The Department of Social Welfare and Development-Cordillera continues to promote unconditional love for children as it pushes for the Alternative Parental Care Program.
“We should not just focus on showing love for our partners, friends, and relatives but we can also celebrate love for the children who are most in need of our concern and affection – those who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected. And we can do that through the Alternative Parental Care program,” DSWD-Cordillera Director Leo L. Quintilla said.
“Through the Alternative Parental Care, we are ensuring that the welfare and well-being of our children are being put first. This is because our social workers put in their best effort to look into the commitment, capa-city, and compatibility of the prospective parents compared to the needs of the children. By going through the process, we are preparing not just the children, but the parents for a life-long journey of unconditional love,” he added.
The Alternative Parental Care program is a child care or placement service provided to children in especially difficult circumstances who cannot be taken care of by their biological parents.
This can be temporary and is called foster care that has the goal to provide temporary and planned substitute family care for the child while the biological family or relatives are being prepared for the child’s return or while a more appropriate permanent placement is being worked out.
Kinship care and legal guardianship may also fall under foster care where as relatives and/or pre-identified individuals are given authority to look after the children. It also involves adoption that is a socio-legal process of giving a permanent home to a child whose parents have voluntarily given up their parental rights.
In 2019, DSWD-Cordillera’s Adoption Resource and Referral Section (ARRS) developed 13 prospective adoptive parents and 12 foster parents.
“We would like to encourage individuals and couples who are interested to open their homes to our children to help us in spreading unconditional love. The DSWD-CAR is willing to assist you. We are also calling the attention of individuals who have simulated or tampered birth records to avail of the amnesty provided by the Simulated Birth Rectification Act,” Quintilla said.
The Republic Act 11222 or the Simulated Birth Rectification Act allows birth records to be corrected and provides amnesty to parents with children whose birth records have been simulated.
Birth simulation are cases in which the civil registry was tampered with to make it appear in a child’s birth record that he was born to someone other than his biological mother. Prior to RA 11222, individuals who committed birth simulation face legal liabilities.
With RA 11222, amnesty from any criminal, civil, or administrative liability will only be given to adoptive parents if they changed the birth records “for the best interest of the child” and that the child has been consistently considered and treated as the parents’ own son or daughter.
The law also fixes the status and filiation of the child whose birth was simulated by giving them all the benefits of adoption. – Nerizza Faye G. Villanueva
April 26, 2024
