Child rights advocates under the umbrella alliance of the Child Rights Network (CRN) are all in support for Senate Bill No. 1933 or the proposed "Domestic Administrative Adoption Act" because this will create a more efficient and streamlined domestic adoption process.
SB 1933 consolidated Senate Bill 1070 and 1337 filed by Senators Grace Poe and Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr., respectively.
The CRN explained that the proposed law will allow domestic adoptions to be undertaken through an administrative process supervised by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). In doing so, there will be no more judicial phase of the adoption process.
This will shorten the usually lengthy procedure associated with judicial adoption as well as the application period, which usually takes six to nine months.
In the Philippines, it usually takes two to four years for the adoption process to get finalized. The deliberations of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality revealed that 60 percent of adoption cases get finalized in one to three years, and it entails hundreds of thousands of pesos in procedural costs for the adoptive parents.
"Such a long, arduous, and expensive process disincentivizes prospective parents from undergoing legal adoption and has proven to become a major stumbling block preventing thousands of Filipino children from finding a loving adoptive family," the CRN said in a statement.
According to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), a total of 7,890 children have been declared as legally available for adoption from 2009 to September 2020 because they were found to be abandoned, neglected, dependent, or voluntarily surrendered by their biological parents or legal guardiants.
From that number, 4,943 are still under the care of the DSWD because they are still waiting for their permanent homes.
The CRN hopes the number of children left with the DSWD will soon find loving homes as the adoption process becomes more streamlined. "By cutting the voluminous bureaucratic processes involved in legal adoption in the Philippines, more children will soon be able to find a loving home, while at the same time encourage more parents to adopt children," the group said.
"It’s a win-win situation that would benefit thousands of children needing a family and thousands of parents yearning for a child," it added.