Canada: The invisible children
Saturday, April 28, 2007
The invisible children
Over 9,000 Ontario children are available for adoption, but only a fraction of them will become part of a family
FRANCES BARRICK
ROBERT WILSON, RECORD STAFF
Kyler Smith and Jennifer Staples have adopted Nate, 2 1/2, from Korea. They are in the process of adopting a second child.
WATERLOO REGION (Apr 28, 2007)
The smiling face of the 11-year-old girl flashed on the large screen.
In a prepared video, the girl from Waterloo Region told a roomful of adults wanting to adopt that she loves to bake and wants to learn to play the piano.
She also wants to be part of a family, and she knows this tape is perhaps her last chance of finding a loving mommy and daddy.
This girl is one of over 9,000 children in Ontario who are available for adoption. That's the population of Elmira. But few people know about these children.
The total number of adoptable children in Canada is 66,000, but less than 1,700 are adopted annually. In comparison, Canadian families adopt from abroad at a rate of about 2,000 a year.
"I think people are shocked to learn that there are so many local children available to adopt," said Pat Gillies, adoption supervisor at Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region, which has 268 children in care.
These children are Crown wards, which means the courts have ordered them to be removed from their birth homes because of a history of serious abuse or neglect, or their parents could no longer care for them.
What they share is their desire to have a permanent home. Most live in an average of three foster homes during their childhood, with some moving from one foster home to another every couple of years.
"Every child in Ontario deserves a home," said Marcy Lemon-Lawrence, a Waterloo-based adoption practitioner.
But few couples "step up to the plate" and adopt these older children, many who come with a suitcase full of problems because of their past, said Lemon-Lawrence, who does up to 20 private adoptions a year, many of them international.
Many of these Crown wards suffer from fetal-alcohol syndrome, have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and are developmentally delayed.
"You have to be a very special couple to welcome one of these children into your home," Lemon-Lawrence said.
On a dreary Sunday in April, hundreds of adults gather in Toronto for the Adoption Resource Exchange, a government-sponsored forum where Crown wards available for adoption are showcased.
One by one, the videotaped profiles of 128 children from 23 children's agencies across Ontario are flashed on a large screen in an auditorium at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Afterwards, couples apply to adopt these children. Often there is more than one couple vying for the same child.
Glen and Yvonne Brubacher of Drayton were one of those couples.
They immediately fell in love with three sisters, ages five, six and seven, from northern Ontario and have applied to adopt them. If they succeed, they would become an immediate family.
The childless couple couldn't believe the number of Ontario children available for adoption.
"It's huge. It just makes you want to take all the children. It's heartbreaking. They don't have any parents and you just want to love them all," said Glen Brubacher.
Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region was one of the agencies at this forum, which has been held twice a year for the past 51 years. The agency has historically been lucky in finding parents for these children at this presentation.
This time the local agency profiled 16 of its 268 children in care.
The children ranged in age from 19 months to 14 years. One case involved two brothers, and in another situation, there were two brothers and a sister who wished to be adopted together.
The agency also profiled a 13-year-old girl who functions at the level of a four-year-old, likely the result of sexual abuse and witnessing years of domestic violence between her biological parents.
In total, the local agency received 53 applications from couples interested in adopting the 16 children. Social workers will review the applications to try and find the right match for the children.
"We don't go looking for children for families. We look for families for children," said Gillies.
It's a stressful time for these children because they know their future is at stake.
"They know they are being profiled. Some are looking forward to it and some are scared and some are fearful of rejection," said Tecla Jenniskens, an adoption worker with Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region.
Only about 10 per cent of Crown wards find permanent homes, but adoption workers say recent changes in adoption laws and a new website profiling these children should improve that track record.
As of November, Crown wards with legal access to their birth parents can now be adopted.
Before, they had to spend their childhood in foster care to facilitate contact with their biological parents.
But since only about one-third of these children ever see their parents, the provincial government agreed to change the law to allow them to be adopted.
These children account for about 75 per cent of all Crown wards. Children without parental access have always been eligible for adoption.
"What we need to do is get children out of foster care and into permanent homes," said Ted Giesbrecht, a Kitchener lawyer who has been doing adoption work for almost 20 years and who has been pushing for this change in adoption laws for a decade.
But few people know about these children, and even fewer are prepared to take on the task of parenting these older, harder-to-place children, said Giesbrecht.
"These children need stability. They need steady care that they can count on for a lifetime. It is how they develop trust," he said.
The Adoption Council of Ontario, an adoption advocacy group, has developed a website listing hard-to-adopt children. Since April 2004, this website, called AdoptOntario, has placed about 40 per cent of the 160 children it has featured. Currently, 44 children are profiled on the website.
Plans are underway to have this website expanded to include all 9,000 Crown wards, as well as the names of couples approved for adoption, in hopes of making matches.
"These kids need homes . . . But they also need the right people to adopt them," said Kathleen Duda, a now-retired adoption worker from Waterloo Region who oversees the website.
Adoption has changed drastically in the past 50 years.
In the 1950s and 60s, there were more babies available for adoption than couples wanting to adopt.
Today, it is the reverse.
There are about 150 Ontario babies adopted every year, said Giesbrecht, who is one of the busiest adoption lawyers in Ontario with about 15 domestic adoptions a year. He has 70 couples on file waiting to adopt. Most of them have had trouble having children of their own.
He said less than one per cent of birth mothers who have an unplanned pregnancy choose adoption. About half of those women choose abortion, with the remainder keeping their babies.
This shortage of babies means more couples are looking elsewhere to adopt.
"The majority of my clients are vying for that healthy infant," and that is why many go overseas to adopt, said Lemon-Lawrence, the adoption practitioner.
"I like nothing better than to take a couple who feel they have no hope of being a parent and giving them that hope," she said.
Jennifer Staples and Kyler Smith had such an experience.
Initially, this Kitchener couple decided not to have children until tragedy struck.
The death of their two-year-old niece in a car crash during the Easter weekend of 2002 sparked a sudden and deep desire to become parents.
But after three miscarriages in one year, they chose adoption and became parents of Nate, an infant boy from Korea. They are in the process of adopting a second child from Vietnam.
"It was her death that brought Nate into our lives," said Staples, a public health nurse.
The couple considered domestic adoption, but they had two things going against them. First, a lack of available babies, and second, Staples, now 45, knew her age would be a deterrent as birth mothers tend to want a younger woman to raise their children.
They were also not comfortable with the idea of an open adoption, where birth parents maintain some form of contact with the child they gave up for adoption. Open adoptions have become the norm in Ontario.
An older child was also out of the question as Staples and Smith wanted a full parenting experience. And after years of nursing in Africa, Staples said she was too "fatigued at being Mother Teresa" to care for a child with special needs.
So, like many other couples, they looked beyond Canada to become a family.
In 2005, Ontario residents adopted 734 children from abroad. International adoption statistics for last year are incomplete.
China remains the most popular country for Canadians to adopt internationally. In 2005, Canadians adopted 1,871 children from abroad, of which 973 or 52 per cent were Chinese.
The second most popular country is Haiti at 115 children in 2005, followed by 102 from the United States. Ninety-seven children came from Korea. Africa is now growing in popularity.
A big drawback to an international adoption is the cost. Staples and Smith said it cost $35,000 to adopt from Korea, and they expect to spend another $25,000 to adopt a child from Vietnam.
They said they might have spent the same amount of money if they chose infertility treatments, with no guarantee of the drugs and medical procedures producing a child.
Staples and Smith, a financial adviser, chose Korea because infants to be adopted are placed in foster homes, and not orphanages. Babies from orphanages, who don't get much one-on-one care, sometimes have difficulty bonding with their adoptive parents. Mothers over 45 cannot adopt from Korea, so the couple have turned to Vietnam for their second child.
This adoption took nine months to complete, the length of a normal pregnancy. Nate was seven months old when Staples and Smith brought him home to Kitchener from the airport in March 2005.
Today, he is an active, boisterous boy who clings to his mother. Healthy and big for his age, he will turn three in August.
"To me it is no different from a birth. You wait so long for this special person," said Staples, who has Nate's Korean name, Soo Gil, tattooed on her back.
"You become a mother immediately. Your maternal instincts kick in right away.
"The only difference is our stork was a 747," Staples said.
fbarrick@therecord.com
READING LIST
Adopting the Older Child by Claudia L. Jewett
Adopting the Hurt Child by Gregory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky
The Open Adoption Experience by Lois Melina and Sharon Kaplan Roszia
Waiting Kids in Canada: All About Domestic Adoption by Robin Hilborn
Canadian Guide to Intercountry Adoption by Robin Hilborn
RESOURCES:
Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region
Ask for adoption recruitment worker
519-576-1329
website: www.facswaterloo.org
Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services
Ministry Adoption Unit
Information on how to adopt a child in Ontario
416-327-4742
website: www.children.gov.on.ca
Adoption Council of Ontario
Resource information and website listing children available for adoption
3216 Yonge St.
Toronto, Ont.
416-482-0021
website: www.adoptontario.ca
Adoption Council of Canada
211 Bronson Ave.
Ottawa, Ont.
Information about adoption across Canada
613-235-0344
website:www.adoption.ca
YEARS OF WONDER PUBLIC FORUM
WHEN: Sunday, May 6, 1- 4 p.m.
WHERE: Our Place Resource and Early Years Centre
154 Gatewood Rd., Kitchener
Join us for panel discussions on the crucial first 10 years of a child's life, fatherhood and multicultural issues. The event will be moderated by Lynn Haddrall, The Record's editor-in-chief.
To register, call Jennifer at 519-884-0000 x 222