The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said a bill simplifying the adoption process is a “milestone legislation” that would ensure the best interest of the Filipino children in need of alternative care.
The Senate and the House of Representatives ratified the bicameral conference committee report of Senate Bill No. 1933 and House Bill No. 8998 or The Domestic Administrative Adoption and Alternative Child Care Act on Sept. 28.
“The new bill is a milestone legislation since it will ensure that the best interest of Filipino children in need of alternative care will be immediately addressed through foster care and permanent families will be found through an administrative process of legal adoption,” Acting DSWD Social Marketing Service chief Ana Marie Daep said in a statement on Thursday.
Daep said the DSWD has been advocating to make legal adoption an administrative process.
The bill, she said, will encourage more Filipino families to legally adopt children and completely eradicate the crime of simulation of births.
The proposed measure will also ensure the implementation of standards regarding the living conditions of children under alternative care that will be conducive to their holistic development.
The bill seeks to create the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) and will reorganize the Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB), an attached government agency of the DSWD, to handle all applications, petitions, and inquiries regarding alternative childcare in the Philippines.
The DSWD expressed its full support to the signing of the bill into law and will continue to advocate for legal adoption as the only legitimate process to ensure and safeguard the best interest of abandoned, neglected, orphaned, and surrendered Filipino children.
The measure is a consolidation of two bills originally authored by Senator Mary Grace Poe-Llamanzares and Senator Ramon Revilla Jr.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, author and sponsor of the consolidated version, said the measure seeks to dispense with the “lengthy process associated with judicial adoption by allowing domestic adoptions via an administrative process.”
“It improves on our existing policies and processes on alternative child care, to better protect the best interests of the child, particularly the neglected and abandoned child, and to bring them into loving homes,” she said.
Under the bill, the waiting time of adoptive parents would be cut from years to at least six months.
Source: Philippines News Agency