Gender urges as many as possible to foster children

Child and Family Protection Services under the Minister of Gender, Family and Social Services urged as many people as possible to foster children under state care.

At the moment there are a total of 203 children under state care.

Speaking about fostering children on a programme aired by local channel RaajjeTv, the Director-General of Child and Family Protection Service Rishmy Amir said that currently all applications to foster children have been sent for processing.

Noting that there are a high number of children in state care, she urged as many as possible to foster in order to provide a family environment for them to grow up.

Fostering children is the state handing over the care of children under the state to people other than their families.

Moreover, Rishmy noted that although they usually receive foster applications for children under six months, this year they have requests for children a bit older than this as well.

She also revealed that so far they received seven applications this year, and four children’s care have be shifted to their foster families.

Meanwhile, the case of one child is currently in court, three other children’s cases have been approved by the court and are in the process of being forwarded to the court, as per Rishmy.

The Child and Family Protection Services have handed over the care of 71 children to foster parents over the years, and only three children were brought to state care from this.

There are four categories are two types of fostering. The two types are temporary and permanent fostering.

Categories of fostering:

- A Child that has been orphaned with no family

- Biological parents are alive but no connection with the child

- Current family situation is not compatible to sent the child with them

- The family situation does not allow the child to be reconnected with them

Those who want to foster need to go through four stages, starting from submitting the application, which is available from the ministry’s website.

Following this, an assessment will be conducted to determine whether the applicant meets the requirements.

The person applying to foster has to be Maldivian, and married. However, should the applicant be single and meet all the other requirements, they do stand a chance at being able to foster as per Gender Ministery.

Additionally, the person needs to be 25 to 65 years of age, and capable of taking care of a family. This would also be determined through an assessment. 

Child and Family Protection Services said that in total the whole assessment, evaluation and information-gathering period can take between a month to one and half months.