| Name | Party | Connection with adoption | Types of legislation supported for adult adoptee access to original birth certificate. Options given: i) unconditional, ii) with contact veto, iii) with disclosure veto) |
Types of legislation supported for birth parent access to adoptee's amended birth certificate. Options given: i) unconditional, ii) with contact veto, iii) with disclosure veto) |
Comments |
| Dave Hocking | Liberal | Extended family member is adopted | with disclosure vetoes | with disclosure vetoes | |
| Colleen Purdon | NDP | Extended Family member is adopted Other: I have worked with children and adults who have been adopted as a sexual abuse counsellor and music therapist. I have also worked with women who have had to give up their children, or had their children removed from their care by CAS. |
unconditional | with contact vetoes | My clinical experience has shown me how difficult it is for children and
adults to deal with the secrecy and implied shame associated with adoption.
More recently, the cutbacks to social services have made it increasingly
difficult for poor and disadvantages mothers to retain care of their
children, and for children to remain with their birth parent.
I think adult adoptees have the right to their birth information, and the right to contact birth parents. If the birth parents do not want contact, that can needs to be respected, but a veto on contact is not the answer. Adoptees should also have basic information about the circumstances of their adoption. It would be important to know if they were taken out of the home because of abuse, in order for them consider their safety (usually their emotional safety) when contacting birth parents. Adoptees need to have protection from birth parents who abused them and for that reason have lost custody. The birth parents do not have the right to re enter the adult adoptee's life at a time convenient to them, or in some cases to continue a pattern of abuse or manipulation. For these reasons, adoptees should have the right to veto contact. Some adoptees are relieved to no longer have contact with their birth parents when they are adopted out because of abuse. These parents do not have the right to contact their adult children, but their adult children should have the right to contact them, if they feel this is safe and important to them. There nees to be much more support (increased welfare, increased minimun wages, increased subsidized childrcare, more parenting programs, better preventive health programs, and a more flexible and better funded child welfare system) in Ontario to meet the needs of birth parents who struggle with parenting, and for children in these homes. In addition, the current system in Ontario forces far too many children into foster care and adoption placements because supports for their birth parents are not available. This is a process that further traumatizes and dislocates children in ways that are often more harmful than the poor parenting they experienced in their birth parent's home. In addition, my experience is that a surprisingly high number of foster families provide marginal parenting for high needs children, and it is not uncommon for foster parents to have children removed from their homes because they abuse their charges. The current child welfare system in Ontario is not adaquate and for many children continues a pattern of abuse and neglect. |
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