Madam, - I refer to recent articles and letters on the forthcoming referendum on the rights of the child.
Children and young people who grow up in long-term foster care spend their lives waiting - for therapeutic appointments, for access visits, for social workers to call or be appointed to them, An amendment to the Child Care Act, 1991 will allow children who have grown up in long-term foster care to be adopted by their foster carers where this is in the children's best interest. Children in foster care know who their parents/family are and so can continue to have contact if they wish.
Dervla Browne (Opinion, February 24th) writes that, under current legislation, long-term foster carers have been able to apply through the courts to adopt a child in their care. However, the grounds for doing so include proving that birth parents have failed in their duty, amounting to abandonment, and that this is likely to continue until the child is 18 years.
What message does Ms Browne think this sends to the children and young people in our care? One of the many duties of foster carers is to help young people see the positive side of their birth families.
Incidentally, Ms Browne refers to adoption in her third paragraph. There is legislation coming up that will allow a young person who has grown up in foster care and who wants to be adopted by their foster family to be adopted after their 18th birthday, when they can give their own consent.
There are many young people who want to "belong" to the foster family with whom they have grown up. Geoffrey Shannon puts it well when he says (Opinion & Analysis, March 7th) that "they deserve the opportunity to experience the stability and security that adoption arguably affords".
Meanwhile, as we debate the issues, the children and young people continue to wait. Why don't we give them a "second chance"?
- Yours, etc,
PAT WHELAN, National Co-Ordinator, Irish Foster Care Association, Mayfield Terrace, Dublin 16.