeditiously,” Gandhi said. CARINGS stand for Child Adoption Resource Information & Guidance System.
The development comes in the backdrop of the union government’s crackdown on the missionaries, a Roman Catholic order founded by Mother Teresa. The ministry of women and child development had instructed state governments to conduct immediate inspection at all childcare homes run by the missionaries.
The National Democratic Alliance regime in 2015 had announced new guidelines for adoption of children. Also, a revamped IT application for adoption and CARINGS had also become operational.
The new guidelines aimed at providing more effective regulation promises to bring more transparency and efficiency into the adoption system.
“We checked that out of 79 Mocs only 48 had valid registrations (under the the Juvenile Justice act, 2015) while the rest were either in the process of obtaining its renewal or applying for fresh licenses. We would be getting it done at the earliest...all the child care institutions have to link mandatorily to the nearest adoption agency so that children from these institutions can be given for adoption. MOC have agreed to do that and we hope that at least those institutions that are registered get linked within a week. The second stage would be to get the details of the children on our system,” said ” said Colonel Deepak Kumar, chief executive officer, CARA. The Jharkhand government in July had shut down a MOC home following the arrest of a nun and a worker over alleged ‘babyselling’.