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Children are being adopted at a younger and younger age, which contributes to their successful integration, the Secretary of State for Families of the Ministry of Culture and Innovation stressed at a professional conference in Budapest on Wednesday.
Speaking at a forum organized by the Family Friendly Hungary Center and the National Child Protection Service, Ágnes Hornung stressed that people waiting for adoption are becoming more accepting of children’s gender, age and health status. There have been examples of three siblings being adopted together, but it is also easier for children with disabilities and children with long-term illnesses to find a loving family, she added.
She pointed out:
Hungary has enshrined and strengthened children’s right to care and protection in the Fundamental Law.
Every child has the right to grow up in a loving family if he or she cannot grow up in his or her own. This right permeates the adoption process and the system, she added.
Ágnes Hornung said that in Hungary, there are around a thousand adoption procedures every year. This number has fallen slightly in the last two years due to the coronavirus epidemic, but is expected to reach or even exceed 1,000 again this year.
The politician said it was the responsibility of the state to provide adequate support to families who choose adoption.
For us, there is no difference between families linked by blood or by the success of the adoption procedure,”
she said, adding that adoptive families receive the same support as other families: they can benefit from family allowances, the home creation program and tax relief.
She stressed that the professionals’ hard work and dedication help to build unconditional trust in the new family, where adopters and children can become a real family.
Ágnes Szuromi-Kovács, Managing Director of the Family Friendly Hungary Center, said that they had developed a unified methodology for adoption. She said that the professional basis for this was provided by the seven professional regulations and the methodological guidelines for the follow-up of adoptions developed by the Institute for Family and Social Policy in 2013. With its niche content, this methodology has taken the work of the family-friendly center on adoption to another level.
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