LILY is 11 years old, has long glossy hair, and is small for her age. Although she is deaf, and her mobility is impaired by cerebral palsy, she throws herself into everything she does. She loves swimming and eating, and has an infectious smile.
She looks Thai, although it is believed that she may be the daughter of a Burmese refugee. She was abandoned at birth, and has spent most of her life in a government orphanage in Thailand.
But now Lily has been adopted by James and Rachel Haddell. Their decision to adopt a disabled child was motivated by the level of need they witnessed while living and working as volunteers in orphanages for disabled children in Thailand.
While not questioning the care that children such as Lily receive, Mr Haddell said: “You can’t be out here for very long before you start thinking that nothing makes up for kids not having parents.”
Overseas adoption is, by its nature, a cause of debate, and it is relatively rare (about 3000 children have been adopted in the UK from other nations, the International Adoption Guide suggests).
Just the mention of the subject brings to mind images of A-list celebrities’. The pictures make it look as though children are merely pieces in a game played by wealthy Westerners.
But the Overseas Adoption Support and Information Service (OASIS) argues that intercountry adoption can offer a solution for children who need the benefits of a family, and, at the same time, allows people to fulfil their legitimate desire to build a family.
“Children have the right to grow up in a family environment in an atmosphere of happiness, love, and understanding, and if this cannot be achieved in their country of origin, then intercountry adoption is a valid means to achieve this goal.”
IT WOULD, of course, be ideal if children in need of families could be adopted in their own country, to remain in their homeland and native culture. But, in some places, this is practically impossible, especially when a child suffers from some form of disability.
Christian Care Foundation for Children with Disabilities (CCD) provides help for some of the thousands of disabled children in Thailand who have been abandoned, or given into care by families unable to support them. It works with the government-run orphanages for disabled children (and, often, adults, as they have nowhere else to go), running day-care centres and supporting orphanage staff.
CCD also runs its own children’s home, Rainbow House, which houses 20 to 30 children and adults with disabilities — offering them care, education, and vocational training. Additionally, CCD works with Thai families whose children suffer from disabilities, supporting them and putting them in support networks with other, similar families, so that their children are less likely to end up in one of these institutions.
One of CCD’s main aims is to reunite abandoned children with their birth parents, but they have managed to achieve this only 15 times in the past 14 years.
“For many of them, we are unable to trace their parents because they have no history,” CCD’s executive director, Wasan Saenwian, said. “If we cannot find parents, we have to arrange adoption or fostering in Thailand. Because they are Thai, they should be in Thailand. But many do not want to adopt a disabled child.”
CCD’s first intercountry adoption was arranged with a family in Scotland, and now 41 children have found homes overseas, ten of them in the UK.
LILY was nine years of age when the Haddells began the process of adopting her, and they plan to stay in Thailand for a further two years while the adoption is completed.
Mrs Haddell does not see this as extraordinary. “It was always about Lily”, she said. “Being out here, and seeing her every day . . . it was Lily that we wanted to be in our family, and who we really fell in love with.”
Her husband agrees: “We knew Lily was deaf, and that she has cerebral palsy, and that she’s totally worth all of it. We knew exactly what we were getting.
“We can’t describe any objective reasoning that led us to adopting Lily in particular, other than that we loved her so much that it felt entirely natural for her to become a part of our family — or maybe, more accurately, it felt entirely unnatural whenever we thought about her not being a part of our family.
“I guess we’d say we loved her because God loved her, and because God loved us.”
The family has now begun to learn British Sign Language together. This is obviously new to Lily.
She has gone from being an abandoned child living in a government orphanage to being a resident in CCD’s Rainbow House, and to suddenly having a mother and a father, and a home. How has she coped with the changes? “It’s been a gradual process, but she’s very resilient, and she’s a very, very strong girl. We think she’s absolutely amazing, and she inspires us every day,” Mrs Hadell said.
It is hard to know what the future holds, but she is now enrolled in an international school, and the Haddells are optimistic about the future. “She’s 11, and she’s studying in a reception class with four-year-olds, and her deafness and her cerebral palsy make life harder for her, but . . . we’re absolutely committed to her, and we do everything that we can to support her.”
BECAUSE Mr and Mrs Haddell live and work in Thailand, the process is being treated as a domestic adoption. In spite of having the bureaucracy of only one country to deal with, it has sometimes been tough.
“I think anyone in the adoption process at times feels like huge decisions are in the hands of other people, and you feel quite powerless in determining the fate of your family,” Mr Haddell said. “Knowing that we have a mighty God and that our circumstances were all in his hands has been a real source of peace for us.”
In fact, he believes that, although adoption is probably not for most people, more Christians should consider it. “In Isaiah, it speaks of religion that pleases God as being to look after widows and orphans,” he said. “I think sometimes we’re in too much of a hurry to ‘recontextualise’ things in the Bible when the contexts are actually pretty comparable.”
The family plans to return to the UK in a few years, after the adoption has been finalised, Mrs Haddell says. “Certainly, adults with disabilities have a lot more options in the UK, compared with Thailand.”
Won’t bringing a child with disabilities to the UK make unreasonable demands on state provision? Mrs Haddell believes this is an insulting view of disability. “To think of anyone in terms of whether they make a net positive or negative monetary impact is ultimately a very shallow view of any human being. Lily has so much to give, and the UK will be better off for having her in it.”
SUCH a move will be complicated, they know. “There are endless things to consider, such as the importance of acknowledging her birth culture and her deaf culture as she grows up in the UK so that she can develop her own sense of identity.
“It is impossible to know what she will be like in the future as she learns to communicate and make sense of the world. But all of our time out here has taught us that if God is for us we really don’t need to worry about it. . . For the first nine years of her life she had no one to love her; so just being able to offer her that will always be the most important thing we can give her.”
Mr and Mrs Haddell’s adoption of Lily is just one response to the global crisis of children needing families. Others work with charities such as CCD to offer care, education, and training in a child’s home country, through long and short-term volunteering, by offering financial support, or through prayer. Like Mr and Mrs Haddell, many are motivated by faith — others, however, are motivated simply by the desire to create a better world.
www.ccdthailand.org
www.nationaladoptionweek.org.uk
www.ccdthailand.org
www.nationaladoptionweek.org.uk