Fostering and adoption. Children from Catalonia

Pre-adoptive placement fostering

Measure for the protection of unprotected minors as a stage prior to adoption, agreed when the child is the object of physiological or physical mistreatment or when their parents or guardians are deprived of authorisation to care for the child, either because they renounce the inherent rights of said condition, or by determination of the judicial authority.

Simple fostering

Measure for the protection of unprotected minors agreed when they have been separated from their household or family environment. This may be a single person or another family or a public or collaborating centre in order to substitute, provisionally, their natural family nucleus.

Adoption

Legal situation accorded judicially that leads to a parent-child relationship with identical effects to that produced naturally and that provides a family to a non emancipated minor or exceptionally to an adult or an emancipated child and person older than 25 years or a married couple or de facto couple, as long as there is a difference of 14 years in the ages of the adopted and the adopters. However, international adoption presents peculiarities such as the need for the adoption process to be in keeping with the legislation of the country of origin of the minor and the inscription of the full resolution of the adoption in the Central Civil Register, which produces plenary executive rights to the Spanish state as well as the acquisition by the minor being adopted of Spanish nationality.

Fostering and adoption

The Institut Català de l'Acolliment i de l'Adopció (Catalan Institute for Fostering and Adoption - ICAA, Ministry of Social Welfare and Family), with the purpose of helping to drive forward a general policy on adoption and basic placement in foster families, to streamline the process to assess suitability of people or families applying to foster or adopt, and to process international adoptions when required.

Adoption is the legal, psychological and social process of fully and definitively integrating a child in a family into which he/she was not born. It is a child protection measure that provides a parent-child relationship with the same legal effects as biological parenthood, and at the same time ends the legal bond with the family of origin, always in the best interests of the child.

The legislation that governs the adoption process is as follows: Law 25/2010, of July 29, of the second book of the Civil Code of Catalonia, on the person and the family. This legislation establishes in article 235 point 30 the requirements that persons wishing to adopt must comply with:

• Be in full exercise of their civil rights.
• Be older than twenty-five years and be at least fourteen years older than the person being adopted.
• Adoption is only admitted for more than one person in the case of the spouses or partners living stably together. In these cases, it is sufficient for just one of the persons to be at least twenty-five years old.

Adoption of children in Cataloni

Children susceptible to being adopted in Catalonia are those that have suffered situations of abandonment and/or mistreatment. The body responsible for child protection is the la Directorate-General for the Care of Children and Adolescents (DGAIA), which is in charge of their guardianship and which resolves that the best measure for protection is pre-adoption family fostering. The measure of fostering is of a temporary duration which can be for months or years.

on December 31.