We got support from support groups, the Open Door Society and NACAC, North American Council on Adoptable Children, and on the web. The Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health helps with our grandson now. Health Canada's non-insured health benefits for first nations and Inuit health also helps, with the added benefit of making our kids feel they belong to first nations.
I have worked for the Adoption Council of Canada since 1991, when it began, as staff, as board member, and volunteer researcher. I currently provide a current awareness service on the ACC's listserv, but I work more actively in FASD, sending e-mails on international listservs, running a support group at CHEO, and serving on committees.
What's wrong in Canadian adoption? If there were recruitment, training, and support, 30,000 children in the child welfare system could potentially be available for adoption. They move in and out of foster care, group homes, change workers, and age out of the system to apartments on their own.
We need a paradigm shift to believe that adoption works, and a vision to make it happen, but the provinces aren't acting. Ontario hasn't moved to do anything about the implementation of recommendations from a panel last August, and it's strange that child welfare associations don't really talk adoption. An adoption conference last year brought experts from Australia and Ireland to talk permanency, but never mentioned the word “adoption” at all.
Yes, people will adopt older kids and stick with it, just as people come home from eastern Europe with children very much like those here. It's easier to adopt internationally than domestically. Some jurisdictions don't do adoption at all. Adoptive families need information and education, support and understanding, services and referrals, and many need financial help. Both domestic and international adoptive families are struggling with mental health problems. It's hard. It's estimated that 70% of Canadian children affected by FASD are not living with their birth family, but with foster, adoptive, and kin parents. Adoptive families could make a huge difference in raising children with disabilities such as FASD.
I've provided a list, a bibliography that gives you information on that, a professor doing research.
We know little about adoption in Canada, and that's—