New adoption law to speed up adoption process in PH, lessen expenses

CEBU CITY – The new "Domestic Administrative Adoption and Child Care Act” or RA-11642 can now speed up adoption processes which used to take about seven years to get a child legally adopted in the Philippines and less expensive.

“With RA-11642 and the creation of the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) and its Regional Alternative Child Care Offices (RACCO) in the country, child adoption now is purely administrative, the process no longer goes to courts which made it expensive and took longer for children to get adopted,” RACCO-7 officer-in-charge Concepcion Solera bared in a media briefing on June 13 at the Golden Prince Hotel here.

Solera said RA 11642, which reorganized the Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB) into the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) aims to simplify domestic administrative adoption proceedings and lessen the cost of streamlining services for alternative child care.

The NACC is the one-stop quasi-judicial agency responsible for administrative domestic adoptions, foster care, certification of a child legally available for adoption, and the Stimulated Rectification Act, Solera added.

According to her, it also exercises all powers and functions relating to alternative child care, including declaring a child legally available for domestic administrative and inter-country adoption, foster care, kinship care, family-like care, or residential care.

Jeraldin Mendoza, head of the Family Development Unit said that for domestic adoption cases, as provided in Section 56 of RA 11642, judicial petitions for domestic adoption pending in court upon the effectivity of the law may be withdrawn and filed before the NACC.

RACCO-7 revealed that from 2009 to June 2023, 866 children were declared legally available for adoption.  Now, adoptive applicants have already reached 636, foster parents 66, and foster children 103 and the number of petitions filed for domestic adoption reached 62 and there are already nine cases with order of adoptions, Mendoza said.

Lawrence Matthew Villaluz, head of the Capacity Building and Monitoring Unit of RACCO-7 stressed that under the new law, the adoptive parents should tell the child that she or he is adopted before the child reaches 13 years old.

Villaluz also highlighted how family-based setups are better than residential care and how they address the challenges of gender and age segregation for children needing alternative family care.

Solera calls on interested or prospective adoptive parents to coordinate with the RACCO-7 located in the DSWD 7 office for an application for adoption and foster care.  The media briefing/press conference was part of the activities lined up in celebration of Adoption and Alternative Child Care Week.

The RACCO-7 opened the celebration on June 11 with a bike for a cause dubbed the Bisig Kleta bearing the theme, "Every Child Matters: A New Era in Adoption and Alternative Child Care" that aims to disseminate public awareness about legal adoption. (Photos: MBCNewman/NACC FB)