Adoption Council of Canada

"Three prominent Canadian researchers have called for greater efforts to investigate the declining state of adoption in Canada.

Speaking at the 2003 Annual General Meeting of the Adoption Council of Canada held in Toronto on Nov. 22, 2003, Gail Aitken, Nancy Cohen and Jean Becker called for:

"Better training for  social workers to make the adoption system work faster.

 research on the particular attachment needs of  adopted children.

A national study on the state of Aboriginal adoption."

"ADOPTION MYTHS
One of the biggest myths about adoption in Canada is that there are no Canadian children available for adoption. There are more than 70,000 children in the care of child welfare organizations across Canada. More than 20,000 of these children have parents whose parental rights have been terminated by the courts. What this usually means is that these children have no permanent family and will live in foster care or small institutional placements until they are legally of age.

"Without federal oversight, most provinces have devoted child welfare budgets to the work of child protection and foster care. Until recently, adoption work has been a low priority within provinces, and nearly non-existent between provinces. Canada is also home to many different aboriginal peoples (including First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) who have varying degrees of involvement in child welfare services for their people. The diversity of policies and processes between peoples and provinces makes cooperation between them especially challenging--more difficult than state-to-state interactions."