The Senate on Tuesday ratified the bicameral conference committee report on the bill simplifying the adoption process in the Philippines.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Senate committee on women, children, family relations, and gender equality, reported the final version of the Domestic Administrative Adoption and Alternative Child Care Act.
Hontiveros said there were significant differences between the versions of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
However, the bicameral conference decided to adopt the provision from the Senate version that reorganizes the Inter Country Adoption Board (ICAB) into the National Authority for Child Care or NACC, which is envisioned to be a one-stop shop for alternative child care.
Other salient points of the final version of the bill are:
- It provides for administrative adoption, thereby removing the judicial process that has previously made legal adoption lengthy and costly;
- It improves on existing policies and processes on alternative child care, to better protect the best interests of the child, particularly the neglected and abandoned child, and to bring them into loving homes.
“I am proud to say that this law is the product of meaningful collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders involved in alternative child care—legislators from both chambers who are all passionate about protecting children, government agencies and NGOs involved in this line of work, and most importantly, adoptive families whose experiences have guided and illumined this bill every step of the way,” Hontiveros said. — BM, GMA News
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