Despite the growing sensitivity towards issues dealing with the protection of children, in our country the adoption of children with special educational needs still continues to be a matter to be settled. We are referring to children who, due to their special characteristics, require special atten-
tion from the adults who will take care of them. Because of this, they remain for years and years in an institution waiting for a family. It is necessary to overcome the prejudices that still exist and the fears which result from a lack of knowledge of
the situation and the real needs of these children, and also to understand that their well-being is a responsibility of us all. The Government authorities have also understood this situation and various Autonomous Communities have launched aware-
ness raising campaigns and programmes to inform and train the adopting parents properly.

Although we are used to hearing that in our country there are no children available for adoption and that this is why families tend to opt more for international adoption –not surprisingly the waiting lists for national adoption in almost all the Autonomous Communities are closed– this is not exactly the case. There are hundreds of children waiting in institutions for a person or a family that would like to adopt or foster them. They are children that, due to their characteristics, have special educational needs or, what comes to the same thing, they are children who will require special attention and, therefore, their future adop-
tive parents will need special preparation.

But, what children are we speaking about? There is a wide range of situations in which children are considered as minors with special needs. They present the following particularities:
•  They are older children, adolescents and pre-adolescents.
•  They are a group of siblings.
•  They belong to an ethnic or minority culture group.
•  They suffer from some physical, psychological or sensorial handicap.
•  They suffer from an emotional or behavioural disorder.
•  They suffer from a chronic disease.

(...) It is not easy to know how many minors living in institutions in Spain belong to the group considered as having special educational needs since, up to now, the Autonomous Communities -in our country they are the institutions that hold power in the area of adoption- have not offered specific programmes for the adoption of these children.

In fact, the adoption procedures of a child with special needs are exactly the same as those for a child without them. After obtaining the suitability certificate, the future adoptive parents have to wait for the assignment of their child, a wait that is not usually long if there is a child with the characteristics the family has requested in one of the centres of the Community. Up till now, the adoptive parents did not receive any specific training for the special needs of their child. Instead, a single course of training was followed for international adoptions and for minors with special needs.

However, all of this is now changing. Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Andalucía have jointly developed a training programme for adoptive families which includes specific sessions for special adoptions. Furthermore, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Comunidad de Madrid have launched campaigns to encourage the fostering and adoption of children with special educational needs.