«To love is a gift, but not everyone has it»

“If we look at the theory and mentality of our country, it’s easy to be loved by one’s biological parent – because they understand what is theirs”, says Rosa Varela. But it’s a situation that has had devastating consequences – particularly when it comes to the Law.

“I know a case where a judge ignored all the arguments to the contrary – from a team of child psychiatrists – and took a child from her adoptive parents, to hand her over to a biological parent. That was a crime. A child is bound to a family, and then torn from it. It’s a hugely violent rupture”, she criticizes.

“I was adopted at the age of six, which is one of the most critical ages. My experience in life tells me that exactly from the moment in life when we love someone else, unconditionally, that’s what defines the relationship between parents and children. It’s a connection for life”.

From the children’s point of view, Varela imagines a simple scenario of a child adopted at the age of one. One day, that child starts school and the teacher asks her pupils to bring in photographs of when they were babies. It’s time for the parents to explain, without any taboos, where that child came from.

One of the reasons for dedicating her first book to the “Refúgio Aboim Ascensão” is that Varela shares the opinion of the centre’s director over foster families. She’s defends the premise that “children should be kept in an institution for the minimum time possible so that they can be quickly adopted”.

She’s also critical of the bureaucracy surrounding adoption in Portugal. “It’s enough to know that if you want to adopt a child here – although there are so many waiting for homes – you could wait years. That means the children are waiting as well. Think about that: the personality of a child is formed up to the age of six. After that time, all you can do is improve on that formation. What does that mean for a child who arrives at an adoptive home AFTER she is six?”

“How is she going to believe that she’ll be loved from thereon in? And, as a consequence, perhaps she won’t be able to love herself. That means emotional imbalance – which will imply costs to the State and have the potential of working against it, as life did with the child. It’s a vicious circle. We have to support these children, support their education and the idea of creating balanced human beings”, she adds.

“Personally, I think priority should be given to families who are not single parents. I think that’s very important for the development of a child, as much as possible, to grow up with a masculine role model as well as a feminine one. This helps children integrate within society later much more easily, when they have grown up with both sexes”.

Equally, Varela is aware that many people are looking for the “perfect child” when they adopt. “They all have to be Caucasian. They can’t have any problems. They have to be up to a year old. I can tell you that last year only five Portuguese couples adopted children with problems. We’re talking about a country with millions of people!”

“And there are children “with problems” that are still very special. The Refúgio has a Down’s Syndrome child at the moment that is absolutely beautiful. But nobody wants him! Yet parents have children with Down’s Syndrome, and they certainly don’t throw them out”.

Varela’s next book is to centre on emotions, and will be called «A Máquina de fazer abraços» (The Hug Machine).

Children’s SOS

“Portuguese jails are full of young people whose history is invariably the same: they were hungry at the age of three, they were beaten when they were four, and they saw their drunken father beat their mother when they were five”. Infancies and later lives, lost because “there’s no early-warning fostering in Portugal. Institutions generally receive children between the ages of four and five years” many “have no experts or staff with the expertise that the children need, and there they stay” director of Faro’s “Refúgio Aboim Ascensão” told the audience at Varela’s book presentation.

Luis Villas Boas also defends the eradicating of “foster families for children under the age of five”. And he explained why. “ A child of one year old may be handed over to a foster couple, and, a little while later he’ll be happy thinking, in his childish way, that these are his parents. And then one day Social Security will come knocking at the door and say “hand over the child. He’s going to be adopted now”. In a way, the child is thus abandoned twice. And then, sometimes, the adoption doesn’t work, and the child is sent to an institution! This is what’s called depleting children – wearing them out”.

As an alternative, Luis Villas Boas advocates “a model that Portugal persists in refusing to follow”, even though it’s had 25 years of practice and has changed the lives of almost 500 children. It’s called “emergência infantil” (children’s SOS) and involves the rescue of children aged from tiny babies to five years old, found to be in situations of risk (abandonment, neglect, abuse). They are sheltered in the Refúgio, in a “family environment” for an average of 12 to 15 months, until they can be returned to their family, or put up for adoption.

Contrary to what happens in other parts of the country, in the Algarve adopting a child takes an average of one year – because the process has been “regionalized”. And the Refúgio prides itself on the fact that since 1985, only two children have been “returned” during the initial phase of the adoption process.

Luis Villas Boas defends that the 19 centres of adoption in the country should be much more rigorous in the way they hand children over to adoptive couples. They can’t go on “leaving children in the laps of couples that they have never seen before in their lives” after just a few hours.

“When we chose a candidate couple for adopting, they have to spend five days with us.”Right now, the “Refúgio” has 84 children. Among these “we have 16 special needs children with chronic illnesses, rare diseases and disabilities. The oldest is six years old, and the youngest is two”. But at least half the children can be adopted.

But “according to Social Security in Faro, there are no candidates willing to adopt! I don’t believe that in 10.7 million Portuguese there’s not one person who wouldn’t want a child with mild Down’s Syndrome? Or that the State cares so little that they won’t look for such an adoptive parent!”

For Luis Villas Boas, this is a huge problem. “Where will that child be in four or five years time? Nowhere - because there’s nowhere for him to go. Because Portugal doesn’t think to create special institutions for these children with special needs.”

Finally “we need to give people the idea that being an adoptive parent is just the same as being a biological one. There is no difference. All that’s needed is the desire, the capacity, and the determination”. And the love...