According to the 2022 Activity Report of the National Council for Adoption (CNA), the reduction in the number of adoptions drops to half, if the numbers from 2016 are taken into account, when 361 adoptions were registered, and continues a downward trend since 2019, when there were 206 adoptions.

Candidates' preference continues to fall on children up to the age of six, who are healthy or have mild health problems and who can be adopted alone, without siblings, a “factor of concern” for the CNA, which points out the “considerable number of children who transition from year to year”, awaiting adoption, and which are those who are over seven years old, have serious health problems or are disabled.

Even so, the CNA highlights that in 2022 there were 45 proposals to adopt children between the ages of seven and 15.

In 2022, there were 14 interrupted adoption processes, four during the transition period – moving from the foster home or family to the adopting family – and 10 in the pre-adoption period, when the child is already living with the family adoptive.

Among the reasons given are “lack of empathy towards the child and the difficulty they have in expressing emotions”, idealized expectations in terms of emotional displays, inflexible attitudes and prejudices towards “more challenging behaviours (petty theft, lies , sexualised behaviours, aggression)”.

In 2022, only 15 applications had to wait a year or less for adoption, with an average waiting time remaining between six and seven years, which leads the CNA to recommend adapting applications to the profile of children in adoption, highlighting that the long waiting time also has consequences for the motivation of candidates.

“Experience shows that the time lag between the certification of suitability to adopt and the moment of integration of a child, despite successive reassessments, can have a negative impact on the success of the adoption, both in terms of weakening motivation and in terms of respects the ability of families to adapt to changes resulting from the integration of a child”, points out the CNA.