Adoption is an unjustifiably laborious, bureaucratic and expensive process in many so-called 'developed' countries, with domestic adoption being the hardest route of all.
It's bad enough if you are a would-be parent, waiting to adopt a baby or child you have never met, but imagine if you have been acting as a parent to a child for many years, wanting to adopt him or her as your own, only to have him taken away from you and moved on to another home.
Imagine if you are that child who simply yearns for a loving, permanent home, with the people you consider your parents, but whom you cannot legally call mum and dad, and from whom you could be removed at any time.
Open adoption is not even a faint hope for most foster families and their foster children. Some families wait for eight years or more.
Almost 50,000 Australian children are in out-of-home care (20,000 of whom are in NSW alone), and are unable to live with their parents for many different reasons.
In 2013-14 there were 317 adoptions in Australia, 114 were from overseas and 203 were local. Of these, 46 were arranged privately, 68 involved step-parents or relations formally adopting a child, and only 89 confirmed new parents for children from out-of-home care.
National Children's commissioner Megan Mitchell has urged senators to look at the US and UK, where policymakers have aggressively pursued adoption for children in care.
"Foster care is a temporary setting and not a place for children to grow up in," she said in an interview with The Australian. "We know that lots of children wash around the system … they cannot attach to a school or an educational pathway or particular carers".
When children cannot safely stay with their parents, out-of-home care is an option, but one that the outgoing Chief Exec of Barnardos, Louis Voigt believes does not necessarily lead to a better result.
"We have seen children as young as nine who have been moved 32 times", she said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.
While there are many thousands of loving foster parents out there looking after children who desperately need stability, the system itself is flawed.
"The foster care system is a maladjusted, damaging system for children. We find the evidence of it in suicides, prisons, mental health and homelessness", said Ms Voigt.
A crucial part of organisations like Barnados is the process of trying to keep vulnerable families intact, but some parents simply can't or shouldn't be caring for their children and consequently Ms Voigt has spent much of her 32 years at Barnardos campaigning for easier adoption.
"When we started, adoption was demonised and I have been attacked for believing this was important," she said.
"It's because of our history. We were not talking about taking children forcibly from parents. We were talking about children who had already been permanently removed from their families of origin. Where it is too unsafe for that child to stay with their family."
Fiona and her family know all about the frustrations of the adoption system.
As a mother of one adopted and one foster child, she is waiting for the slow wheels of adoption paperwork to turn.
After a year of welcoming and nurturing her foster child into her home, a Section 90 appeal supported by Legal Aid attempted to return the child to his birth mum. Fiona intervened in the District Court process, fought FACS and Legal Aid barristers and won. Today her foster child is still with her and Fiona's family work hard to ensure a strong relationship between the child and his birth family.
Sadly, this is not the case for all permanent care foster families. Open adoption is where relationships with the birth family are encouraged and supported and contact plans agreed in the Supreme Court. Many children who were promised open adoption in their care plan, and who thought they had a permanent, safe and loving foster home forever, are threatened with being sent back, years later, to their birth homes.
"Kids need the best start in life with stable day care an important part of that for many families", says Fiona. "There are thousands of foster children in our country, in a Government care system, where many are unable to settle into a permanent home, because it hasn't been decided yet what to do with them. Children can literally wander the out-of-home-care system for years and from a very early age. It's common for kids to churn through eight or more homes", she said.
Many children, more than you would think, experience the merry-go-round of multiple homes and multiple day care and school placements. It can be very destabilising and incredibly traumatic for them.
"At the moment open adoption is only 0.4% of the solution for kids in care, despite the pleadings of many wonderful families who would adopt if they could", said Fiona. "Studies show kids do better in life once adopted into a loving family - consistent care, consistent schooling and a permanent home".
The Government has the rhetoric, but not the follow through - only about 30 FACS staff are currently working on adoption across NSW. There are over 800 families waiting and many more would step forward if they thought they would be able to adopt.
There is now an online petition to the NSW Government, calling on the NSW Premier and new Minister for FACS to streamline and expedite the adoption of foster children with permanent care orders already living with authorised foster families who have applied to FACS to adopt their foster children.
The petition asks the government to allocate proper resources to have the processes undertaken to lodge the applications with the Supreme Court by the end of 2015. It's simply a matter of more staff to organise paperwork and conduct assessments. No legislative change is needed - it's just about priorities.
If you are a foster parent looking to adopt, or if you are just a concerned member of the public who believes that children in care need a more stable family home, sign the online petition calling on the NSW Government to streamline the adoption of foster children in care, click here to make a difference. |
