'Why leave a child hanging for years?': conference hears adoption challenges

Courts should be legally bound to decide requests for long-term care orders within six months, as cases that drag on for years are harming children, a conference was warned on Thursday.

The head of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services suggested that courts should be bound to issue decrees about requests for long-term care orders within six months. Current delays – sometimes lasting beyond three years – are “causing a disservice” to vulnerable children, Alfred Grixti added.

Grixti said there were currently 44 pending cases in the Maltese courts, adding that these delays were discouraging people from entering the lives of these children as foster carers.

Addressing the launch of a two-day conference titled Reflecting on Intercountry Adoption, he said that capping the timeframe would allow foster parents to kickstart the process for adoption after five years. 

Care orders are intended to protect children at risk of significant harm by placing them in safer arrangements, such as foster families.

In February, Times of Malta reported how figures obtained from the Ministry for Social Policy and Children’s Rights showed  47 care order decisions (now down to 44) are pending in court, affecting 71 children.

Half of those cases have been waiting for a judgment for more than a year. Four cases have been ongoing for more than three years, nine for over two years, and 15 for more than a year.

John Role, from the National Foster Care Association Malta, said court delays are causing significant stress for children as well as their foster and biological families.

In the past, interim care orders were issued provisionally by the social policy minister, after which the court had 28 days to issue a final care order.

Legal amendments issued in 2020 shifted responsibility for interim care orders to the courts instead.

However, the changes also removed the deadline for a long-term care order to be issued.

On Thursday, Social Policy Minister Michael Falzon told the conference that before the amendments, a foster parent could only apply to adopt the child after 10 years, and this has now been reduced to five. 

Those five years only start counting once the long-term care order is issued – which is why timely decisions are key.

“Can we leave a child hanging for three years?... My must make sure that we are always acting in the best interest of the child,” he said.

The annual report of the Social Care Standards Authority - Malta’s national regulator for social welfare services - revealed that in 2025, the Malta Central Authority received 41 applications from prospective adoptive parents.

A total of 13 adoptions were finalised by the Maltese courts during the year: five local adoptions and eight intercountry adoptions involving children from India, Bulgaria, Colombia, Portugal and Vietnam.

The majority of children adopted were between one and four years of age. Three local adoptions involved individuals over the age of 18.

At the end of 2025, a further six intercountry adoption cases remained in progress. In these cases, an adoption decree had been issued by the courts in the child’s country of origin, while the corresponding decree from the Maltese courts was still pending.

'Adoption can be a beautiful thing'

Nicole Grech shared her experience with those at the conference on Thursday. 

Now a third-year law student with a love for sports, she recounted how she was adopted by her Maltese parents from a children’s home in Ethiopia at the age of nine months. 

Her birth name was Shewit, and her parents changed it to Nicole – something she embraces.

“I don’t see the name change as a dismissal of a culture.... My grandfather was Nicholas, and it’s the name of the patron of Siġġiewi. I love both names – they represent important parts of my life,” she said.

Nicole noted that it was not only those who chose to adopt children were impacting lives as much as the adopted children were.

 "We are making them parents also,” she said, adding that she had “a pretty amazing childhood” surrounded by a great family and friends who always understood her.

She spoke about how her parents always spoke openly with her and her brother, who was also adopted, about their origin. They also always encouraged her to be herself.

“My dad always taught me that I am not less than anyone else,” she said, adding that she remained in contact with a social worker for many years.

She described this as “very important in the adoption journey... because these are people who are not your parents, but still care a lot”.

“It's a beautiful life – they taught me a lot... I am grateful to them, but I don’t feel indebted to them, if you know what I mean. Adoption can be a very beautiful thing with the right legal framework and support groups. I am not ‘lucky ‘because I was given a beautiful life. I am lucky because I have a beautiful life,” she said.

“I never felt the urge to search my birth family... I  believe that things happen for a reason,” she said as she spoke about the need to give adoptees more space to have their voices heard.

Questions that unfold

Lynelle Long, founder and chair of the Intercountry Adoptee Voices in Australia, shared her experience as an adult adoptee who was born in Vietnam and adopted in Australia.

She spoke about questions that emerged throughout her life – from questioning why her looks and name did not match her being ‘Australian’; feeling her body stiffen at school when they learnt about the war in Vietnam; visiting her country of birth as an adult and feeling like she did not fully belong there, or in Australia; questioning why she had eyesight issues without a medical history; and questioning how to be a parent without a clear sense of origin.

She spoke about the need for life-long adoption support that recognises that the needs of an adoptee evolve; measures to ensure citizenship; and shifting how success is measured: away from placement rates and towards how adoptees are faring years later.

“We are not temporary subjects of the system, we are its lifelong outcome,” she said.