The Government is looking into adoption options for children in homes and foster families.

There are about 600 children who fall in this category and the situation of another 350 children is being assessed. A further 60 have been assessed but are still waiting to be assigned a foster family or accepted by a children’s home.

During a visit to St Joseph Home in Sta Venera, Social Solidarity Minister Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca said talks were underway with Justice Parliamentary Secretary Owen Bonnici to evaluate how children in care could be given the opportunity to be adopted.

She said such children had a fundamental right to a family. The Government would be evaluating every case, involving the children themselves in the evaluation.

In 2010, then Family Minister Dolores Cristina had insisted that children who had no hope of ever being reunited with their natural parents should be given up for adoption because they had the sacrosanct right to live within a family.

She wanted to see the courts exercise more often their right to remove parental rights and give children up for adoption.

Ms Coleiro Preca commended the care plans at St Joseph Home and St Patrick’s Boys’ Institute in Sliema, which she visited recently. In both homes, residents who turn 18 go through a half-way house system that helps them get on their feet in the employment sector.