Australia - Andrew Shaw looks at issues around adoption in Australia, and specifically how proposed new laws in Queensland could benefit gay and lesbian carers...
At the start of August, when the Queensland government announced that the state’s laws would be amended to allow same-sex couples and singles to adopt, the response on social media was ecstatic – and bemused.
If gays and lesbians were trusted to take on responsibilities for children and adoption laws could be passed without a plebiscite, what was the problem with marriage equality? In many people’s minds the two issues are linked. But marriage has nothing to do with children in the eyes of the law, says Rodney Chiang-Cruise from Gay Dads Australia.
“While this is great news on many, many levels, practically it’s not going to make a huge difference immediately,” he says of the Queensland announcement. “But going forward five, ten, fifteen years, it may be quite a significant piece of legislation.”
The fact is, adoption in Australia has been steadily falling for some time. Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) show 292 adoptions were finalised in 2014-15, the lowest annual number of adoptions on record.
The history of adoption in Australia went through a conservative period in the 1970s and 80s due to the legacy of the stolen generation. Instead of adoption, foster care was considered the solution. Parents were still parents, but did not have to be responsible for child care on a daily basis. According to adoption agency Barnardos Australia, some 40,000 Australian children rely on foster care, and agencies have been fostering out children to gay and lesbian carers for decades.
But there are restrictions on foster carers that affect the lives of the children: overseas/interstate travel must be approved, for example, and a child that has been fostered for a decade can never be sure that they will not be removed from the security of their foster home.
Adoption aside, Chiang-Cruise is more concerned with Australian laws that leave surrogate children without legal parents. “I’m the father of a nine year old by surrogacy with my partner; one of us is the bio dad, one is not. Neither of us is considered legal parents here. That child has no legal parents in Australia.”
He told QP (Queensland Pride magazine) that Queensland’s adoption laws may help in situations where a bio dad from a straight relationship is raising a child with his male partner, who may be able to able for second parent adoption provided the mother doesn’t object.
The concept of open adoption, around for decades, is now gaining currency. Open adoption (as opposed to ‘closed adoption’) is where the child is aware of their bio parents and has contact with them. Open adoption could be by a long-term foster carer – 94 of the adoptions in 2014-15 were by carers. In some situations where mental illness is involved, this may be without the parents’ consent, but in the majority of cases the agreement is mutually undertaken.
Barnardos Australia is a strong advocate for open adoption, creating the Centre for Excellence in Open Adoption a couple of years ago. Barnardo’s senior manager of program services, Dr Susan Tregeagle, told QP that open adoption, where the child sees their parents or siblings or other kin a few times a year, is essential for children’s personal sense of identity and understanding of where they come from.
“In open adoption, adoptive parents have full parental responsibility and the child no longer has the instability of potentially many different foster care placements,” Tregeagle says.
“This really gives children a strong sense of belonging to a family for life and being able to finally settle down. Children feel much safer under these arrangements and begin to thrive.”
Tregeagle says Barnardos and the NSW government handle the bulk of adoptions from foster care in Australia, and is advocating strongly for other states and territories to follow suit with reforms that encourage more open adoption of children from foster care where appropriate.
Chiang-Cruise thinks that although Queensland’s proposed new legislation may follow suit (a draft bill has not been released yet), adoption from foster care is more likely to happen in NSW.
“They’ve taken a more modern view of foster care in terms of trying to move towards giving kids legal parents who can look after them. Historically, the position throughout Australia has been a reluctance to take a foster child and allow them to be adopted – to straight families as well. It’s a hangover of the stolen generation. They don’t want to be breaking up families.
“But NSW has taken some steps in recent years to address that and there a number of people in NSW who are going through the process of adopting long-term foster care kids.”
While parents, carers and children wait to see how their lives will be affected by the new law, the final word on adoption goes to a poster on social media who seemed bemused by the inequality she found inherent in the situation:
“Just doesn't make sense to me,” wrote Barbara. “How do they arrive at these decisions? You can raise children, but can’t be married?”
At the start of August, when the Queensland government announced that the state’s laws would be amended to allow same-sex couples and singles to adopt, the response on social media was ecstatic – and bemused.
If gays and lesbians were trusted to take on responsibilities for children and adoption laws could be passed without a plebiscite, what was the problem with marriage equality? In many people’s minds the two issues are linked. But marriage has nothing to do with children in the eyes of the law, says Rodney Chiang-Cruise from Gay Dads Australia.
“While this is great news on many, many levels, practically it’s not going to make a huge difference immediately,” he says of the Queensland announcement. “But going forward five, ten, fifteen years, it may be quite a significant piece of legislation.”
The fact is, adoption in Australia has been steadily falling for some time. Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) show 292 adoptions were finalised in 2014-15, the lowest annual number of adoptions on record.
The history of adoption in Australia went through a conservative period in the 1970s and 80s due to the legacy of the stolen generation. Instead of adoption, foster care was considered the solution. Parents were still parents, but did not have to be responsible for child care on a daily basis. According to adoption agency Barnardos Australia, some 40,000 Australian children rely on foster care, and agencies have been fostering out children to gay and lesbian carers for decades.
But there are restrictions on foster carers that affect the lives of the children: overseas/interstate travel must be approved, for example, and a child that has been fostered for a decade can never be sure that they will not be removed from the security of their foster home.
Adoption aside, Chiang-Cruise is more concerned with Australian laws that leave surrogate children without legal parents. “I’m the father of a nine year old by surrogacy with my partner; one of us is the bio dad, one is not. Neither of us is considered legal parents here. That child has no legal parents in Australia.”
He told QP (Queensland Pride magazine) that Queensland’s adoption laws may help in situations where a bio dad from a straight relationship is raising a child with his male partner, who may be able to able for second parent adoption provided the mother doesn’t object.
The concept of open adoption, around for decades, is now gaining currency. Open adoption (as opposed to ‘closed adoption’) is where the child is aware of their bio parents and has contact with them. Open adoption could be by a long-term foster carer – 94 of the adoptions in 2014-15 were by carers. In some situations where mental illness is involved, this may be without the parents’ consent, but in the majority of cases the agreement is mutually undertaken.
Barnardos Australia is a strong advocate for open adoption, creating the Centre for Excellence in Open Adoption a couple of years ago. Barnardo’s senior manager of program services, Dr Susan Tregeagle, told QP that open adoption, where the child sees their parents or siblings or other kin a few times a year, is essential for children’s personal sense of identity and understanding of where they come from.
“In open adoption, adoptive parents have full parental responsibility and the child no longer has the instability of potentially many different foster care placements,” Tregeagle says.
“This really gives children a strong sense of belonging to a family for life and being able to finally settle down. Children feel much safer under these arrangements and begin to thrive.”
Tregeagle says Barnardos and the NSW government handle the bulk of adoptions from foster care in Australia, and is advocating strongly for other states and territories to follow suit with reforms that encourage more open adoption of children from foster care where appropriate.
Chiang-Cruise thinks that although Queensland’s proposed new legislation may follow suit (a draft bill has not been released yet), adoption from foster care is more likely to happen in NSW.
“They’ve taken a more modern view of foster care in terms of trying to move towards giving kids legal parents who can look after them. Historically, the position throughout Australia has been a reluctance to take a foster child and allow them to be adopted – to straight families as well. It’s a hangover of the stolen generation. They don’t want to be breaking up families.
“But NSW has taken some steps in recent years to address that and there a number of people in NSW who are going through the process of adopting long-term foster care kids.”
While parents, carers and children wait to see how their lives will be affected by the new law, the final word on adoption goes to a poster on social media who seemed bemused by the inequality she found inherent in the situation:
“Just doesn't make sense to me,” wrote Barbara. “How do they arrive at these decisions? You can raise children, but can’t be married?”
Source: gaynewsnetwork
0 Comments