VIETNAMESE ORPHANS Good Response To Adoption Plan

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31776, 5 September 1968, Page 1

VIETNAMESE ORPHANS Good Response To Adoption Plan

Response to the scheme for bringing Vietnamese orphans to New Zealand for adoption had been magnificent, the Rev. H. C. Dixon said in Christchurch yesterday.

Mr Dixon, who is the national secretary for C.0.R.5.0. and the Freedom From Hunger Campaign, said that in the short time since the scheme had been publicised, 235 requests for information had been received and 74 explicit applications for the adoption of a Vietnamese orphan had been made.

Applications had come from a crosssection of the community and about 50 per cent of those applying had already adopted children in New Zealand, he said.

“A large number of those also have adopted children of mixed blood, mainly Maori or Island children, but there are some of Chinese extraction.”

Mr Dixon agreed that the scheme was a token gesture when the large number of Vietnamese orphans was taken into account, but it was at least doing something. The scheme, which has to conform to the adoption and immigration laws, had Government backing, Mr Dixon said.

Approval for visas for 20 children had been given and this number could be raised to 60, he said. Child Welfare Division facilities were being made available to the scheme for the selection of parents, which would be done by an ad hoc committee comprising members of the Child Welfare Division, the National Council of Churches, and the Catholic social services.

It was hoped to have the first of the children in New Zealand before Christmas bnt it all depended on the situation in Vietnam.

Legal charges in Saigon,

travel costs and administrative expenses could be as high as $4OO a child - but it was hoped to have the final figure much below that, Mr Dixon said.

“In any case, potential adoptive parents will not be expected to meet this expense, nor will this question prejudice their chances of selection,” he said. NOT FAVOURED

It was fallacious to suggest that the children could be kept in Vietnam under a sponsorship scheme until they were of an age to decide whether they wished to come to New Zealand.

“The pattern of community life in Vietnam has completely broken down and to speak of ‘enlarged families’ is ridiculous—there aren’t any. If we were to wait until the children were teen-age.'s, they would probably be dead.” he said. More than 200 Vietnamese orphans had been adopted in other countries already and it was only the lack of a suitable agency in Saigon that had stopped such a scheme being set up for New Zealand earlier.

The selection of orphans In Vietnam would be done by the International Social Service, an organisation based in Hong Kong, which had been the agency used for bringing orphans to New Zealand from Hong Kong previously, Mr Dixon said.