International Social Service or ISS is an international charitable, non-governmental organisation. It provides assistance in cases of family breakdowns with an international aspect, for example ascertaining a child's best interest where divorced parents live in different countries. It was founded in 1924, and was originally called International Migration Service, changing to its present name in 1946. According to its website, International Social Service (ISS) helps individuals, children and families confronted with social problems involving two, or more, countries as a consequence of international migration or displacement. As an international not-for-profit organisation, it is active in around 140 countries through a network of national branches, affiliated bureaus and correspondents. Each year, it provides services to more than 50,000 people throughout the world. It deals with issues related to voluntary or forced movement across borders, international family conflicts, family separation prevention, issues concerning child protection in family separation (Custody / visiting rights and maintenance payments, etc.), child abduction, alternative care, foster care, national and intercountry adoption, search of origin, voluntary or forced migrations and protection and care of unaccompanied or separated minors in the countries of origin and receiving countries. It provides intercountry social and legal casework, counselling for individuals and professionals, research and analysis, project management, information diffusion and advocacy.
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The parents of Budi separated one year after he was born. The father left the area and the mother was not able to care for her son so she asked his grandmother to look after him until she could find work. During the years that followed the boy did not hear anything from his father and the mother had very irregular contact with her own mother and son. Eventually the grandmother remarried and moved with her new husband and Budi to live in Spain. The child integrated well, attended school and learnt the language. When the boy was 12 years old the grandmother applied to the Spanish authorities to formalise her guardianship of Budi. The Spanish social services found that the child lived in a secure and loving environment. ISS were asked to help locate the parents and inform them of the application for the transfer of custody, counsel them on their rights and, if appropriate, obtain their consent to this process. The colleagues in Singapore managed to locate the mother and she gave her written consent. The father could not be found. Custody of Budi was transferred to the grandmother by the Spanish authorities.
In 2006, Martin Boyle, the father of Rebeca Rezende Boyle, a child living in Brazil with her Brazilian mother, Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende, approached ISS UK for assistance in locating her. Many years before, Rebeca's mother had disappeared with Rebeca and had refused to respond to her former husband's requests for information and contact and refused to acknowledge the receipt of any money that he sent. Martin had been to Brazil and had tried using lawyers, the British Consul General in Sao Paulo, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, his local MP and the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Office of the Official Solicitor, the Brazilian Special Secretariat for Human Rights and attempted to make a request under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction all to no avail. Rebeca's mother, with the connivance of her parents, Maria Jose Oliveira Rezende and Milton Pessoa Rezende, Sales Director of the L. S. Starrett Company, refused to respond to him or to say where she was. ISS UK contacted Susanna Malinski of the Industrial Social Services or Serviço Social da Indústria SESIRS, their correspondent in Brazil, who attempted to contact Rebeca's mother through local social services in Itu in the state of Sao Paulo. For over six months in 2007, Itu Social Services kept trying to approach Rebeca's grandparents at their address in an enclosed and guarded condominium in the town and were repeatedly turned away by armed guards. After six months, Rebeca's mother arranged a meeting with Itu Social Services, but failed to keep the appointment. After seven months, she contacted Itu Social Services posing as a lawyer, Araci Ferreira Alves Lopes de Oliveira, of São José dos Campos in the state of Sao Paulo and told them, falsely, that Boyle was legally forbidden from entering Brazil and that any request for information needed to go through her, the lawyer. In May 2008, Martin received a response in the form of an official report from Itu Social Services relating the attempts they had made to locate Rebeca and what her parents and grandparents had told them. At the same time, Itu Social Services, in full knowledge of the background of Martin's desperate attempts to contact his daughter, stated in the report that Rebeca's mother had stated that Rebeca was happy with her new family andnew little brother, who she loved very much.When Martin contacted the lawyer named in the report, she denied all knowledge of Rebeca's mother, but said that a woman had approached her office several weeks earlier and had taken her card. The report was transmitted back to Martin through SESIRS and ISS UK. When ISS UK attempted to contact their correspondent in Brazil for further clarification, they were met with silence. Desperate, Martin flew to Brazil himself and was arrested at Guarulhos International Airport on a false charge of non-payment of child support and held in a 3m X 4m cell with 20 men for 15 days. While in prison, he was told that Rebeca had been fraudulently adopted by her stepfather Jose Augusto dos Santos Sa, of Sao Jose dos Campos, and that her birth certificate had been altered and his name removed. This was done on perjured evidence stating that Martin had disappeared and could not be found. When Martin finally returned to the UK, still with no idea where his daughter was because her mother and stepfather had been moving from address to address to avoid being located, he attempted to get ISS UK to report the matter to the Secretariat in Geneva, he was told that his case worker had left. As of June 2010, Martin has still been unable to locate or speak to his daughter, who has been told that he has disappeared and does not want to know her. All of his attempts to contact Rebeca's family go unanswered and ignored and his lawyer's attempts to have Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende and Jose Augusto Dos Santos Sa summonsed for child abduction and fraudulent adoption have failed because of the connivance of Rebeca's grandparents and the Brazilian jeitinho. ISS UK claim to have been powerless to do anything, but at the same abandoned all sense of urgency and determination when it became clear that the Brazilian correspondent was unwilling to pursue the matter.[1][2]