ADOPTION
Whether your work focus is foster care, residential care or transitioning from care, here’s a question for you. In your view, is large-scale adoption from Out-of-home Care (OOHC):
Part of your jurisdiction’s past but not part of its future?
Part of your jurisdiction’s past and part of its future?
Not part of your jurisdiction’s past but part of its future?
Neither part of your jurisdiction’s past or its future?
I always try to be mindful that we all work in different child welfare contexts. As a short-cut I sometimes use the long-established research-based model developed by the American Neil Gilbert (1997), which differentiates between key characteristics of western Child Protection orientated Anglo-American countries (Australia, Canada, England, and the US), and those of Family Service orientated Northern European countries (Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, with Norway subsequently included). In 2011 along with Nigel Parton (UK) and Marit Skivenes (Norway), Gilbert usefully re-developed the model to incorporate a third orientation – a child focus. In reality of course, countries are to varying degrees a mix of orientations, which can and do change over time and within countries there may also be differences across states, provinces, territories and local authorities/municipalities/counties.
However, like all models, this one is useful – until it is not. When we look across these and other Anglo-American western countries (i.e. New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and, the Republic of Ireland) two related differences that these two models do not identify are clearly apparent.
Firstly, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have large populations of Indigenous people, with such children also being significantly over-represented amongst those in out-of-home care (OOHC).
Secondly, to a large degree these three countries use adoption significantly less than other Anglo-American countries, and for cultural reasons particularly so for Indigenous children. By way of contrast, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in the US in 2017, 58,200 children from OOHC alone were adopted; this represents 24% of all children existing OOHC that year and is more than both guardianship and placing with relatives.
Adoption is a legal construct that permanently transfers parental responsibility from a child's birth parents to adoptive parents. Adoption is a historical construct that has sometimes put the needs of childless couples over the needs of children and their best interests. Adoption, and in particular adoption from OOHC, can also be seen as a political construct that in part reflects a set of views on the role of government, limiting government expenditure on the poor, and the promotion of the virtues of some families and their needs and wishes, over others.
Adoption from OOHC has undoubtedly served some children well, and has provided some of them with a loving and permanent home. However it can come with other consequences and we need to ensure that all children in OOHC have a loving and permanent homes that meets their full range of needs. That requires strengthening OOHC systems and their effectiveness as well as a commitment to and investment in more universal family support provision, preventative services that are valued by families and a meaningful, skilled and effective focus on family reunification and support.
With our ongoing challenges to recruit (and retain) foster carers with both the motivation and capability to foster, there are growing questions about the continuing sustainability of many of our current OOHC systems; the human and financial impact of COVID is exacerbating those challenges further. However, irrespective of whether you currently see large-scale adoption from OOHC as part of your jurisdiction’s past or future, as professionals we, alongside and with others, need to be having more conversations about the future of OOHC and the place of adoption within in.