TEHRAN – Child adoption process being piloted in Tehran will speed up, Darioush Bayatnejad, Tehran province welfare organization director has said.

Currently, some 2,800 applicants are awaiting adoption process, most of whom are parents not having children or intending to foster a child, he added.

The website will be soon operational nationwide, he highlighted, Mehr reported on Tuesday.

Among these applicants, some tend to foster children who suffer from different diseases to help them with treatment processes and costs, he noted.

He went on to say that applicants will be assessed to have required qualifications, then they will be on the waiting list to adopt the child, which is going to get faster, so the children sooner join a family to grow in a proper place.

Although these children are kept in care centers and are provided with the whole facilities needed, they feel lack of emotional support, he noted.

He further called on the families interested in child foster to be less sensitive about the gender and age of the children to help speed the process.

In the past few years, adoption laws have been revised so have been facilitated and easier to achieve, Bayatnejad concluded.

According to Iran's Welfare Organization, the country's adoption and foster laws which dated back to some 44 years ago were revised and modified in 2013. Within the new law kids could be adopted up to the age of 16 while the former law states that kids aged 12 or less could be adopted. In addition to families with no child now families with one kid and single women are able to apply for adoption.

The law formerly authorized adoption only for orphans while the new law permit adoption for children with dysfunctional families as well in case the judge concludes that the new family is suitable for adoption. 

Earlier the adoptive families were required to sign over one third of their property to their child-to-be but some could not afford to do so and now the judge gets to decide how a family, depending on their financial status, should be treated.

Ahmad Khaki, deputy head of Tehran’s welfare organization for social affairs said that the number of children adopted in Tehran increased by 25 percent in [the past Iranian calendar] year 1396 (March 2017 – March 2018) compared to the year before, as some 500 children were adopted by Tehraners last year.

FB/MQ/MG