Covid Kinship Bursary Fund

Please give whatever you can to our Covid Kinship Bursary Fund, enabling families in the UK to adopt their child relatives in India who have sadly been orphaned due to Covid-19.

These children are extremely vulnerable, having faced the unimaginable trauma of recently losing both parents and in some cases grandparents and other carers to the virus. The Indian authorities estimate that to date over 30,000 have been directly affected. Some of those children have family living in the UK who wish to adopt them. We wish to help these families to provide the loving home these children now so desperately need.

Preparing, assessing and supporting prospective adopters is a costly service as it quite rightly is governed by regulations to ensure the child’s best interests are safeguarded. When a child in the UK is adopted from care, this cost is met by local and central government; but when a child is adopted from abroad, even by a relative, it is the adoptive parents that must bear these fees. The financial implications are huge – around £25,000 and this is an outlay that none of these families have anticipated or planned for.

Our Covid Kinship Bursary Fund will mitigate this cost for families affected, ensuring children orphaned by Covid in India may be adopted by their extended family in the UK. We want to help these vulnerable children to overcome the devastating consequences of the pandemic, heal and achieve their full potential. Thank you.