Boost adoption rate through national target

Tony Abbott has ordered a committee to report on adoption in Australia in May. Jeremy Sammut urges the government to take action and boost the number of local adoptions from care.

In December 2013, the Abbott government announced plans to make it easier for Australian parents to adopt children both locally and from overseas. Acknowledging the official ‘taboo’ on adoption in Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott ordered an inter-departmental committee to recommend ways to take adoption out of the ‘too-hard basket.’ The committee will report to the May 2014 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

The chief barrier to more local adoptions is that state and territory child protection authorities almost never take legal action to free children for adoption, even for children who languish in Australia’s ever-expanding out-of-home care (OOHC) system with little prospect of safely returning home.

In 2012–13, there were only 210 local adoptions, despite more than 40,000 children being in care, and despite almost 28,000 of these children having been in care for more than two years.

The situation is actually bleaker than this. There were only 54 adoptions where the child was not previously ‘known’ to the adoptive parents, and in all these cases the birth mother and/or birth father consented to the adoption. Adoption is so rare partly because child protection authorities will not pursue this option without parental consent and will not apply to the courts to dispense with parental consent.

Of the remaining 154 ‘known’ adoptions, 78 were ‘step-parent’ adoptions, five were ‘relative’ and ‘other’ adoptions, and 81 were ‘carer’ adoptions—out of a care population of more than 40,000. Moreover, 78 of 81 carer adoptions were in NSW alone. The under-performance or non-performance on adoption from care by other states and territories speaks for itself.

This reflects official child protection policy in all states and territories. Standard practice is to keep children suffering abuse and neglect with their parents and to only remove them as a last and temporary resort after extensive family support services are provided. When removal into care finally occurs, extended efforts are made to reunite children with their dysfunctional parents. ‘Family preservation’ is the reason increasing numbers of children are languishing in care.

Australian child protection policy continues to resemble Einstein’s definition of madness—doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Abbott government should provide national leadership and take adoption out of the too-hard basket by setting national child protection performance targets, including boosting the number of local adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries within the next 10 years.