The Child Welfare League Foundation has been temporarily barred from providing adoption and foster services until an appropriate plan is in place to improve staffing issues, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Li-feng (李麗芬) said yesterday.
The foundation has been at the center of a controversy involving the death of a one-year-old child under its care.
The Taipei City Government referred the case to the foundation, which temporarily placed the boy in the home of a contracted caregiver surnamed Liu (劉) while it tried to adopt him.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
The boy was allegedly abused to death by Liu in December last year.
In addition to halting new adoptions, ongoing adoptions may continue under supervision by local governments, with more visitations by officials and foundation staff, Lee told a news conference in Taipei.
The foundation has been found in need of an internal staffing review, and would be barred from providing adoption services until it is complete, she said.
After the foundation submits a report with a plan for improvement, and a review meeting with a group of experts, the Taipei and New Taipei City governments and the foundation on Friday, the ministry would reassess whether it may resume its activities, she added.
There are 468 children in Taiwan awaiting adoption and 200 of them are younger than three years old, Lee said, there are currently eight organizations in Taiwan involved in facilitating adoptions.
“The local government gave up too early,” Lee said, adding that the ministry believes that the adoption follow-up process should not be left solely under the purview of civic groups.
Liu and her younger sister have been detained on suspicion of child abuse and causing injuries leading to death, but have yet to be charged.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its