DSWD leads adoption consciousness celebration Feb. 1-9

The theme also encourages families to undergo legal adoption in order to protect the welfare of adopted children. The legal adoption process will also ensure the safety, security, and best interest of the adoptive children. (Pexels photo)

MANILA — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is promoting legal adoption this February as they lead the observance of the 2020 Adoption Consciousness Celebration (ACC) on February 1 to 9.

“Let us also celebrate the special kind of love that exists between parents and children unrelated by blood – a love that sees beyond differences,” the DSWD said on Friday in a statement.

The week-long celebration carries the theme, “Pagmamahal Palaganapin, Legal na Pag-aampon Ating Gawin! (Spread Unconditional Love through Legal Adoption!),” aims to promote legal adoption as an expression of unconditional love and support to abandoned, neglected, and surrendered children.

The theme also encourages families to undergo legal adoption in order to protect the welfare of adopted children. The legal adoption process will also ensure the safety, security, and best interest of the adoptive children.

2020 ACC Activities

To start the celebration, DSWD and members of the National Organizing Committee (NOC) of the 2020 ACC held on Saturday a motorcade from Quirino Grandstand to Quezon City Memorial Circle.

The Department, with members of the Association of Child Caring Agencies of the Philippines (ACCAP), will also open Adoption Help Desks on selected malls and churches around the country on February 8 and 9.

President Rodrigo Duterte signed on February 21 last year the Republic Act 11222 or the “Simulated Birth Rectification Act,” that aims to streamline the adoption process in the Philippines.

Simulation of birth is defined under the law as the “tampering of the civil registry to make it appear in the record of birth that a child was born to a person who is not the child’s biological mother, causing the loss of the true identity and status of such child”.

The law allows the rectification of simulated birth of a child where the simulation was made “for the best interest of the child, and that such child has been consistently considered and treated by the person or persons who simulated such birth as her, his, or their own daughter or son.” (PR)