An average of 1.3 children have been abandoned every day in Taiwan over the past five years, according to the latest report by the non-profit Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF).
Citing statistics compiled by the Ministry of the Interior, the report said 2,407 children have been abandoned since 2005, meaning that an average of 481 children have been abandoned each year, or 1.3 per day.
A further analysis of the official data shows that 54 percent of the 202 children abandoned between August last year and July this year were less than one year old, 28 percent were aged between one and two years and only 9 percent were older than three.
CWLF chief executive officer Wang Yu-min (王育敏) said the number of telephone calls from people seeking to have their children adopted has also risen steadily since the foundation inaugurated adoption services in 1993.
In the past five years, Wang said, the foundation has received 3,303 such phone calls, or an average of 1.8 calls per day.
Analyzing adoption cases handled by the foundation over the past year, Wang said 84.2 percent of them were not brought to the foundation by their birth parents and had been staying with foster families, orphanages, relatives, caregivers, hospitals or other temporary shelters.
Moreover, he said, 33 percent of them had stayed at more than one institution and 9.3 percent had been placed in three or even more shelters.
Only 43 percent could find adoptive families within one year and nearly 25 percent had to wait for two years to find adoptive families, Wang said, adding that some abandoned children still cannot find a family willing to adopt them even after waiting for five or six years.
Wang said the time taken to locate suitable adoptive families was often related to three issues: uncertainty from the birth parents; members of their biological families suffering from drug addiction or mental illness; and children with special circumstances, such as disabilities, advanced years or those of Aboriginal or foreign origin.
Nearly 64 percent of children sheltered by the foundation are in the last category, Wang said.
Wang said the foundation has launched a fundraising campaign with the aim of establishing a NT$15 million (US$483,870) fund to care for abandoned children waiting for adoption.
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