Human Resources Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Good. Well, it's really good to have you with us here today.

Can you please give us your presentation? Thank you.

[Susan Smith]

Okay. Thank you very much for asking me to speak. This is a subject I've done research on most of my career and it's very dear to my heart.

I work now for the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, and recently authored a paper that's on our website.

Do you have the powerpoint slides that were made as a handout for you all?

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

For us to hand them out, they have to be in both official languages, and I don't think we have them translated at this point.

[Susan Smith]

Okay.

When you get them, there is a link to this paper, which gives a lot more detail about what I'm speaking on today.

I wanted to make four primary points in the few minutes that I have. One is that in the U.S., as in Canada, child welfare is a matter of family law, and has therefore been left pretty much to the states. But at the same time, the federal government, beginning in the 1970s, when they realized that more and more kids were coming into foster care and growing up in foster care and that there needed to be some reform to address this problem, began taking various measures to promote adoptions from foster care. Today, adoptions from the child welfare system are approximately two-thirds of all the adoptions in the U.S. not by step-parents and individual families. So they very much represent the lion's share of adoptions in the U.S.

There's a graph in the handout, which I'm just going to hold up, that shows that in 1988 we had 15,000 adoptions across the U.S. from foster care. Today it's 57,000. So in a matter of a couple of decades, adoptions from foster care more than tripled in the United States. This was the result of a number of different initiatives the federal government took. The first one was an interstate compact to encourage interstate cooperation in foster care and adoptive placements across state lines. This was something that states had to choose to participate in, but about ten years after it began, and by the 1970s, all states had agreed to participate in this interstate kind of agreement.

Another thing the federal government did was to set the expectation that after children were in foster care for a certain amount of time with no progress, the state would work toward a permanent family for these children through adoption, and they provided incentives to states to increase their adoptions from foster care.

They have done other things to provide supports, but even though we've done a great job in getting more and more kids adopted, another thing that is really needed in our country is supports to families after adoption, and some of the speakers have already referred to that.

Today we know that outcomes for adoptions from care are positive, that over 90% of adoptive families are satisfied with their adoption experience and would choose to adopt a child again knowing what they now know. But at the same time, there are many challenges for these families. We know from a very large national study of children, both adopted and not adopted, that about 45% of children adopted from foster care are going to need ongoing mental health services. And it's very hard for many of these families to find help, because in the usual scheme of things, mental health professionals look at parents as being responsible for issues their children are having. Any family adopting a child who comes with severe neglect and abuse issues from the their past will have to confront these challenges. So there needs to be specialized help to help families understand the needs of their children and understand how to address them.

Finally, I think many times this makes people nervous, and they think, “How can we afford this?” We know that adoption is cost-effective. There have been studies in the U.S. that show that the government, on average, saves $143,000 per child for every child who's adopted out of foster care. And the numbers of children in foster care have gone down by about 100,000 over the last ten years in this country, largely due to increases in adoption.

So it's in the best interests of children, and it's in the best interests of governments, but it's complex.

One of the things we still need to do a lot of work on is post-adoption services for these families, both supportive services, like the parent-to-parent support that was referred to, and therapeutic interventions. Many families will not need these services. Some families will just need a little along the way, and about a third of these adoptions will need pretty much ongoing support.

One of the other things I want to recommend is a national database. The U.S. mandated that states report information on children entering and exiting foster care. This database has been very helpful in gauging where we are, what improvements have been made, and what still needs to happen.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much.

We will begin our round of questions.

Just for the committee's information, we probably won't need the full 15 minutes for committee business. So we can probably question right until almost 20 to the hour, and then we'll leave a few minutes for anything that might arise.

We will do a five-minute round, and then we should be able to get a three-minute round in as well.

For the witnesses, the five minutes include your answers.

We'll begin with the Liberals and Madam Minna, please.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, and welcome to our neighbour from south of the border.

My first question is for you, Ms. Smith. You've been very interested in children who are older. At what age do you “age out” those children who are not adopted, or is it different from state to state?

[Susan Smith]

In most states it's 18, although some have raised it to 21 in certain circumstances. The federal government has recently stated that it would provide ongoing support for children in care until 21.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

So you're pushing for 21. That's interesting.

You also mentioned that after a certain amount of time without adoption as children get older you work to find them permanent homes. Can you explain exactly what happens there? How do you do that? At what point do you say this isn't moving, and then what do you do exactly?

[Susan Smith]

In the middle 1990s under Clinton there was a law passed called the Adoption and Safe Families Act. It stated that if a child had been in care continuously for 15 months of the past 22 months—I think that is how it was stated—they would go to court to consider termination of parental rights. So previously, children could drift along for four or five years from foster home to foster home with no parental progress toward permanency. Then they set a time limit and said that after a year and a half, if the parents weren't making progress they would go to court, consider terminating their parental rights, and free the child for adoption.

When I showed the graph there was a real increase around that time. Following the middle 1990s it doubled. That was largely the basis for that.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You are actually freeing children up for adoption at a much younger age than previously.

What was the reaction to that in terms of any rights? I'm just curious about parents who may have been in trouble and had problems. A year and a half or two years isn't that long a time. Was there any backlash, legal or otherwise?

[Susan Smith]

There was some. The courts have done a lot of work on this issue too. There have also been some social work approaches through what's called family group decision-making. As soon as a child comes into care they sit down with the entire family and explain the timeframe they're working within. They are very explicit about the things that need to be addressed in the year-and-a-half period.

Concurrent planning is another approach that has been used to address this. They work early on to get the child in a placement that can become permanent if the child is not able to return home. The family is asked up front if they have a responsible relative they would want to take care of the child if they cannot continue to parent. They work really hard to get the child early on, instead of waiting until he is three or four to say maybe they should move him from the foster home, where he has bonded with the foster parents, to an aunt's house. They try to do that early.

There have been social work responses to improve the prospects for children, as well as legal responses.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Okay. Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Lessard, please.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Madam Chair, I want to thank our witnesses for being here this morning to share their expertise.

First of all, I will speak to Ms. Xavier—

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Ms. Smith, do you have translation? Can you understand Mr. Lessard's question?

[Susan Smith]

No. I thought I was hearing before, but I didn't realize someone asked a question. It's too faint.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Okay, so we need to correct that.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

My questions are for the people who are here, for Ms. Xavier and Mr. Paulin, among others.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

It's still important that Ms. Smith have the translation.

[Susan Smith]

I can hear you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Okay. We'll continue, and if you have trouble please let us know.

Go ahead, Mr. Lessard.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Ms. Xavier, do you understand French? You have your earpiece?

[Cindy Xavier]

I can hear you, yes.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

All right. I'll begin by speaking to you.

You said you would like children who are adopted internationally to obtain citizenship at the time of adoption, just as citizenship is obtained at birth. I understand that that would be in order to avoid the entire bureaucratic process. I would like to know whether there are other underlying reasons for that. That's the first question I'm asking you.

My other question is about leave. Unless I am mistaken, you said you did not want leave through the employment insurance system, but that instead you would like an adoption leave benefit. What do you mean by that? Why draw that distinction?

[Cindy Xavier]

To answer your first question, we want to expedite things for families who have adopted children internationally, in terms of them gaining Canadian citizenship. However, in addition to that, children who have been adopted from abroad cannot pass that Canadian citizenship on to children they may have biologically. So that is an issue for some parents who know that their children will be Canadian citizens, but their grandchildren may not be.

On the second question, we're asking for an amendment to Bill C-343 so there will be an adoption leave benefit equivalent to the maternity leave benefit of 15 weeks. It would be specific to the needs of the adoptive parents, and whichever parent is the primary caregiver would be the one to take the leave.