Sure, no problem.
When asked independently about what they needed to be happy in our family, they each used the word “security”. They didn't want love, they just wanted to know we weren't going to return them. Our focus, then, was on helping them build lasting attachments within our family and learn how to foster healthy, nurturing relationships with other people. Four years later, they are thriving, they are loved, they are secure, and my son read his first chapter book last week.
The support we received from the federal government was limited to the employment insurance benefits that enabled my partner to take a 32-week parental leave at the time of adoption. We do not believe we received the same supports as those available to biological parents, which I will go on to explain. To that question, I've had much time to consider it from the standpoint of an adoptive parent of older children as well as a member of the LGBTQ community.
I offer the following recommendations in response to the question.
First, broaden the federal tax credit for adoptive families. Canadians are currently able to claim the federal tax credit, but I would like the federal government to consider extending the list of eligible expenses allowed by the Canada Revenue Agency for the adoption credit to include reasonable and necessary expenses incurred by parents in obtaining post-adoption support services for older children, such as psychological counselling, court costs, and legal and administrative expenses related to second-parent adoptions.
My second recommendation is that the federal government intervene to fund post-adoption support services for adoptive parents. Once a child is placed under adoption, support at the provincial level stops, as these services fall outside the mandates of children's aid societies. There must be funding to create services that will provide post-adoption support to adoptive parents and their adopted children to successfully transition into a family. Without these supports to families, adoptions are at risk of being disrupted early on and children are at risk of returning to public care. For older children this is especially dangerous, as their chances of adoption are diminished well before a disrupted placement. Of the three families our social worker was overseeing at the time our kids were placed with us, our adoption was the only one that was not disrupted.
My third recommendation is to expand the definition of “disability” and to broaden that definition under CRA guidelines to better encompass the needs of substance-exposed kids, as our publicly adopted children are significantly more at risk. As you've heard from many others, to amend the employment insurance benefits to increase the duration of parental leave, this will support, particularly in the adoption of older children, the significant coordination of services that's required as we transition them into a family and often into new schools and entirely new social circles. It will help parents who are coping with post-adoption depression; it will help cope with the sleeplessness you've heard of. My son, for example, did not sleep for the first two years he was with us, and it took a year before he was sleeping four hours through the night.
So our opportunities to nurture, attach to, and secure support for adopted children early on are critically important to their later success. And I don't necessarily expect to personally have parity with a biological mother and employment benefits, but I do expect that my adopted children, regardless of age, have the same chances to be mothered or fathered, or simply parented in their first year with a family, as they would have experienced if not for the misfortunes of their circumstances.
My fifth recommendation is to eliminate the ability of provinces or territories to discriminate against LGBTQ parents and adoption and to enact legislation that stops any province or territory from refusing prospective adoptive parents for reasons of gender identity or sexual orientation. We must have national uniformity on this issue.
My last recommendation is that the federal government must intervene to resolve the challenges of interprovincial adoption. First, if a family is considered to be approved for adoption in one province, they should be able to move to a different province or territory without having to restart the entire process. The current process is an unnecessary waste of public resources and delays children in leaving care for adoption into permanent homes. Second, the federal government should establish a national databank to assist with interprovincial matching so that children can receive the best possible placements for their situation. This means that a child in one province could be adopted into a family in a different province or territory if that family were the best match. This is particularly relevant to provide permanency to children and youth who are marginalized within the foster care system, such as those who identify as LGBTQ, especially transgendered youth.
Thank you.