The Institute for Children and Adolescents of Uruguay (Inau), through a national campaign, which was held in Colonia on May 19, promotes the adoption of children over 5 years of age who are waiting for a family.
The president of INAU, Pablo Abdala, was in Nueva Palmira on the occasion of the inauguration of two mobile rooms (containers) in the Caif ´Una Pindó’. In reference to these infrastructure works in the Palmyrene Caif, he said that there are “eighty rooms of 60 m2. each one that is currently being built, some already finished, and surely more will be added”.
President of the Inau, Pablo Abdala
Also “we have the opening of new CAIFs that are built from scratch. There are 40 projects underway, some through the PPP regime (Public Private Participation), and the others through a trust fund of the National Development Corporation (CND), such as the one in Carmelo that will be inaugurated later this year. ”.
Increase in child abuse
When asked about the increase in child abuse, Abdala said that “it is an issue that worries us. On April 25, on the Day of the Fight Against Child Abuse, the Sipiav (Comprehensive System for the Protection of Children and Adolescents against Violence, which works in the Inau orbit), presented the figure corresponding to the year 2022 that it registers an increase in cases of violence”, which is due to two factors: “increase in violence and greater verification of it because we are detecting it more and registering more”, in an “inter-institutional intervention between Inau, Justice, the Prosecutor’s Office, Mides , Anep”.
Children in permanent homes
The protection system “is in a very healthy process, of improvement, of increasing quotas, and of improving the response. The population of institutionalized children remains relatively stable, we are around 7,500 children and adolescents, who are cared for in the most diverse modalities: 24-hour center, foster families, or often children who are still in charge of their families, but they are institutionalized because the justice system indicated to the Inau the accompaniment of these children and of these families for being in situations of weakness or fragility or of ties
Adoptions: promote over 5 years
Regarding adoptions, “there have been very healthy changes. In the last two years, we have reached the two highest records in history. There were 151 integrations last year and 125 in 2021”.
On the morning of May 19, “we were in the city of Colonia launching a departmental campaign to encourage the incorporation or adoption of older children. It is a national campaign, which we presented in Montevideo, but now we are going to each department to sensitize adoptive families of the importance, that it is a happy and promising alternative to incorporate children who are over 5 years old, who there This is where things start to get complicated, and yet the experience we have in Inau is that they work well”, emphasized Abdala.
Currently there is “greater agility” in the adoption process, “there is the key or the secret. The changes made by the Urgent Consideration Law, which establishes maximum terms of 18 months, are decisive for these good results to materialize”.
“Guarantees are essential in adoptions, because hasty decisions cannot be made, but we cannot take 4 or 5 years to value a family as it happened before. Now families are valued at 18 months, which is more than enough time, but if time passes, the children grow up and if the children grow up, then the difficulties of their going up for adoption begin, ”he said.
