This note comes from the slightly different worldview of Chairman, as I have recently accepted this position. To launch things, the first option, which is highly relevant and a great pleasure in this case, is to thank ones predecessor for their earlier efforts.
Pat Wordley has been chairman of AFAA since 1994, well before the relaunch and the name change from STORK. She has given a great lead and helped to build AFAA's reputation and influence into something much larger than could be expected from the size of our membership. Her work has greatly contributed to achieving AFAA’s aim: to help our adopted children grow up happy and well adjusted, proud of their birth country and well integrated into their country of adoption. I'm very grateful that Pat will be continuing with some of her previous activities, working on the Committee and representing AFAA in the wider world, and taking the title of External Coordinator. A big Thank You for all her past efforts and current commitment.
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The Guardian's front page story on 10 April 2000, headlined "Blair to help parents adopt", touted possible UK government action on a raft of new initiatives for domestic adoption, the most noteworthy of which would be a national register to link eligible children and potential adopters. Besides forecasting a "report on adoption" by the influential Cabinet Office Performance and Innovation Unit [now available at http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2000/Adoption/adindex.htm], the article was related to a Department of Health press release entitled More Work Needed to Overturn Barriers to Adoption which appeared on the same day. The press release promotes a report from the Social Services Inspectorate (circular CI(2000)7, available on the Department of Health website) about how local authority social services are implementing the 1998 action plan called Adoption - Achieving the Right Balance. The conclusion is that many councils are performing well, but the overall quality of adoption services is too variable to be acceptable.
Besides citing the need for better planning and management of adoption services, better training of staff and better information, the report highlights the variable and sometimes poor treatment of potential adopters, notably the time taken to process applications and complete preparation courses. Although not suggested by the report, the most obvious tactic in such circumstances would be naming and shaming.
Most interestingly for AFAA members, the report gives some modest but useful facts about intercountry adoption. Requests to assess potential intercountry adopters run at about 600 per year. Over half of social services departments do ICA assessments in-house, while a quarter had contracted them out to other adoption agencies.
The evidence on local authorities’ performance in adoption services is mixed, and many couples will have suffered as a result of the bad cases. But there is some comfort to be found in the government's desire to move adoption from a Cinderella service into the mainstream, and in the Inspectorate's promise of a survey of adoption services to report "in the summer". With the PIU report also in the works, the performance of those in UK adoption services seems likely to continue in the spotlight for some time to come.
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Elsewhere, standards of individual and official behaviour are not always the best, especially in low income countries during or after periods of war or disruption. It is in the interests of all of us that intercountry adopters should do everything in their power to ensure that any adoption processes in which they are involved follow the best possible practice. Couples choosing a country to adopt from should always be alert to the conditions prevailing on the ground.
So it was alarming to read about a recent UN report on one country citing "large-scale trafficking of babies and young children for adoption abroad" which was mentioned in the Financial Times on 8 May 2000. "A special rapporteur on children's rights found that lawyers had created an organised system of obtaining children. They are either bought from poor or surrogate mothers or stolen by hospital staff and their deaths faked."
In that country, "legal adoption appears to be the exception rather than the rule", says the rapporteur, and "The state colludes in the process". "People are involved in it at the highest levels of power within the state", another informant is quoted as saying.
It is important not to let some evidence of foul practice taint a whole movement, or worse, a whole generation. Potential adopters owe it to themselves, to their children to be and to other adoptive families to ensure that these misdeeds are not continued. DNA checks can provide some safeguards, but a piece of paper is only as reliable as the conditions under which it was issued, as Neville Chamberlain discovered.
My advice to potential adopters with any misgivings would be to commit the extra time and money needed to visit your source country first, and talk to the lawyers, the other adopters in the hotels, to the orphanages, to any independent foreign workers, and get all their views. If things feel sound, then you'll have bought the reassurance cheaply. If not, you should swallow hard and look for another country.
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Personal views by Andrew Gibbons.
Andrew Gibbons
chairman.afaa@pobox.comPlease note that views expressed in these articels are not necessarly those of the Editor or the Webmaster or of the AFAA Committee.
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Last modified: 15 September, 2002