PREGNANCY

Myth: Kids in care need privacy more than they need families.
Adoption advocates have been trying for years to sound the alarm about the number of Canadian children in the care of child welfare authorities — estimated at 76,000 by the Adoption Council of Canada (ACC). Of those, about 22,000 are available for adoption because the ties with their birth families have been legally severed. Most of these kids fall into the category of special needs, whether because of age (some provinces give this designation to any child older than two), a diagnosis of an existing or potential condition, the fact that they’re in sibling groups, or other factors. And some have survived a rough start, such as neglect or prenatal exposure to drugs.

There’s strong consensus that a committed “forever family” is a far better place for a child to grow up than foster homes or group homes. “Every child deserves a permanent home,” says Barbara MacKinnon, executive director of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa. But concerns for privacy and fears about commodifying adoptable kids have interfered with past efforts at recruiting families for particular children.

That’s changing, as the number of waiting children has moved to the front burner in several provinces. New Brunswick launched an aggressive ad campaign in 2002 to raise awareness of all the kids waiting for families; it also hired an additional 25 social workers to help find permanent homes for them. In 2003, the Alberta Ministry of Children’s Services launched a website featuring real first names, photos and profiles of individual children, accessible to any Web surfer; other such sites have tended to be protected by passwords, or use pseudonyms to mask the kids’ identity. The Alberta site (child.gov.ab.ca/whatwedo/adoption/profilelookup.cfm) generated a storm of publicity upon its launch, when the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner complained that the profiles gave too much personal information, some of it medical. Now revamped, the profiles walk a fine line between description and labelling, and the interest remains high.

To the squeamish, it’s advertising — making kids into merchandise. To believers, it’s finding children families. Whatever your view, the numbers tell a compelling story: In the year after Alberta’s site was launched, the number of parents applying to adopt jumped by 63 percent, and 42 percent of the children profiled on the site were matched with adoptive parents. In New Brunswick, 363 kids in care have been placed for adoption since the project began.

Along with the push to place kids in permanent homes comes a new recognition of the importance of post-adoption support, financial and otherwise, especially for families who adopt children with special needs. While some provinces offer subsidies to some adoptive parents, the funding is spotty and, in some cases, falls well short of the money those same families would receive for fostering the children. Sandra Scarth, president of the ACC, puts it this way: “Why would you not pay people to adopt if you’re paying them for foster care?” She’d like to see a thorough review of subsidy policies, with an emphasis on the needs of the children, not the means of the adoptive family.

Originally published in Today's Parent, July 2005