Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
The organisation will be working for families and children under the intercountry adoption process
Children from Poland and Latvia in need of permanent homes would now
benefit from the new intercountry adoption programmes of the Australian
government. The government announced that it will be providing
appropriate families for children who can’t find adopting homes within
the two European countries.
Establishing the adoption programmes, the government will be funding the not-for-profit organisation LifeWorks Relationship Counselling and Education Services with $3.5 million for four years for its family support services. The organisation will be working for families and children under the intercountry adoption process.
Minister for Social Services Christian Porter said that Poland and Latvia already have a strong commitment to help children in need to find families in their borders. The collaboration aims to provide services for older children, those with medical needs
and sibling groups.
"We are delighted to be extending our expertise to supporting and assisting families through the intercountry adoption process and beyond,” said LifeWorks CEO Janet Jukes. “The programme model will focus on issues of family formation and family stress, providing tools and supports that result in the effective establishment of a strong, positive and healthy family unit."
The government and LifeWorks will work with the International Social Service, or ISS, Australia to provide the intercountry adoption services. The ISS will provide specialist services for adopting parents when taking their child to Australia from other countries and will also assist families with relationship counselling and parenting support services.
To date, the government is aiming to establish more intercountry adoption programmes with other countries. Porter said that there will be a discussion between the government and Bulgaria about a possible new programme within the current week. Officials are also pushing for a talk with Vietnam for a potential programme.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection have also deployed officers to overseas locations, including China, South Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Chile, to establish the intercountry adoption reforms.
The officers will work to guide adoptive parents to access in-country support services and help adopting families to process visas and other citizenship matters.
http://www.ibtimes.com.au/australia-opens-new-intercountry-adoption-programmes-poland-latvia-1481952
Establishing the adoption programmes, the government will be funding the not-for-profit organisation LifeWorks Relationship Counselling and Education Services with $3.5 million for four years for its family support services. The organisation will be working for families and children under the intercountry adoption process.
Minister for Social Services Christian Porter said that Poland and Latvia already have a strong commitment to help children in need to find families in their borders. The collaboration aims to provide services for older children, those with medical needs
and sibling groups."We are delighted to be extending our expertise to supporting and assisting families through the intercountry adoption process and beyond,” said LifeWorks CEO Janet Jukes. “The programme model will focus on issues of family formation and family stress, providing tools and supports that result in the effective establishment of a strong, positive and healthy
family unit."The government and LifeWorks will work with the International Social Service, or ISS, Australia to provide the intercountry adoption services. The ISS will provide specialist services for adopting parents when taking their child to Australia from other countries and will also assist families with relationship counselling and parenting support services.
To date, the government is aiming to establish more intercountry adoption programmes with other countries. Porter said that there will be a discussion between the government and Bulgaria about a possible new programme within the current week. Officials are also pushing for a talk with Vietnam for a potential programme.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection have also deployed officers to overseas locations, including China, South Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Chile, to establish the intercountry adoption reforms.
The officers will work to guide adoptive parents to access in-country support services and help adopting families to process visas and other citizenship matters.
http://www.ibtimes.com.au/australia-opens-new-intercountry-adoption-programmes-poland-latvia-1481952
It took months of hard work to adopt our daughter overseas
Family
has a deep and lasting impact on everyone, it can be good or bad. The
most important thing is love and honesty regardless of your families
formation: biological, blended, fostering or adoption.
Our
family is a mix. We have two sons and a daughter. All three are unique
in their gifts, talents, personalities and challenges. They are equally a
blessing in our life and like most parents – we couldn’t imagine our
life being normal without any of them.
Our
family was tough to form. I suffered major post natal depression after
both boys. We wanted more kids but the thought of going back “there”
seemed unbearable.
Before
having kids my husband and I both discussed and were drawn to the idea
of adoption. It seemed a simple concept to us – one plus one equals two
right??
There
were kids that needed families due to the sad circumstances in their
life, or poverty in their country; and there are parents who would love
to have more kids in their family. I guess my naïve view was that there
must not be enough adoptive parents because the statistics on kids in
orphanages or permanent foster care as state wards was growing out of
control. But as an accountant I should know that one plus one equals
whatever you want it to be. And in the case of kids needing a family –
the answer is sadly not two.
Starting the adoption journey
So
we started down the adoption route in NSW – we were screened and
attended a three day workshop where it felt the social workers were
doing everything to talk us out of adoption. I was confused – it seemed
odd they needed to spend three days telling everyone that their adopted
child would be damaged, not perfect and sometimes hard to manage.
There
was value in learning the impacts of early trauma on a child, how they
might work through emotions and how much more loss they have to deal
with. But the social workers at the workshop made adoption sound like a
bad thing and a last resort for infertile parents.
This
attitude in NSW DOCs really bothered me. Every biological parent I
know (ourselves included) knows that kids don’t arrive perfect. They
cry, they throw tantrums, they fail subjects at school, they bully or
are bullied and use fowl language when you are out of earshot. But most
parents love their kids and do the best they can for them, because they
are their kids, not because they are perfect. The remainder of parents
create our sadly very large foster care system.
Undeterred,
we decided to push ahead. If a little child needed a family we were not
going to take away that opportunity because of ‘some’ (not all) tired
government workers.
Choosing inter-country adoption
Fortunately
we had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong with my work for a few years
and we discovered expat adoption groups for Australians existed in many
countries – including Hong Kong.
We
found an adoption facilitator who had a good reputation and perfect
track record of honest adoptions. They did not charge exorbitant fees
for services and also provided verifiable background information for all
the children that they did adoptions for. I don’t believe that the
majority of people in adoption are corrupt – I am a realist and accept
that some are. We were adamant that we would not feed corruption or
become part of that system.
Through
our adoption facilitator we went through the legal processes, home
assessments, checks and proof of financial stability. We provided
extended family references showing that an adopted child was wanted and
would be loved and accepted by everyone in our family circle were
completed.
Bringing our daughter home
After
two years and turning our little study in our little apartment in Hong
Kong into what seemed like an international law office – we arrived home
in Australia with our beautiful daughter and as a family of five.
The
process was long, bumpy and scary. But when I met my daughter five
years ago, who weighed less at nine-months-old than my boys did at
birth, I just wanted to hug and feed her.
Her
full adoption circumstances are her own to tell when she is an adult.
We cry over the loss of her birth family together, are thankful she was
able to spend nine months with her birth mum – and are so grateful for
all the support we have received from our friends and family. This
extended network continues to support the great work being done in
Ethiopia.
We
live in a world full of sad things but there was a happy ending for
these five smiling faces that have a loving bond for life. It may seem
picture perfect, it’s not. There will always be heartache and
challenges. But that goes for every human being because no family is
perfect, but a loving family is the best start to any person’s life.
Poverty leads to children without family
After
spending time overseas in the orphanages and in charities that work at
trying to keep children with their birth parents and the seemingly
impossible task of helping them – my heart was signed sealed and
delivered to our daughter. The orphanages do the best they can with
little resources. Thankfully, many adoptive families form long-lasting
relationships and provide financial support to their child’s birth
country. Feeding programs, removal of social stigma of unwed mothers are
all things we hope to see happen in these countries so that more birth
parents can survive and raise their children. However poverty is a
reality and it leads to death and a lack of education and the result is
children without family who are institutionalised. I guess I harp on
this point to combat the ill-informed comments that people make about
adoption so they can feel good about themselves or be like a celebrity.
It's simply not true.
Improving adoption in Australia
It
took months of hard work to adopt our daughter overseas. This is
compared to the years it would have taken to adopt domestically in
Australia. I believe the development of a national, committed department
for adoption is a great start for Australia. Having a dedicated
government adoption body would prevent overwhelming our already
under-resourced local community services departments who need to focus
on keeping Australian kids safe - either with their birth parents or if
necessary in foster or adopted families.
The
hoops the Australian government makes you jump through are safe guards.
And the experience we had with the Australian Consulates on the ground
in Kenya and Hong Kong was the complete opposite to those who churn
paperwork and say "no" to everything back in NSW. They see the poverty
and the orphans, they see the honesty in the motives of Australian
families and are amazingly supportive (with no financial benefit to them
– just extra paperwork that they probably don’t get rewarded for at
performance review time).
We
are stoked that the positive side of adoption is now out in the media.
The past adoption practices created heartache – but I have many friends
and now my kids have many friends who are happy and safe because of the
majority of people who do the right thing and the openness that now
surrounds adoption. We hope the plans to remove the red tape from
adoption in Australia succeed and that National Adoption awareness week
helps to remove the negative stigma around it. The world can do with
more loving families and smiling faces.
the inter-country adoption process
One of the
state's only adoption agencies has dramatically closed following a
funding crisis, leaving more than 60 couples that had initiated an
inter-country adoption in limbo.
The Sunday Business Post reports that Arc
Adoption, one of just two agencies authorised to facilitate
inter-country adoptions, told clients last week that it was 'winding
down its operations with immediate effect'.
The crisis is said to be down to the Department of Children's decision to retrospectively pull Arc's funding.
The Adoption Authority said they would take over 11 of the cases that were at an advanced stage.
Responding to authority's claims that they did not expect
delays for those in the middle of the inter-country adoption process,
Arc Adoption founder Shane Downer told the paper "the Adoption Authority
has no effective contingency plan".
"We are trying hard to pass files over in a careful and
orderly way, but given our experience I would not be confident that
people will not suffer," he added.
Inter-Country Adoption Administration
Despite having no workable legislation on domestic adoption, and no international adoption agencies registered in the country, 35 children are living in a government facility waiting for potential placement overseas
A history of adoption hiatuses
Adoptions from Cambodia have been stop-and-start ever since a system was formally established in 1989: placements were first halted less than two years later, and suspensions have been announced half a dozen times in the decades since with varying degrees of follow-though.
The number of children who have left the country is not clear. According to figures reported by the Ministry of Social Affairs, 3,800 children left Cambodia between 1997 and 2009, but informal adoptions and poor record-keeping mean the real figure is likely higher.
Cambodia acceded to The Hague Adoption Convention in 2007, and passed the inter-country adoption law necessary to bring it into place in 2009. When it quickly became clear that the new law was not enough to stem the flow of “stolen” babies leaving the country, adoptions were suspended. Many countries had already withdrawn their cooperation by this point.
It is hard to establish a clear timeline for the subsequent hiatus, because of the frequency of announcements being made but not followed through.
The Ministry of Social Affairs has made almost annual announcements about potential dates for the resumption of adoption: initially March 2011, then January 2013, then an unspecified date in 2014.
The stalling is in large part
the result of an absence at
each stage of potential partner countries, who continue to doubt that sufficient progress has been made.
The past few years have been relatively quiet at Cambodia’s
Inter-Country Adoption Administration. Since the country called a halt
to international adoptions in 2009, there have been meetings to attend,
paperwork to file and the occasional press call about Angelina Jolie
Pitt to field. But until recently, there have been no new children to
process. Adoptions from Cambodia have been stop-and-start ever since a system was formally established in 1989: placements were first halted less than two years later, and suspensions have been announced half a dozen times in the decades since with varying degrees of follow-though.
The number of children who have left the country is not clear. According to figures reported by the Ministry of Social Affairs, 3,800 children left Cambodia between 1997 and 2009, but informal adoptions and poor record-keeping mean the real figure is likely higher.
Cambodia acceded to The Hague Adoption Convention in 2007, and passed the inter-country adoption law necessary to bring it into place in 2009. When it quickly became clear that the new law was not enough to stem the flow of “stolen” babies leaving the country, adoptions were suspended. Many countries had already withdrawn their cooperation by this point.
It is hard to establish a clear timeline for the subsequent hiatus, because of the frequency of announcements being made but not followed through.
The Ministry of Social Affairs has made almost annual announcements about potential dates for the resumption of adoption: initially March 2011, then January 2013, then an unspecified date in 2014.
The stalling is in large part
the result of an absence at
each stage of potential partner countries, who continue to doubt that sufficient progress has been made.
Now there are 36, all but one residents of a state care facility near the Phnom Penh airport that houses children who are physically and mentally disabled, or HIV positive.
It was August last year when the children’s 36 files were carried from the Ministry of Social Affairs’ Child Welfare Department to the Inter-Country Adoption Administration in the neighbouring building. Now the administration’s small team is engaged in the complex task of completing the paperwork necessary to allow the children to be the first officially adopted out of the country in more than five years.
It’s a tricky business, and one they’re new to: previously, adoption agencies themselves bore much of the burden of selecting and readying children for sending overseas. “We need to follow all the procedures,” the office’s young director, Roeun Rithyroath, often repeats. “We don’t want to make mistakes with this.”
The need for caution is clear. For the past two decades, international adoptions have been one of the country’s most controversial talking points.
Founded on the shifting sands of a system where “orphans” for the most part still had living parents or close family, and with significant sums of money changing hands every time a child left Cambodia, the process of sending children overseas was often indistinguishable from human trafficking and nicknamed “baby selling” by the international press.
A prolonged hiatus
Under international pressure, and amid a string of scandals, Cambodia suspended international adoptions in 2009. The last children, whose cases were already in motion, left the country the following year.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/departure-lounge-disabled-children
New thresholds for service and administration, and increases organizational capacity and accountability
Five Acres has achieved national accreditation through the New
York-based Council on Accreditation (COA). Five Acres provides
community-based, deaf services, residential, foster care and adoption
programs and a nonpublic school. Organizations pursue accreditation to
demonstrate the implementation of best practice standards in the field
of human services. COA evaluated all aspects of Five Acres’ programs,
services, management, and administration.
COA accreditation is an objective, independent, and reliable validation of an agency’s performance. The COA accreditation process involves a detailed review and analysis of an organization’s administration, management, and service delivery functions against international standards of best practice. The standards driving accreditation ensure that services are well-coordinated, culturally competent, evidence-based, outcomes-oriented, and provided by a skilled and supported workforce. COA accreditation demonstrates accountability in the management of resources, sets standardized best practice thresholds for service and administration, and increases organizational capacity and accountability by creating a framework for ongoing quality improvement.
To achieve COA accreditation, Five Acres first provided written evidence of compliance with the COA standards. Thereafter, a group of specially trained volunteer Peer Reviewers confirmed adherence to these standards during a series of on-site interviews with trustees, staff and clients.
Based on their findings, COA’s volunteer-based Accreditation Commission voted that Five Acres had successfully met the criteria for accreditation.
An endorsement of COA and the value of its accreditation process is reflected in it being named by the US State Department as the sole national independent accrediting body under the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption to accredit inter-country adoption service providers. In addition, COA is the only national accreditor designated by the U.S. Department of Defense to develop accreditation standards and processes for human service programs provided to military personnel and their families.
Founded in 1977, COA is an independent, not-for-profit accreditor of the full continuum of community-based behavioral health care and social service organizations in the United States and Canada. Over 2,000 organizations — voluntary, public, and proprietary; local and statewide; large and small — have either successfully achieved COA accreditation or are currently engaged in the process. Presently, COA has a total of 47 service standards that are applicable to over 125 different types of programs. To learn more about COA, please visit www.COAnet.org.
Five Acres is a 128 year old child and family services agency strengthening families and preventing child abuse through treatment and education in community based and residential programs. Founded in 1888 as an orphanage, today Five Acres offers an array of services including community-based services, residential treatment, foster care and adoption, supporting more than 8,500 children and families across five counties. More at www.5acres.org
http://www.pasadenanow.com/main/five-acres-announces-national-re-accreditation/#.VsVQWuawA8g
COA accreditation is an objective, independent, and reliable validation of an agency’s performance. The COA accreditation process involves a detailed review and analysis of an organization’s administration, management, and service delivery functions against international standards of best practice. The standards driving accreditation ensure that services are well-coordinated, culturally competent, evidence-based, outcomes-oriented, and provided by a skilled and supported workforce. COA accreditation demonstrates accountability in the management of resources, sets standardized best practice thresholds for service and administration, and increases organizational capacity and accountability by creating a framework for ongoing quality improvement.
To achieve COA accreditation, Five Acres first provided written evidence of compliance with the COA standards. Thereafter, a group of specially trained volunteer Peer Reviewers confirmed adherence to these standards during a series of on-site interviews with trustees, staff and clients.
Based on their findings, COA’s volunteer-based Accreditation Commission voted that Five Acres had successfully met the criteria for accreditation.
An endorsement of COA and the value of its accreditation process is reflected in it being named by the US State Department as the sole national independent accrediting body under the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption to accredit inter-country adoption service providers. In addition, COA is the only national accreditor designated by the U.S. Department of Defense to develop accreditation standards and processes for human service programs provided to military personnel and their families.
Founded in 1977, COA is an independent, not-for-profit accreditor of the full continuum of community-based behavioral health care and social service organizations in the United States and Canada. Over 2,000 organizations — voluntary, public, and proprietary; local and statewide; large and small — have either successfully achieved COA accreditation or are currently engaged in the process. Presently, COA has a total of 47 service standards that are applicable to over 125 different types of programs. To learn more about COA, please visit www.COAnet.org.
Five Acres is a 128 year old child and family services agency strengthening families and preventing child abuse through treatment and education in community based and residential programs. Founded in 1888 as an orphanage, today Five Acres offers an array of services including community-based services, residential treatment, foster care and adoption, supporting more than 8,500 children and families across five counties. More at www.5acres.org
http://www.pasadenanow.com/main/five-acres-announces-national-re-accreditation/#.VsVQWuawA8g
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