Adoption Crusaders

There has been a lot of media attention on adoption policy lately, partly on the back of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s annual report Adoptions Austraila.

Most of the media attention is your typical sensationalist nonsense, but it is also, even worse, driven by particular ideological interest groups with very little interest in the truth.

For example, Joanna Howe wrote for Fairfax a few of weeks ago under the headling Reports reveal adoption laws failing children. Joanna writes that, “Two landmark reports released this month reveal that Australia’s adoption laws are desperately failing our children.”

This statement is demonstrably untrue on a number of counts.

One of the reports is the AIHW annual report, which is hardly a “landmark” report, given that it is published annually and the most recent report tells us nothing surprising – just a continuation of established trends.

The other report is hardly “landmark” either, put together by a small-time interest group called the Women’s Forum Australia. Scroll to the bottom of Joanna’s article and you’ll find that she is on the research committee of the group. Try to follow the link and you’ll find you have to purchase a copy of the report to read it. Landmark indeed!

The other assertion, which is contestable if not downright untrue, is that the laws are “failing our children”.

The Women’s Forum Australia website argues for changes to Australian adoption laws, which the group labels as “among the worst in the developed world”. The principal rationale provided by the group for adoption reform is that there are so many families wanting to adopt, but waiting times, high costs and red tape all get in the way. That’s right, it’s all about the poor families wanting children. The needs of children themselves rate as a mere side-note in this construction of adoption. Instead, adoptable children are a commodity, and one that is in short supply.

So are the laws failing our children? Or are they failing to supply chidlren to families who feel they are entitled to a child?

Let’s assume that the Women’s Forum is genuinely interested in the welfare of the children. On that basis, let’s consider some of their claims.

The first issue raised by the Women’s Forum is that adoptions are in decline. Joanna Howe’s Fairfax article claims:

A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that adoptions in Australia have now hit an all-time low. There were only 317 adoptions in Australia in 2013-14, down 9 per cent from the previous year and 76 per cent from 1989-90.

This is generally true. In Australia, the number of adoptions has decreased quite a bit over the past five years, from 413 in 2009-10 to 317 in 2013-14.

However, this decrease has been almost entirely in intercountry adoptions, which have dropped from 223 in 2009-10 to 114 in 2013-14.

Despite the decrease in adoptions being those of children from overseas, groups like the Women’s Forum often talk as though Australian adoptions are in decline, which is demonstrably untrue. Over the past five years, the numbers of known and local adoptions have remained stable. Known adoptions (where the child had a pre-existing relationship with their adoptive parent) have increased from 129 to 157 between 2009-10 and 2013-14, hovering around the five year average of 139 per year. Local adoptions (Australian children put up for adoption by strangers) have decreased slightly over the same time (to 46), but remain around the five year average of 52 per year.

Adoptions in Australia

As a result, Australian (known and local) adoptions have been growing as a proportion of all adoptions over the past five years.

Adoptions in Australia

The Women’s Forum presents a solution to our baby supply deficit problem, by pointing out that there is a plenty of children in this country who could be adopted. They tell us on their website:

At the same time there are almost 40,000 children in out-of-home care. That's almost 40,000 children who could benefit from a loving, secure and stable family situation with adoptive parents.

And Joanna Howe repeats the same line in her Fairfax piece, claiming that the Adoption Rethink report provides a wealth of evidence that this would benefit children.

You can begin to see why they skirt around the fact that the drop in numbers is in intercountry adoptions: they try to use the overall decrease, as though it is an expression of declining domestic adoptions, to argue for increasing the numbers of domestic adoptions by tapping the rich vein of kids in the child protection system. But there is a problem with this plan to adopt children from out-of-home care. The idea that these children could be adopted out in great numbers is based on a number of misunderstandings about the child protection system.

Of the thousands of children living with foster carers across Australia, many of them have challenging needs. The “heroic efforts of the carers” (To quote Joanna Howe) are backed up by financial support from government child protection agencies, support from carer agencies, and a range of health, education and therapeutic services for the children. If children’s needs cannot be met by these combined efforts, how might an adoptive family cope? Our adoption crusaders provide no answers, but simply reiterate their rhetoric about “stability” and “permanency”, as though these words are a kind of incantation that will magically transform the circumstances of the children.

Instead of explaining how adoption might help these children, Joanna Howe tells us that, “The research shows that adopted children scored higher in IQ tests, school performance and lack of behavioural problems than children placed in institutions, foster care or remaining with birth parents unable to provide appropriate care.” The trouble with research like this is the old chicken-and-egg conundrum. Do adopted children do better because they’re adopted, or is it simply that they haven’t had the same adverse childhood experiences that almost all children in out-of-home care have had? These are the sorts of “facts” that raise more questions than they answer.

These kinds of groups also promote a common misconception that the number of children entering out-of-home care is constantly on the rise. In fact, the opposite is true: each year, less children are entering out-of-home care. The number of kids in the system are growing, but this is a function of the time they spend in the system (see graph below), rather than a growing number of entrants.

Make no mistake: there are a lot of children in out-of-home care in Australia, and some of these children would benefit from the stable, loving care of adoptive families. This is evident in the amount of time children are finding themselves stuck in this system.

Children in out-of-home care in Australia by length of time in care

A lot of children are stuck in the system, but the reality is that very few of them are actually genuine candidates for adoption. First of all, consider the range of ages. Most adoptive parents are looking for babies and very young children to take in. That is the whole point of adoption for many people – to raise a child as part of their own family. Of the 40,542 children in out-of-home care on 30 June 2013, only 1,093 were less than a year of age, and an additional 7,925 were aged one to four years. If we make a blanket generalisation (for the sake of argument), that adoptive parents are only looking for children aged four years and younger, this means that the remaining 31,524 children are already out of the picture.

Then we need to consider the needs of these children. Children enter out-of-home care when their parents are unable to protect them from harm. This means that many of them have suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and neglect. Many have suffered abuse at the hands of those who are supposed to protect them. The result is often significant physical and emotional trauma. Children come to out-of-home care with considerable physical and mental health needs, with unhealthy attachment patterns, and behavioural problems that can range from regular bedwetting to regular violent outbursts.

There is also the matter of ongoing connection to family and community. For many children in out-of-home care, the goal being worked towards is reunification with family. This means that staying with foster carers (or being in some other care arrangement) is a temporary measure while work is done with family. Many conservative commentators will point out at this point that the graph above proves this is a failed approach; that state governments work towards what is, for many children, an impossible goal; that they should be working towards permanency rather than reunification. These commentators are right when they say that reunification efforts are failing. But, that is not because it is a flawed goal; it is because the resources are not available to do this work effectively. A number of state-initiated inquiries have recently found this (see, for example, the recent Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry report). Given adequate resourcing, this work can achieve its stated purpose: to see more of the 40,000 children returning home. This is an inconvenient truth for adoption advocates, because it depletes their prospective supply of babies.

Ongoing connection to family and community is crucial to the development of children. Research tells us that, even when they are temporarily placed in another’s custody, ongoing contact with parents and siblings is beneficial to their development of self-image, which is foundational to so much social and cognitive development. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, connections are even more important; to family, community, land and culture. Adoption for these children, in almost all cases, would be unthinkable. This cuts out another large chunk of children in out-of-home care, since this segment of society is so horribly over-represented in the system, making up more than a third (34 per cent) of all children in out-of-home care.

So, once we cut out the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children older the infants and toddlers, children with complex needs that require targeted support, and children who have a reasonable possibility of safely returning home to family, there are very few children, even out of a whopping 40,000, who can realistically be adopted. In addition, once state and territory governments start investing more in targeted and intensive family support, we will see more and more chidlren staying at home (rather than entering out-of-home care) and going home (after a short stay in out-of-home care), which will reduce our prospective adoptive child pool even more.

To recap:
1. There is no crisis in domestic adoptions. Known and local adoptions are around their five-year average.
2. Intercountry adoptions have decreased markedly, due to improved conditions in coutnries overseas and better protection agaisnt child trafficking.
3. Adoption from out-of-home care may be beneficial for a very small number of children, but will hardly fill the shortage for entitled families that the adoption crusaders worry so much about.

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Edit: 2013-14 data is now available in the Report on Government Services. It largely shows a continuation of the trends presented above.