Arroyo bill seeks to create child adoption authority

REPRESENTATIVE ARROYO / SAVED IN APRIL 5, 2017
FILE – Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo speaks during a news conference at the House of Representatives, December 5, 2016.
(FOR NIKKO DIZON STORY)

In a bid to speed up adoption, former president now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo proposed a bill to address the problem of “overaged children” who are deemed unfit for adoption by unifying all adoption laws and creating a child care authority.

In a statement Thursday, Arroyo said her House Bill 5090 or the Act Codifying the Alternative Child Care Laws of the Philippines seeks to put all existing laws on abandoned children under one law to simplify further the process of adoption.

“This bill seeks to address this problem by creating a ‘one-stop-shop code’ whereby those who seek to adopt and/or foster care will be easily facilitated to the best interest of every child available for adoption and/or foster care,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo said her bill seeks to solve the “worsening problem of ‘unadoptable’ and overage children ‘not fit for adoption’” who suffer the “long and complicated process of domestic and inter-country adoption.”

Arroyo’s bill seeks to create a National Child Care Authority (NCCA), which would facilitate the adoption process as the sole authority to accept, evaluate and decide all applications for local and inter-country adoption.

The NCCA is mandated to implement the Alternative Child Care Code, which “will not only improve and speed up the process of adoption, foster care and guardianship but will also increase its fiscal capacity thereby improving its services offered to stakeholders,” Arroyo said.

The NCCA would be headed by an executive director and would have two divisions — the Domestic Child Care Division and Inter-Country Child Care Division.