Amendments to Jamaica’s adoption laws and administrative changes at the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) will help make the adoption process less burdensome, says Education Minister Dr Dana Morris Dixon.

The minister noted, too, that critical to the process is a framework around fostering.

“We have to look at how we can make the process go quicker. We have to look at, obviously, the right of the parent versus the right of the child and how we can move it along more quickly. We have a lot of children in state care, and we all know that the best place for our children is in a home with a loving family. It’s a family structure that you want them in, and so we have a responsibility to move that along more quickly, but legally, based on the Adoption Act, we are not able to move it at the speed we want to from that basis,” she said.