Blessing, Destiny and Victoria still unsure of the future

Three migrant toddlers, who were saved from drowning boats, remain at a children's home while a care plan deciding their future is drafted.

Ruth Sciberras, Agenzija Appogg's children services manager, said the plan could include fostering and, later, adoption for the three girls.

The infants were plucked from the waters earlier this year when two boats carrying immigrants crossing from Africa in search of a better life in Europe sunk.

Blessing, aged one, was the first to be rescued in June. Her parents and brother are thought to have drowned. Although she was soon reunited with a woman who claimed to be her aunt, the Cameroonian-Nigerian infant was later taken back to the Ursuline Sisters Crèche after the woman admitted she was not a relative.

In September, two sisters, named Destiny and Victoria by the nuns, joined Blessing at the crèche after being saved from the sea. The girls are believed to have been travelling with their mother, who drowned during the fateful voyage.

The siblings cannot be put up for adoption yet because the law demands that attempts to find their father need to be made first, the outgoing head of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, Joe Gerada said.

He said the foundation supported the idea that children were fostered rather than taken care of in orphanages if they cannot be adopted. But this was not easy because foster carers are not easily found, Ms Sciberras said.

Alex Tortell, operations director within the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry, said the authorities were closely looking at the situation of the migrant children in care, cautioning that this was not a fast process.

"The long-term goal is for them to be adopted or fostered," he said, adding that nobody had come forward to claim paternity or maternity of the three children.