Behind every step of the adoption process — the application, the assessment, the training, the waiting, the meeting, court ruling — there is a child for whom all this is not just bureaucracy, but the only path to a room of their own, their own name on the door, and an adult who will stay with them forever. No matter how well it operates, a family-type placement centre cannot provide this. It can only count down the days — day after day — until someone decides to take the next step. This article explains what that step is.
What is a family-type accommodation centre and which children live there
A family-type care centre is a place where children who have been left without parental care live — placed there because, at present, there are no close relatives or a foster family to take on their care, and the plan for their future envisages a life outside their biological family [1]. The environment there aims to resemble a family setting, but does not replace it.
Which children in a Family-Type Placement Centre can be adopted
Not every child placed in a Family-Type Placement Centre is eligible for adoption in the legal sense of the word. Placement in the centre is a protective measure, whilst adoption is a separate, parallel procedure which requires the child to be entered in a special register — the Register of Children Eligible for Full Adoption. This occurs when there is a legal basis for it — for example, the parents have consented to the adoption, have died, or their parental rights have been terminated by a court order. A child whose parents still hold parental rights and have not relinquished them remains in a Family-Type Placement Centre but is not eligible for adoption until their status changes [2].
The first step: the prospective adopter, not the child
The system in Bulgaria operates in a way that runs counter to most people’s intuition — it is not a case of finding a child for a parent, but of finding a parent for a specific child, and this is deliberately designed to protect the child’s best interests. That is why the procedure always begins with the applicant.
A person who is permanently resident in Bulgaria and wishes to adopt a child under the terms of full adoption must submit a written application to the ‘Social Assistance’ Directorate at their permanent address. The application must be accompanied by a set of documents — relating to health, income, financial status and criminal record — as exhaustively listed in Regulation No. RD-07-7 of 2010. At this stage, the Social Assistance Directorate also provides an initial consultation on the procedure itself [2].
This is followed by a social assessment, which by law must be completed within three months (with the possibility of a one-off extension of up to two months for objective reasons). This includes at least three meetings with the applicants, at least one home visit to the home where the child will live, a meeting with the other family members, and an interview with two referees who provide a recommendation. Applicants also undergo a training course based on an approved programme — not a mere formality, but genuine preparation covering topics such as trauma, attachment and the adaptation of a child coming from an institutional setting [2].
On the basis of the assessment and training, the social worker draws up a report containing a reasoned proposal, and the director of the Social Services Directorate issues, within seven days, authorisation (or a reasoned refusal) for entry into the register of adoptive parents. The applicant is then assigned a reference number and entered into the National Register of Adoptive Parents under the terms of full adoption [2].
The Adoption Council makes the selection
Each regional directorate has an Adoption Council, which meets weekly and, for each child in the register, selects a suitable candidate from among the registered adopters — taking into account the child’s needs, not the candidate’s preferences. The selected candidate receives written notification and information about the child at a pre-arranged meeting, followed by an opportunity for personal contact, in which the Social Services Department at the child’s current address provides assistance [2].
If the applicant decides to proceed, they must submit an application for adoption to the court via the regional directorate within one month. Where the child is placed in Sofia, the case is heard by the Sofia City Court; in all other cases, it is heard by the relevant district court. The court requests a report from the Social Services Department, hears the prosecutor’s opinion and issues a reasoned decision if the adoption is in the child’s best interests. Once the decision has come into force, the Social Services Department continues to monitor how the child is being brought up and is developing at the new family’s current address for a period of two years [2].
When a child has to wait longer
A large proportion of children living in Family-Type Placement Centres fall precisely into the group for which the law provides for so-called special measures — children with health problems, disabilities or those over the age of 7. These measures are triggered when, within six months of the child’s entry in the register, the Adoption Council has been unable to identify a suitable candidate, or when at least three prospective adopters identified in succession have declined. In such cases, the child’s profile — with non-identifying details — is published on the website of the Social Assistance Agency, and any candidate listed in the register may submit an application for that specific child [2]. This is also the reason why older children and children with disabilities – many of whom live in family-type placement centres – remain in the system for longer — not because there is no procedure for them, but because finding a suitable family requires more effort from all parties.
What the approach looks like beyond Bulgaria
The transition from institutional care to family-based care is not unique to Bulgaria — it has been a policy priority for the European Union over the last decade, as part of the so-called deinstitutionalisation of child care systems [3]. A specific example is Portugal, where, under a 2015 law, foster care became the preferred option over institutional placement for children under the age of 6, and in recent years the country has been developing an integrated foster care model to make the transition to family care more structured and faster [4]. The rationale across Europe is similar to that in Bulgaria — institutional care is a temporary solution, and the aim of the system is the family, whether it be a biological, foster or adoptive family.
The step that makes all the difference
All of the above sounds like a procedure, because it is a procedure — with deadlines, paperwork and committees that meet weekly. But behind the reference number in the register lies a child who, somewhere at this very moment, is going to bed in a room shared with other children, growing up without the certainty that the same adult will be there for them tomorrow. Adoption is not an act of rescue and does not require anyone to be a hero — it requires only the decision to take the first step: submitting an application to the Social Services Department at your permanent address. The rest is a procedure that the system knows well and through which thousands of people before you have already passed. If you, too, feel that there is room for a child in your life — they are already waiting for you. They just don’t know it yet.
Sources:
- Methodological Guide for Family-Based Care — https://www.sgilovech.com/документи/норматиВНИ-документи?download=27:методическо-ръководство-цнст
- Social Assistance Agency — ‘Adoption. Special measures for the adoption of a child’ — https://asp.government.bg/bg/deynosti/zakrila-na-deteto/osnovni-napravleniya/
- UNICEF Europe and Central Asia — ‘Development of foster care in Europe and Central Asia’ — https://www.unicef.org/eca/reports/development-foster-care-europe-and-central-asia
- The All4Children project — ‘Integrated Model of Family Foster Care in Portugal’, National Library of Medicine / PMC — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11125499/