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EXTRACTS of Infancia y adopción , number 6, july-december-1999
 

Families wanted
The adoption of children with special needs

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.
 
 
 

Fernando Savater: «To educate is to transmit humanity»

Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, author of a great number of books and collaborator in Spanish and foreign publications, the name of Fernando Savater is clearly linked to ethics. He maintains that educa-
tion and the protection of minors are basic ethical problems. Before the challenges and questions that this statement poses to those who have to educate, Savater proposes training and reflection and, above all, that the interests and the rights of minors should be kept as top priorities. These are some of the answers to our interview:

«Ethics depend fundamentally on intention; that is to say, it is not a question of making external rules because that is what the law codes are there for: what counts is the intention. In the case of  ethics in the protection of children what is important is that what really is being sought is the best for the child or for the youth, not the satisfaction of some sort of personal vanity or whim. I repeat that in the case of ethics, what is important is the intention. Nevertheless, in the legal sphere what counts is the rule, the norm. When we speak of the ethics of the protection of children, we are referring to what the children can expect from the adults who will take charge of them, regardless of whether these adults are their biological parents, guardians or the people who are going to adopt them, and to the moral reflection that having a young child in one’s care, the responsibility for that child, arouses in us. It is a basic ethical problem. The moral aspect derives precisely from this fact of taking charge of other individuals. And in the case of minors, due to their state of having been put under our care, protection, orientation... the ethical guidelines become even more necessary.»

«Childhood is a moment of preparation for adult life. When we ask ourselves what has to be protected in the child, the answer is very simple, we have to protect his/her childhood, to protect this interval, this time for play, for discovery, for learning. We mustn’t turn the child into an adult too early, as in those terrible cases of children who work as slaves from very early childhood or the children who, due to the fact they have been abandoned or to poverty, are compelled to become adults; that is to say, their childhood and time for play have been stolen from them and nobody takes the responsibility of being an adult while the child is a child.»

«In the case of adoption, the only difference is that, instead of being the biological child that is born without any other requirement than that of the procreation of the couple, here, some procedures have to be followed. The child is not biologically linked to the family. Instead, he has to be linked by a decision, by a commitment. The biological child only arrives but with the adopted one we commit ourselves, and this has a dimension of chosen commitment which, I believe, is even stronger than biological parenthood. The true parents are those who take charge of transmitting humanity, who will make themselves responsible for the transmission of the human message, the symbolic dimension, the verbal dimension, the recognition of human similarity and social norms.»
 
 

In the name of the son
Legal reforms on adoption
 

The Spanish Constitution declares that the fundamental core of our social and democratic state is the principle of equality which is reflected with special reference concerning children in Article
39. It is a precept that imposes on public authorities the duty to guarantee social, financial and legal protection to the family and, very specifically, integral protection to the sons and daughters, imposing on the parents the duty to aid and support them in all matters.

Therefore, this protection has to be especially strong in the first moments after the arrival or incorporation of the child in the family. The state has to help the parents to fulfil this duty as much as possible.

There is no doubt that, despite the fact that some progress has been made in this direction in Spanish Law, there still exist unresolved matters, parti-
cularly those referring to maternity leave in the situation of the arrival of a child in adoption.

Until 1996, in the case of biological filiation, maternity leave was (and still is) 16 weeks (extended to 18 in the case of a multiple birth). Mean-
while, in the case of adoption, maternity leave only lasted 8 weeks, a period that was reduced to 6 if the child was aged between 9 months and 5 years.

In the past, maternity leave reflected an exclusive philosophy: the binding over the normal period of lactation and, above all, a period of rest aimed at attempting to restore the physical health of the mother. However, today we can state without any doubt that this is far from being the only or even the main justification of such leave. There are two other basic reasons: to avoid the child’s arrival undermining the work situation of the mother during the first months and, more than that, the essential care and protection that is needed by the minor. The aim is to try to achieve the greatest degree of desirable coexistence that should take place in these moments in order to encourage a better mutual knowledge, a symptom of the integration of the child in the family life.

If these are the main reasons for maternity leave, then this is why we should question the present insufficient treatment concerning adoptive parents who have finally managed to get a child after a very long and difficult wait.

(...) Now, through the Law of the Conciliation of Family and Working Life, very great improvements in this area have finally become a reality. They refer to the following points:

1) Equality in maternity leave because, considering the above mentioned present situation, in the case of adoption, maternity leave is now 16 weeks when the child is less than six years of age, an age when compulsory schooling is required.

2) Another significant new feature concerns multiple adoption. As is already well-known, in the case of a double birth, in biological filiation, two additional weeks are provided per each child. The same should apply to adoptive filiation. It is true that there are only a few cases, but there are some cases in which two, three or even four siblings are being given for adoption. As is logical, the social services try to keep them together with one adoptive couple instead of distributing them.

3) Similarly, the Law attempts to reply to the problems that exist in the case of international adoption, where the presence for some degree of time is required in the child’s country of origin. Concerning this matter, even though other solutions could exist, there is no doubt that the new resolutions expressed by the Law of Conciliation imply progress. It provides that, in these cases, maternity leave may start up to four weeks before the resolution that constitutes the adoption.

4) It also deals with the present reality of a child being adopted from places such as India, where the term used by the legal authorities is that of «guardianship», while in other countries it is referred to as «simple adoption», although it has identical effects to our fostering or adoption. In fact, on different occasions, some problems arose when maternity leave was requested after return-
ing to Spain. Therefore, in order to avoid any civil servant making any kind of restrictive inter-
pretation, the new Law considers these circums-
tances as being equivalent to maternity leave.

5) Another new feature of the Law is that both adoption and fostering, not just pre-adoption but also permanent adoption, will be considered on the same basis as regards maternity leave. Thus, some of the problems associated with permanent adoption will be avoided. Also, we have to underline the introduction of the possibility, in the case that both the mother and the father are working, that leave may be shared out as best suits them, so that they can make use of it simultaneously or one after the other, provided that the periods are uninterrupted.