What went wrong with adoption group?
What went wrong with adoption group?
July 18, 2009
The damage caused by the bankruptcy of a Cambridge-based international adoption agency this week cannot be reckoned in dollars alone. It must be measured in human heartbreak and dashed human hopes, and from this perspective the cost is absolutely staggering.
At this very moment in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, dozens of children who were waiting to come to new homes in Canada face an uncertain future because of the bankruptcy filing by Kids Link International Adoption Agency, which operated under the name Imagine Adoption. Imagine how fearful some of them must be.
And at this very moment, up to 450 families from across Canada who have invested time, energy, emotion and, in many cases $20,000, are torn by confusion and doubt because they do not know if their dreams of adoption, which they may have worked years to achieve, will ever happen. Imagine their anger and pain.
It is at least reassuring that federal and Ontario officials are trying to serve the interests of 35 children in Ethiopia, as well as 20 to 30 in Ghana, Brazil, Haiti and several other countries. In this tangled equation, these young people matter most and it is good to know that they may yet make it to Canada.
The victims of this bankruptcy -- at home and abroad -- deserve help from our governments. But they and we, the public, also deserve answers about what has gone so badly wrong in an agency that was provincially licensed and should not have failed.
What is known so far is surprising and disturbing. About a month ago, two volunteer directors of Imagine Adoption began examining its finances after noting unusually high expenses for senior staff, including executive director Susan Hayhow.
"They clearly did a bit of work . . . and said, 'This doesn't look right, "' said Susan Taves, a bankruptcy trustee for DBO Dunwoody in Kitchener,
Preliminary bankruptcy documents show the agency had leased a Lexus and a Nissan Pathfinder, with an estimated $80,000 in remaining payment obligations. Why was this necessary?
So far the public has more questions than answers. But as we learn more about this organization in the coming days, it will be worth asking how Imagine Adoption won approval by the province to perform such sensitive and important work. It will also be worth asking whether provincial authorities provided adequate scrutiny of Imagine Adoption's operations. And when more is known, it may even be appropriate to call for stronger provincial regulations for such adoption agencies.
Every child in the world deserves to have a loving, nurturing family and a safe, secure home. While this may be an unattainable ideal, we, as a community, work to ensure this happens whenever and wherever possible. And as a society, we collectively admire those people who labour to connect parentless children with the adults who aspire to adopt them. But the system of adoption used by Canadian families must be beyond reproach. And it must work. Because what's really at stake and what really matters most in such situations is not a business, agency or someone's career but people who long to be parents and a child who yearns for family.