Page 3801 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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This bill is the product of extensive consultations held since 2006. Many of the recommendations in the Report on key findings from the review of the Adoption Act 1993 and evidence from the commonwealth House of Representatives standing committee 2005 report entitled Report on the inquiry into adoption of children from overseas can be found in this bill.
Importantly, the bill incorporates principles from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. This bill reflects the requirements of the ACT Human Rights Act 2004, and it will operate in close conjunction with the new Children and Young People Act 2008.
In the ACT, adoptions are for children and young people. The purpose of adoption in the ACT is to provide children and young people with safe, stable and loving homes. It is to make sure that every child has someone reciting times tables with them whilst they head off to school. It is about making sure that every child has someone making them vegemite sandwiches to put into their favourite coloured lunch box. It is about making sure that someone asks them how their first day at work went and asking them whether they need anything for their second day at work. Decisions relating to adoption will be made in the best interests of the child or young person. This bill clearly explains that the rights of an adopted person should be protected throughout their life.
We are helping adoptive parents by building strong, caring and sustainable relationships with children and young people. The Children and Young People Act 2008 puts more emphasis on stability and permanency planning. As a result, more long-term carers are seeking adoption orders. These parents and carers are welcoming some of the ACT’s most vulnerable children into their families. Legal recognition is important both for adopting parents and for children and young people. That is why this bill will make it easier for these families to officially welcome a young person into their home.
For instance, the act has been restructured to reflect a clear and simple adoption process. I cannot promise that these reforms will speed up the adoption process, because establishing the best interests of the child can be difficult. But we can make adoption easier to understand. For example, division 4 specifically identifies different types of overseas adoption orders. It explains the procedures for obtaining full recognition of these processes in the ACT.
Adoptions must also support a child or young person’s sense of family, history and identity. Over 80 per cent of adoption orders in the ACT are overseas and step-parent adoptions. It is vital that a young person has an open and honest understanding of their origins. It is not only important for medical purposes; a child or young person has a stronger sense of identity and stability when they know about future contact arrangements with their birth family. This is why these reforms encourage birth parents to have a say in a young person’s adoption plan.
Adoption is a difficult process, both for a child and for birth parents. That is why we have extended the decision-making period for adoption from seven to 28 days after
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