Key Principles

Openness and Honesty in Adoption [more]
Child-Centred Legislation and Practice [more]
Pre-adoption and Post-adoption resourcing [more]

News [more]

Education [more]

Contacting Us

Key Principles

The key to addressing both the past and the future of adoption in Queensland lies in carefully and responsibly applying three principles to policy and practice.

• Openness and Honesty in Adoption
• Child-Centred Legislation and Practice
• Pre-adoption and Post-adoption resourcing

These principles can apply at the institutional level, the family level and the individual level.

Openness and Honesty in Adoption

Child-centred legislation and practice comes from honestly confronting the past successes and failures in adoption and being open to making things better for everyone in the future.

Healthy, caring families are rooted in truth. Who could honestly believe that caring, trustful families could be built by keeping secrets, not being allowed to express feelings honestly, and responding fearfully to potentially painful experiences by closing the door on them?

Being open and honest with each other encourages responsibility and allows opportunities to care for each other.

The legal necessity to establish the right of one family to parent a child should not imply the denial of the existence of a child's other relatives. In the case of the adoption of an older child, such an attitude is patently absurd. 

Open adoption, in which birth parents and adoptive parents negotiate an ongoing relationship that will be of benefit to the child, is one implication of openness. The right to access information about one's birth parents or one's relinquished child is another.

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Child-Centred Legislation and Practice

Adoption is about finding families for children, not finding children for families. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, children were still being exploited for their labour, and child placement was widely seen as a way of assisting families with their domestic needs. Eventually, a concern for child welfare and protection overtook these practices, but the focus gradually shifted to meeting the needs of infertile couples, while at the same time dealing with the shame and stigma of illegitimate birth. In both cases, adoption seemed to be a means of addressing adult needs rather than the needs of the child.

By the end of the century, adoption practice had come full-circle. While the needs of all parties were to be considered, the primary focus had again shifted to the interests of the child.

Changes in attitudes to contraception, illegitimacy and addressing the economic and social needs of birth parents quickly reduced the numbers of babies available for adoption. In Australia, government services concentrated on furthering the interests of the child by meeting the needs of birth families; adoption had become a matter of last resort.  However, as the century closed, the importance of permanency in relationships for children was being recognised.  In some countries, large numbers of adoptable children who were no longer infants, did not have families and remained in the foster care system; most couples wanted to adopt babies. 

Intercountry adoption was one area in which the needs and rights of children was in danger of being overlooked. In the 1990s, concerns were raised about an emerging international market in children, which took advantage of war, poverty and social stigma in countries that were relatively disadvantaged. Even those who approached intercountry adoption ethically, were becoming concerned that profit-making was taking hold; in some cases, otherwise sound arrangements were marred by requests that prospective adoptive parents carry large amounts of cash into the sending country. 

At the same time, the voices of intercountry adoptees themselves were being raised and heard. Issues of identity and life-long needs relating to their disrupted personal and cultural identities surfaced. (See, e.g. The Colour of Difference: Journeys in Transracial Adoption and Intercountry Adoptee Support Network)

The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption affirmed that the child's interests were paramount and that for some children adoption was a last resort. It also drew attention to the principles stated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which included rights to identity and culture. 

Intercountry adoptee voices were added to the growing number of other adult adoptees who demanded that their experience be taken into account when considering the future of adoption. It was, after all, for their benefit that the institutions of adoption were created.  

Adoption was a lifelong issue, affecting not only adoptee, but also their families.  Many adoptees claimed their right to information about their biological origins and demanded their right to access that information, if they so wished. Some saw it as a matter of civil rights. (See, Bastard Nation) Advocates of child-centred policies have argued that the same right ought to exist for the children of adoptees.

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Pre-adoption and Post-adoption Resourcing

For a long time, adoption was seen as a simple arrangement of placing 'unwanted' children with childless families. Through a mutually fulfilling parallel process of denial, birth mothers could forget their pasts and adoptive parents their infertility and live in a pretend world in which everyone gained.  Adoptive families, who were deemed to be just like other families, required no special post-placement services, and could access the same community services as other families.

In truth, adoptive families are like other families, except in one regard. Adoptive families have to deal with the fact of adoption. 

As the shame and stigma of illegitimacy became less, many people affected by adoption opened up about their experiences of loss, confusion, disempowerment and denial.  Adoptees and birth parents also began to wonder why they should be prevented, as adults, from locating locating each other. 

Reflective adoption practitioners recognised that the process of relinquishment was fraught with grief and loss and that adult adoptees often felt incomplete as persons. (See, Lifelong Issues in Adoption)

Reflection on the experience of intercountry adoptees and their parents also pointed to the need to promote the virtues of patience, care, compassion and responsibility. Education and counselling was implemented in policy, even if not required by law.

Requests from birth parents and adoptees for access to information about their biological relations also increased pressure for the provision of services to help individuals and their families negotiate the emotional territory. 

In some areas, many professionals who were previously responsible for administering closed systems now had to provide services helping adults to deal with issues of search and reunion. This fact, and the some-times conflicting interest of the parties to an adoption, signalled the need for independent adoption support services.

Other than giving information, only a limited number of post-adoption resources are provided directly by the Queensland Government. However, with the introduction the Adoption Act 2009 the government now funds Post Adoption Support Queensland [PASQ] to provide infimration and face-to-face counselling throughout Queensland. The government also continues to support voluntary services such as Jigsaw Queensland, who also provide information and run support groups for all those affected by adoption.

International examples of best practice in this area include the Center for Family Connections in the  USA and After Adoption in the UK. The Center for Family Connections motto, 'creating and cultivating connections' sums up the basic key principle of pre-adoption and post-adoption resourcing.

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