Transcript of Senator Pia S. Cayetano's manifestation of support for SBN 1933 or the Domestic Administrative Adoption Act
7 December 2020

I'd also just like to manifest my support for this measure. I believe it is public knowledge that I am an adoptive parent, an adoptive single mother. I have gone through that actual process. I know what it is like. I belong to support groups of other adoptive parents and their children, and I have personally experienced on my own and with them the joy, pain, and difficulty of adopting a child in this country.

Thanks to my job, I actually had the opportunity to first foster care my son. I was the Chairperson of the Committee on Women, Children, and Family Relations in 2010 onwards. And during that time, I was hearing a number of bills and around that time, I also was inspired and I felt the timing was right for me to bring another child into our home.

This happened around the same time that we were working on the alternative care bills, including the Foster Care Act, which is now a law. That was around 2012, if I am not mistaken. And in the 17th Congress, from 2016-2019, I was a member of the House of Representatives. And at that time, the House had many bills on alternative care, one of them was similar to the one that we are tackling now on administrative adoption. But they also had bills codifying various types of alternative care, including foster care, guardianship, and adoption. And it is something that I ended up working on perhaps because of both my personal and professional experience on these issues.

So, fast forward, back in the Senate today, I also filed my Senate Bill No. 61, the Alternative Care Bill, which as I said, codifies all of these, and it also does include non-judiciary adoption process. I am a very big supporter of that because like I said, I know what that process is like.

But I want to put on record, and obviously, I'd like to spread this out during the proper time, the periods of interpellation and amendment, that the bottleneck is not just with the judiciary. Obviously, I think all of us can understand na nakakatagal doon. Kahit ano ngang kaso, nakakatagal sa judiciary, pati ho itong adoption.. But I do not want our colleagues to not have the whole truth on the facts.

The fact is, because the DSWD is severely undermanned, DSWD's primary focus, if you just look at how they have been focusing, is to intervene during times of calamities. Napag-iiwanan po ang 1.8 million abandoned, neglected, motherless, fatherless, abused children ng Pilipinas. And that is why I do not have much hope in the current structure, which is how the bill will place DSWD the power to grant the adoption. Again, at the proper time, I will discuss this.

But what I really just wanted to make clear is that I support this move to move from the judiciary to a non-judiciary setting. But I would like our colleagues to really dive into this issue because sa pag-interview, Sen. Grace very accurately mentioned the steps that we must go through, yun pong study, pinagdaanan ko po yan, pupunta ang DSWD social worker sa bahay mo, titingnan niya ang bahay niyo, kumusta ba kayo diyan sa bahay niyo, may aso ba kayo, may pusa ba kayo, may family problems ba kayo? Can you just imagine how much time and energy this takes? If you just count the number of social workers who will do this to the number of times they should go back, it's not even computerized. Sulat-kamay lang yan. So there is just so much that goes into this. Hindi pa ito nakarating sa judiciary, a lot of the delays and bottlenecks are with DSWD itself.

And this is not just me, this is also the advocates who attended these hearings, they testify to that. So I pray and hope that the sponsor would have an open mind on how we can tackle this problem, because I think all of us are one in wanting to provide a home for these children at the soonest possible time, but the right home as well. Because the opposite side of the coin of a hasty process is the danger of trafficking or of children being mismatched and put into bad homes. I just want to place that on record. Again, I support the chair on this, but I'd also like time to be able to find the best solution for our children.

Alam niyo ho yun, during the budget, I raised the fact na yung Php 35 million lang na budgetary requirement for personnel in DSWD, hanggang ngayon, hindi pa na-release. That was for 2020 budget. So yun pa lang, hindi nagagawa. What more pa? We will put into their hands yung pag-decide sa actual decision on where to place these children. If there will not be sufficient budgetary support, training, and all that, I am really saddened and scared by how the outcome of this will be.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Madame Chairperson.