Adoption Council of Canada/ Conseil d'Adoption du Canada

MORE WORK NEEDED TO DIAGNOSE THE ILLS IN OUR ADOPTION SYSTEM

(Mar. 2, 2004) Three prominent Canadian researchers have called for greater efforts to investigate the declining state of adoption in Canada.

Speaking at the 2003 Annual General Meeting of the Adoption Council of Canada held in Toronto on Nov. 22, 2003, Gail Aitken, Nancy Cohen and Jean Becker called for:

better training for social workers to make the adoption system work faster.
research on the particular attachment needs of adopted children.
a national study on the state of Aboriginal adoption.

Gail Aitken, who taught Social Work at Ryerson University for 19 years, asked why we don't act on what we already know from adoption research. Two years ago the Sparrow Lake Alliance Task Force on Children in Limbo published a Permanency Planning report. A new study will show what happens to kids in care when they're crown wards. Focus groups on kids who were not adopted reveal heartbreaking stories. A 15-year-old just wants a placement stable enough to last two years. A 17-year-old just wants to be told that somebody loves them.

Training in adoption for social workers is lacking and services are not available. Permanency planning is needed to get kids placed faster; authorities and agencies need to share information. Contact with birth family members should be possible for children over 4 or 5.

Her list of adoption research needs includes:

An update to a 5 year-old study of social workers' attitudes to openness.
A comparative study of public and private adoption: why adoptive parents choose one or the other.
Make it known that few children in care are being placed for adoption despite funding increases to CASs. Of the 18,000 kids in care in Ontario alone, 8,000 are crown wards, which is 56% more than five years ago. CAS funding has gone up 80% in five years.
Make it known how multiple placements are undermining bonding. Of the crown wards, 42% are over age seven; 37% have had three or more placements; 43% have three or more workers in three years.

Nancy Cohen, researcher and clinician with the C.M. Hincks Research Institute in Toronto, did a post-adoption study with Jim Duvall in 1993 for York Region Children's Aid Society. They compared adoptive and non-adoptive families presenting for mental health services and found that adoptive families used the services but had more strengths, and that adoption was treated as a pathology. We need information to see if this has changed.

Nancy Cohen's Family Attachment Program and Manual offered therapy and help with the stresses of forming a family. Some children have attachment problems. There are not enough post-adoption services.

The private adoption agencies Children's Bridge and Open Arms for Adoption approached her four years ago to do a study to see if findings of Elinor Ames' Romanian orphans study apply to adoption from China. The Canadian Institutes for Health Research funded a study of how 70 children developed. Findings have helped Children's Bridge train new parents in ways to improve attachment. More research on attachment is needed; pediatricians and other professionals must be educated about differences from non-adopted children.

Jean Becker, of the University of Waterloo, has research interests which arise from her situation as a Métis from Labrador with a white daughter adopted 34 years ago. As part of her Ph.D. research on Aboriginal adoptees, she approached Anne Westhues of Wilfred Laurier University about the need for a national study on the state of Aboriginal adoption. In the "60s Scoop" Aboriginal children were seized and shipped out to adoptive homes, and some of the impact on the Aboriginal community is known. There are no reliable statistics. Permanency often did not result.

Both Jean Becker and researcher Jeannine Carriere of the University of Calgary are convinced that Aboriginal adoption research must be expanded to see the impact on Metis, non-status and Inuit. We need to define the "best interests of the child" and see similarities and differences with non-Aboriginal adoption. She suspects differences. In court cases involving disputes between families and bands, it may or may not be best for children to stay where they are. The court process is adversarial, and if left alone, the parties might be able to resolve the case amicably in a few hours.

The national study should consider the relationship between aboriginal adoptions and non-aboriginal adoptions and examine both adoption and foster care. Foster care could be as permanent as adoption in Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal families can't adopt the children in their care since they will lose financial supports.

Issues of severity need to be addressed, given the high numbers of Aboriginal children in care, out of proportion to the size of the population. The national study needs to address frankly the fears of the aboriginal community about adoption, that adoption has become another form of assimilation, like the residential schools. The study needs to look into government policies and practices.

We should make available the many unpublished Ph.D. and M.A. theses on Aboriginal adoption.

We need funding and researchers working on issues of child poverty and child welfare. And we need more public awareness to increase the pressure on government to act on the broader issues for Aboriginal children.

Summary by Elspeth Ross, Adoption Council of Canada.

Source: Adoption Council of Canada, www.adoption.ca

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