Page 2195 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016
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Local adoption is a delicate balancing act, and I do not think that there is any disagreement that issues of consent are paramount, as are issues in regard to the children’s welfare. The first objective would be to try to support a birth family to be able to parent their children, but if that cannot happen, a permanent placement with another family may well be the best outcome for the child.
Once a child is successfully placed with a new permanent family and the permanency of that placement has been agreed, the government agencies involved, especially those involved with preparing the necessary complicated documentation, must aim to ensure that administrative processes are streamlined and be cognisant that any unnecessary administrative delays are impacting on a family and on people’s ability to move forward as a family. For those not involved, another month, or two or six, may not seem to make any difference, but for adoptive parents who are looking for certainty it seems as though things are taking forever.
We want the processes to be completed right the first time and to be simple for adoptive parents to follow. This is true for Community Services Directorate officials, Government Solicitor’s office officials and Supreme Court officials. If we believe that our strategy a step up for our kids is important, we must ensure that all areas of government involved have the same priorities and the same focus.
As such, I welcome Dr Bourke’s amendment to Ms Lawder’s motion, as it seems that it is time to take a closer look at what is actually happening in regard to finalising adoptions in the ACT and to see how this can be improved.
I note that the amendment focuses on domestic or local adoptions only, and I wonder if there might be some merit in widening the brief to include inter-country adoptions, acknowledging, of course, that much of the adoption journey is different but that at the finalisation end of the process there may be some similarities. If not, at least one would hope that the findings of the task force could be utilised to streamline any finalisation processes required by inter-country adoptive parents as well where this is appropriate.
Again, I would like to acknowledge Ms Lawder’s pursuit of this matter. The Greens will be supporting the amendment brought forward by Dr Bourke, because the creation of a dedicated task force is a good response at this point given that Ms Lawder has had to bring this matter back before the Assembly today.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (11.17): I am heartened that this is another of those instances where we all agree on the overall need for this but we perhaps disagree on how to get to a certain point. But for those families who have opened up their hearts and homes to take in a child in an out of home care system and then decided to progress with an adoption process, this is not a decision that any family can take lightly. Having made that quite momentous decision, the stress on that family cannot be overestimated. There are court hearings, lawyers, psychologist appointments, interaction with government agencies. These are not things that most other families have to go through, and the families who have opened themselves to this process deserve to be supported throughout that process to make it as painless as possible. The timeliness of the process is one way to try to address some of the stress that people feel as they are going through the process.
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