Living in unstable long-term government-supported ‘out-of-home’ care (OOHC) is causing harmful and often lifelong impacts for increasing numbers of Australian children. There is a growing awareness that all children need stable homes and families to thrive. This has led to policymakers facing mounting calls from adoption advocates (myself included) to increase the number of ‘open adoptions’* from out of care in Australia.
The difficulties in giving more children safe and permanent homes through adoption led the Federal Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs to conduct a new inquiry into local adoption. The inquiry’s terms of reference refer to reporting on approaches to a nationally consistent framework for local adoption in Australia, with specific reference to:
1. stability and permanency for children in outof-home care with local adoption as a viable option; and
2. appropriate guiding principles for a national framework or code for local adoptions within Australia.
Adoption is ‘taboo’ and rarely occurs in Australia due to the cultural legacy of discredited historic practices involving the forced adoption of children of unwed mothers and the Stolen Generations of Indigenous children.
This paper will examine recent initiatives to boost adoptions in NSW and a way to roll out the core of these reforms nationally. It will also propose a national framework that will ensure permanency for children in OOHC, including making adoption a viable option.
