The Child Nobody Counted Because She Was Already Home

In my country, when people talk about adoption, their minds always go towards the orphanage rows of children, and official certificates at the end, lengthy court processes, and maybe registries too. But looking at this from this point, not all the displaced or vulnerable children around us are not from or in orphanages. Most of them, or one or two, are already in someone's house.

A grandparent who took in two kids to raise them because their mom died and their father left them. An older sibling who took in his younger ones is about to leave with him. A sister who decided to take care of her late sister's child. A church member who took in a struggling child of another member without the government knowing, no court agreement, no signed papers that such was about to be done. For ages now, we and a lot of people have been adopting children unofficially, informally around us, and they call it another name.

And if we are being sincere, the children who are mostly at risk are not the ones sitting inside the government or any approved institution waiting for a proper process and documentation to be signed. Meanwhile, the real exposure happens in the outside world when no one is watching.
Those uncles, church members, brothers, or uncles from the family side have zero state support or good intentions.

Looking at the approved system, as painful and bureaucratic as it sounds, it is properly supported because it always has a goal, which is to safeguard and protect those kids. But the unapproved system doesn't have that in most cases. They just do what they feel and think is necessary and hope that the outcome is better than the circumstances.

It sounds very compassionate when the formal adoption guidelines are loosened just to place more children faster. Because the majority of it would genuinely be. Because a lot of people really love children, but they can barely survive how the system has built it towards different social contexts. And this is a legitimate failure that needs attention to get fixed. But we cannot overlook this by trying to separate it from the history we already have here, where some children are being trafficked through the adoption process by individuals who are always looking for a loophole in the oversight that they could find. And this has always been a a reason which is very exhausting.

In my opinion, the children who are in need of more protections are not the ones in the government or any formal system waiting for documents to be signed and due process to be followed. But those who are around us, in that house that nobody is watching, with their uncles, grandmas, church members, someone from the extended family, and sisters that no body has vetted or signed a legal agreement to move on with any obligations to protect them. And this is exactly where we should be focused on more than ever before, not the other way around.

Thank you for reading.

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