Ontario’s Expert Panel on Adoption - Input time
So here is the link if you are from Ontario and want to add your views please do so!
http://www.gov.on.ca/children/english/infertilityAdoption/index.html
So here is the link if you are from Ontario and want to add your views please do so!
http://www.gov.on.ca/children/english/infertilityAdoption/index.html
KB4b posted the following in a comment to the Arkansas post:
however, i could not agree with you too much on the adoption requirements on your other post. i think the two are very related since they are both barriers to persons being APs.
you should ask yourself if the process and hoops in Ontario and Canada and for that matter in the US create similar barriers to access to adoption as legislation such as this.
when it comes down to AP’s or prospective AP’s, if we are not criminals in the area of child related offences (i can list off the ones that any person would think are obvious), the hoops we should jump through to be AP’s should start and end there.
at that point, we have just as much right to be parents…PERIOD (gay, bi, hetro, rich, poor, in OK health or not great health, fat, skinny, trained or untrained in the area of adoption) as much as you are offended by putting up a very fine line, hoops are just another form of systematic discrimination.
any hoop that is there just because, is just as bad. this is my opinion and i most certainly will do something to change it.
It is an interesting point and I thought worthy of a response and maybe some discussion. Let’s me start with the premise that there should be as few barriers to “creating” prospective adoptive parents as possible as outlined by KB4b. I agree in principal, while disagreeing as to what the barriers should be. But let me pose this question. If such a system as he contemplated existed…where only the lack of a child related criminal record disqualified someone…what criteria or mechanism would be appropriate for matching children with parents.
For private adoptions, should prospective birthparents not have standardized information on adoptive parent candidates with which to make the most informed decision?
For public adoptions, should the guardian of the child (the state and its representative) not have more information that just a criminal record check with which to make the best possible matches? What other mechanism would be defensible. Surely not a “first come…first served” system.
For International Adoption is the issue not the same as for public adoptions? With most programs having far more applicants than there are children, isn’t it in the best interests of the child to do better than just a criminal record check. As subjective as the criteria might be and as much as it would be fair to argue which criteria is best, isn’t that better for the children than just finding the lowest common denominator in prospective adoptive parents?
Maybe I am elitist, but I think it is perfectly fair to look at health, income, preparedness, etc… when making these matches. Have we not all made this very assessment, using the same sort of criteria, when choosing who we would name as guardians for our children in the event of tragedy? Aren’t the situations essentially the same?
So the US Election wouldn’t normally be fodder for a blog about adoption in Canada, but the ballot measure of the title deserves comment.
This was the measure put on the ballot:
An act providing that an individual who is cohabitating outside of a valid marriage may not adopt or be a foster parent of a child less than eighteen years old.
And the result. Passed by a margin of 57%.
Yes you are reading it right. Over 570,000 people voted to say that it is better for a child to stay in foster care than to be adopted by two loving parents who don’t have a piece of paper saying they are married. Of course the further injustice is that a gay couple aren’t even allowed to get the required piece of paper.
I would like to say I am speechless at the injustice of this, but I am not. Bewildered…yes. Horrified…yes. Embarrassed for them and us as a society…yes.
One of the things that I don’t understand is that this Act seems to have become known as the “Ban on Gay Adoption Act”. Since the act is likely to affect far far more than just gay couples why was it characterized like that? Was this Act simply a way to try to avoid the legal pitfalls of an approach that more specifically targeted gay couples? If that is the case, as I suspect it is, then every single one of those who voted for it and every single eligible voter that didn’t vote should be deeply ashamed of themselves for allowing such a thing to pass.
Now let me say that I understand the realities of the world and that not everyone agrees on issues relating to family structure. I could even buy the argument that preference should be given to “traditional” families. I still wouldn’t necessarily agree, but why punish the children with such a sweeping Act?
I can only hope that some way will be found to ensure that this new law is struck down before a single child spends a single extra day without a loving family.
So I was on a discussion panel at the recent Adoption Resource Exchange saturday event down at the conference centre in Toronto. One of the questions asked was something along the lines of:
“Why oh why do we need to jump through all these hoops? Bio parents don’t need to do this. It all seems like too much and is discouraging.”
That is a paraphrase, but was my take away of his point anyway.
So how did I respond. Well I made two points.
1. In hindsight the paperchase is the easy part, so just put your head down and get it over with.
2. Adoption still has something of an image problem and taking care to make sure the “wrong” people don’t adopt is important.
That was what I could come up with off the top of my head, but I thought I would expand a bit on those answers here.
I believe the first of those two is even more true today than it was when we were paperchasing, but I also recognize that it is of little solace to those that are in the midst of paperchasing or trying to get started.
So what about the second point? Is the homestudy process really a useful screening tool? Does it help make adoptive parents “better”? I think the very short answer is yes. Could the process be improved? Most definitely!
So what do I believe is of value and not of value in the process:
So yes it isnt perfect, but I do think all the elements that go into the Homestudy do have value and improvements will continue to happen.