Sakhya Women's Guidance Cell

Workshop on Adoption and Safe Surrender

   On 18^th November 2013 at 2:15 pm, workshop was conducted with the nursing staff in Thane Civil Hospital‘s nursing college meeting hall on adoption and safe surrender. The workshop was organized by Sakhya Women’s Guidance cell and the resource person was Savita Nagpurkar from Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare (IAPA).The Social worker Kamini introduced the resource person to the nursing staff by giving a brief view about her work .The resource person started the workshop by showing two half minute videos and asked the nursing staff to distinguish between the two. In the first video the girl was sad because her family had thrown her child away as she was an unwed mother .In the second video other girl was happy because the unwed had given her child for adoption and had secured the child’s life. With the example of the video Mrs. Savita tried to explain the plight of an unwed mother .How some of the unwed mothers are forced to put their child away by their families or are killed after birth or in some cases given illegally to couples who cannot have their own child. She shared how some doctors in some hospitals illegally give unwed mothers child to a couple who cannot have their own. Back in time couples adopted children but later when the child became sick and struck by some danger disease or became physically disabled or when the couple have their own child later they used to give back the adopted child to the ashram where they adopted the child from causing a trauma in the minds of those children. Because of all these reasons the adoption process came into picture. The resource person further explained the nursing staff if they come across such cases where an unwed mother does not know what to do with the child they can help them by referring them to the IAPA which will help them through the process and help the child to be with a family through adoption. In this way unwed mothers don’t have to abandon the child in some dustbin or near litter areas. Safe surrender project was started by the IAPA to ensure that a child gets to live in a family through adoption. The adoption process requires proper documents of the family who wish to adopt pan card, address proof, salary slip. The person who adopts must have adequate income and has to have an insurance policy removed in the name of the child adopted to ensure the future of the child so that he/she is not abandoned by the adopted family. Later the resource person asked nursing staff to share their views on the topic. One nurse shared that a relative in her family had adopted a child undergoing all the legal process and now the child is as their own .Some nurses took the contact number of the resource person and interacted with her sharing some cases. The workshop came to an end at 4:00 with a song sung by the social worker and a vote of thanks to the resource person and the nursing staff.