November is most widely recognized for its moustache charity drive, Movember. However it is worthwhile to look past the scruff adorning thousands of men’s faces and focus on the other growing trend in Ontario – adoption. November is adoption awareness month.
Last year saw a 21 percent increase in number of adoptions, from 819 in 2008 to 933.
In Ontario, there are many pieces of legislation regarding adoption. One is the Child and Family Services Act of 1990, which regulates the protection and adoption of children in Ontario.
This law only covers the beginning of the adoption process. Like all good movies, a third act is needed to round out the story and give all those involved a happy ending.
One aspect of protecting children may lead to the decision to make them legally free for adoption.
But what happens when years pass, lives are lived and a birth mother or adopted child (now grown-up) wants to reconnect with the family they may have never known?
For one such birth mother, who asked to remain anonymous, the search for information on her daughter’s life was long but well worth it.
“At some points I wanted to give up, but my family pushed me to continue.”
She became pregnant at 16 and had to make the same decision that thousands of others in Ontario have made.
“It was not easy, as you can imagine,” she said. “Looking back, I know I made the right decision. Her life with her adoptive parents is much better than what it would have been had I not placed her for adoption.”
The daughter, now a teen, remains close with her birth mother and sees each other every month.
The search for information may have been worth it, but because she did not place her daughter up for adoption through a children’s aid society, it made the journey much different. In Ontario, there is red tape everywhere and getting around it is difficult.
It is at this moment in the process where a very important measure, the Vital Statistics Act of 1990, comes into play.
After calls that this legislation was unfair towards adoptees, many adjustments have been made to address the issues of acquiring one’s own information. Non-adopted adult citizens of Ontario could obtain their original birth registration, something that was denied to those citizens who happened to be adopted.
Those looking for information on their birth parents or their adopted children would approach the provincial government’s adoption disclosure register to be matched with their birth relative. If there were a match on the system, the two parties would be asked to sign a consent form in order to release their identifying information.
If there was no match, only the adoptee could request a search for the birth relative. If located, the relative would be asked for consent.
In legal terms, there are two types of information an adoptee or birth parent can request.
First, there is non-identifying information. Children’s aid societies are in charge of releasing this information.
Bev Nettleton, a social worker in adoption services with the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, explains her role in the adoption process.
“If an adoptee comes to us and wants his or her background information, we will give him/her everything in their file.
“What they then choose to do with it is entirely up to them.”
The adoptee or birth parent apply to the agency that oversaw their adoption process for information such as medical, behaviour, educational and other facts that would not directly identify any parties.
For instance, a birth parent can receive the age their birth child first walked, but not the name of the adoptive parents. The adoptee can also receive medical information of their parents, but not their names.
“We have to redact any names or any information about third parties,” Nettleton said.
This identifying information is handled at the provincial level, at the Registrar General’s Office.
It is there that adoptees and birth parents are able to obtain original birth certificates and names of the other parties.
The provincial government also deals with matching the two parties, should one, or both, choose to meet. This job used to be in the hands of the agencies that oversaw the original adoptions.
Brenda McNeely, adoption supervisor at the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, says that the decision to put the responsibility on the provincial government was noble.
“The goal was people would have more access to information about themselves and in some ways they do,” she said.
Under a new law, the process has changed dramatically.
In 2007, the Adoption Information Disclosure Act was passed, but challenged days later during the case of Cheskes v Ontario. It was attacked, not on the basis of majority-rule, but because of the, as ruling judge Justice Edward Belobaba wrote, “entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is intended primarily to protect individuals and minorities against the excesses of the majority.”
Despite not wanting to be seen as a “constitutional umpire”, Justice Belobaba ruled that this act violated one’s right to protect their privacy (under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms).
“Included within the Charter’s ambit of protection are the applicants, who are part of a small minority of adoptees and birth parents that wish to protect their privacy. They have every right to do so,” Belobaba wrote.
The ruling led to the inclusion of a disclosure veto and eventually to a successor of the quashed bill, called the Access to Adoptions Record Act. This enabled any party to choose whether or not they wanted their identifying information released, should the other party request it (at the provincial level).
When the adoptee turns 18, he/she has the option to put a veto on their identifying information. The birth parent cannot ask for this information until their birth child turns 19. This one-year gap gives the adoptee a head start, so to speak, to protect their privacy.
If the adoptee does not put a veto on, the birth parent is entitled to receive all identifying information on them.
This puts the government and children’s aid societies in a position where they must balance someone’s right to privacy with another person’s right to their own information.
While knowing the name of a birth mother may help complete a long and stressful journey to discover an adoptee’s origins, it may on the other hand destroy the secret that same birth mother has delicately kept safe for decades, in some cases.
“We’re usually very convinced that were giving it to the person to whom the info is about,” Nettleton said. “The trouble I find is that we feel helpless in that all we can give them usually isn’t satisfactory. It doesn’t finish the story.”
Between September 2008 and April 2009, the Ministry of Community and Social Services reported that approximately 2500 people filed for disclosure vetoes. The split of those requests was split evenly between adoptees and birth parents.
McNeely says that although the agencies role has been restricted and altered, there are still advantages to going through the children’s aid societies.
“It’s really helpful for them to contact us so they can get general information, that we have on file, not names, but circumstances,” McNeely said. “So that they can prepare themselves for what they might meet when they are getting in touch with a person that they really haven’t known for a long time.”
“We want to be as helpful as possible to the birth parents while respecting the adults who are now adopted. We want to be respectful and careful of each person’s information.”
It is this balance that is being continually attacked in Ontario courts, and it is a battle that many hope will come to an end in the near future.
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