Evidence of meeting #37 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was families.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:10 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Lessard Bloc Chambly—Borduas, QC
So that would be a benefit that would be the same for everyone, and all parents could obtain the length of leave they wanted. Is that correct?
10:10 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Lessard Bloc Chambly—Borduas, QC
Now I would like to ask Mr. Paulin two questions.
You mentioned a top-down strategy. You provided few details on that subject. I'd like to know more about that.
You mentioned peer-to-peer support. Who are these peers you refer to?
10:10 a.m.
Board Member, New Brunswick Adoption Foundation
To answer your first question, Mr. Lessard, I would say it's come from below, but the top has also intervened. This is an initiative that came from the department at the time, the former department of family and community services, now called the department of social development. They realized that there were a number of children available for adoption who were not adopted. On the other hand, we had a waiting list of 800 candidate parents who were waiting to adopt children. Something wasn't working.
At the time, the initiative was "sold" to the government under a business plan. We managed to show that, if we were granted 25 social workers for adoption purposes—because we didn't have a lot—and their salaries, with the saving that would be made on the adoptions—that wasn't the main objective—we were going to manage to achieve our goal. We guaranteed that, within three years, if we hadn't managed to pay the workers' salaries just by having more children adopted, those worker positions would be handed back to the public service. We won that bet and the benefits for the children were enormous.
However, the strategy has to be constantly renewed. The message constantly has to be sent and the public's awareness raised. What was special about what we did with adoption is that we established a network with the business community. The government makes a small grant to the foundation, but the rest of the money comes from the business community.
10:10 a.m.
Bloc
10:10 a.m.
Board Member, New Brunswick Adoption Foundation
No, the peers are parents... In New Brunswick, when people adopt—
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Your five minutes are up. If you want to finish that thought, it would be great.
10:10 a.m.
Board Member, New Brunswick Adoption Foundation
I'm going to be brief.
Peers are other adoptive parents who help each other. They don't know each other. Someone has to promote—
10:10 a.m.
Raymonde Falco
P-A-I-R-S.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Merci.
Thank you, Madame Folco, for that very precise intervention.
I'll go now to Mr. Martin, please.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thanks very much to all of you for coming today.
Ms. Smith, you spoke this morning about a central role being played by the federal government in the States in providing incentives to states to up the number of children being adopted. You talked as well about the national government supporting adoptees until age 21. Can you speak a little more specifically about the incentives and the support by the federal government to states to support adoption activity?
10:15 a.m.
Program and Project Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
In the mid-1990s, under the law I referred to before, the federal government agreed to pay money toward child welfare in each state that increased their adoptions. Each state had a baseline for the number of adoptions, and when they increased by a certain percentage, the federal government would give them a bonus in their child welfare budget. They had already started increasing, but that made them soar.
The federal government contributes some money towards the monthly subsidy given to kids in foster care. It used to be that they did not contribute to the adoption subsidies that states provided. They realized this was a disincentive for states to get kids adopted, because they were getting money from the federal government if they were in foster care, but once they got adopted, they got nothing.
That changed in the early 1980s. The federal government gave some money for some children, not every kid in care but those who came from poor families. Each state sets the age at which kids age out of foster care. But there has been recognition that at 18 many of these kids are not ready for independence. Most of them still need families. Some states have decided to allow kids who are still in school to remain in care. Some have decided to allow kids who are developmentally delayed to remain in care for another three years.
Many of them weren't getting money from the federal government to help with this cost. In recent years, the federal government has in some circumstances begun to provide some financial assistance to states to keep kids in care that aren't ready for independence at 18.
We're still far from saying that all kids can stay in care. In states that allow some children to remain, they often have to be in college or vocational training to stay in foster care for a few more years.
10:15 a.m.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
You spoke about post-adoption services and therapeutic intervention. Who pays for that?
10:15 a.m.
Program and Project Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
Every state has a different program. Some services are available in some states and not in others. So far, the federal government hasn't contributed anything toward that. We're trying to get more of a federal mandate for post-adoption services, because they're essential.
Each state government provides something to adoptive families. It may be information and referral to services that are paid for by Medicaid in this country. In some states, they have well-developed therapeutic intervention programs. In some states, like Illinois, where I taught for most of my career, any adoptive family could receive these services. It didn't matter whether you adopted from foster care, internationally, or an infant. They had a program of about 18 months of intensive therapeutic intervention that was available free of charge to struggling adoptive families.
So it varies from state to state. There are many more needs than what are met right now.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Ms. Xavier, can you tell me the five- and ten-year statistical trends for the number of children in foster care in Saskatchewan? Are they increasing, decreasing, staying the same? Can you give me a snapshot of what's going on? Do we statistically know that?
10:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Adoption Support Centre of Saskatchewan
I don't have, before me today, specific statistical numbers, but I can tell you what I know. The number of kids in care is increasing. The number of foster homes for those kids is decreasing, in spite of some tremendous efforts on behalf of our Saskatchewan Foster Families Association and ministry.
10:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Adoption Support Centre of Saskatchewan
The number of adoptions is increasing. That has happened over the last two years.
In the brief that I gave you there is a reference to the “Breach of Trust” report, which was submitted by the Saskatchewan children's advocate. Since that report, there has been an intensive Saskatchewan child welfare review, and along with that a more intensive effort on the part of the ministry to move kids who are--
10:20 a.m.
Conservative
