Thousands of children in Ontario need permanent families

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Last year, more than 1,500 families were approved in Ontario as potential adoptive parents, 822 adoptions finalized. Yet the need for adoptive parents for children and youth in the care of Ontario’s Children’s Aid Societies still remains extraordinarily high.

“There are more than 9,200 Crown wards in Ontario and every one of them deserves a permanent family,” said Jeanette Lewis, Executive Director, Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. “Many of these children can be adopted given the right match.”

Ontario’s Children’s Aid Societies (CASs) provide a free public adoption service that includes training and support to prospective adoptive parents. But Ontario’s public adoption system is at a crossroads. While it has traditionally focused on younger children and those who have no access to their biological families, new research and legislation has shifted their approach.

Children can now be adopted and have connections to members of their biological families. CAS adoptive parents who are open to these contacts have spoken about how the public adoption system has helped them to be better parents, while reducing the trauma of separation and loss for their children. CASs and the Adoption Council of Ontario are also working hard to find homes for older children and teenagers, who often play a big role in finding their new parents.  

The Ontario CAS hopes to help more parents build families and more children find loving homes by promoting Adoption Awareness Month, in conjunction with the Adoption Council of Ontario (ACO), to remind Ontarians that adoption is an option for many children and youth in care. During November, they’ll be promoting adoption with public service announcements and information resources on their websites.

Their goal is to eventually find a family for every child by working together with private and public adoption professionals and government bodies as well as listening to parents who are interested in building their families through adoption.

Eight years ago, Robin Cardozo and his partner adopted two children through Ontario’s public system. But they were struck by how difficult the system was to navigate. As a member of the Ontario Government’s Expert Panel on Infertility and Adoption during the last year, Cardozo and his colleagues conducted a literature review of adoption systems around the world, online surveys of service providers and families, and telephone interviews.

While they found an abundance of success stories, Cardozo said: “The public adoption system in Ontario has a long way to go. Too often, children are trapped in the system. Willing families feel too frequently discouraged and confused because adoption is not adequately promoted or encouraged in the province.”

Rather than providing a single adoption system in Ontario, a patchwork of 53 CASs offer access to public adoption, representing on average only two per cent of their budgets. (Child protection and welfare services are their major focus). Not surprisingly, said Cardozo, the adequacy and quality of adoption services vary dramatically across the province.

Another major barrier to adoption is court ordered access to birth parents. Although 20,000 children are in care (of those close to 10,000 are Crown wards), there are less than 1,000 adoptions yearly. And unlike many jurisdictions that provide some form of subsidy to adopting parents, any subsidies in Ontario are inconsistent and usually short term.

“A number of children in care have special needs and a subsidy could make the difference between that child finding a forever family or not,” said Cardozo.

As a result of their findings, the Expert Panel recommended creating a provincial adoption agency, with local service delivery, focused solely on adoption; allowing Crown wards with court ordered access to be legally free for adoption; and providing financial subsidies to help children, especially those with special needs, find a permanent family.

If their recommendations are adopted, the Expert Panel believes that the number of yearly adoptions can easily be doubled within five years, helping more youth like Aleisha Deece-Cassidy find a new family.

The grade 8 student was adopted two years ago, after living with a birth family plagued with drug addiction and alcohol abuse problems. “My mother did drugs and neglected and abused me,” said Aleisha, 13, who eventually ended up in foster care at age nine. At an Adoption Resource Exchange Conference, a semi-annual event hosted by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services that helps locate and match adoptive families with Ontario children needing adoption, Lexi Deece-Cassidy, Aleisha’s adoptive mother, received information about her future daughter.

After an interview and a two month visitation period, Lexi and her husband were chosen to be Aleisha’s adoptive family. “I was really nervous,” said Aleisha. “I didn’t know how to really be a daughter. It was very, very hard, but I just went along with it.” Even after the visitation period, Aleisha was still frightened of being rejected. “I knew they promised that they would keep me forever and they wouldn’t get rid of me but just having the feeling that they could get rid of me if they wanted was very scary,” she said.

As an 11-year-old, Aleisha had a say in determining her adoptive parents. She had to go to a lawyer, sign papers and officially declare that she wanted to be adopted by the Deece-Cassidys. “So it was a mutual decision,” said her mother. “That was pretty tumultuous for us as well.”

Prior to being adopted, Aleisha said she never really had any friends. Building and maintaining friendships was hard for her. “I’ve only really gotten used to that over the past few months,” said Aleisha. “Learning how to be a daughter was hard as well.”

Aleisha continues to see her biological grandparents and brother, but not as frequently as in the past. “She’s recently learned how to handle it a bit better,” said Lexi. “But initially that was a huge challenge not to see her biological brother who was adopted to another family.”

Since being adopted, Aleisha feels a sense of love and security.

“That you are worth something is the best part,” she said. “There are definitely rough patches but they get smoothed out over time.”

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