No Shortage Of Foster-parents

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31768, 27 August 1968, Page 14

No Shortage Of Foster-parents

It is not correct that New Zealand children’s homes are full of children waiting for adoption, says the superintendent of the Child Welfare division of the Department of Education (Mr L. G. Anderson) in a letter to “The Press.”

“I doubt whether the small number (initially) of Vietnamese children to be brought to this country for adoption will have any significant effect on the New Zeeland adoption situation,” he says. “We have no record of any child available and suitable for adoption who has not in fact eventually been adopted. Record adoption orders are made each successive year. “Although in recent years before there has been an increased number of children becoming available for adoption, and although it takes a little longer to effect placements for adoption, we are getting by.” ’‘Misstatement” In “The Press'* on Friday, a correspondent, D. Bryson, writing oh the topic of the Vietnamese orphans, said “... especially when our own orphanges are full and waiting for someone to adopt these children.” This misstatement, no doubt made in good faith, was in line with many misunderstandings aired from time to time, Mr Anderson said. There were no real orphanages today, and the term had been almost totally discontinued in the last 10 years because it was a misnomer. The correct term was “children’s homes,” and for many years the percentage of genuine orphans in so-called orphanages had been less than 3 per cent. More than 97 per cent of the children in the homes had at least one parent alive, and in many cases both parents. With rare exceptions the children in the homes were not available for adoption—if they were, they would not be in the homes, Mr Anderson said.

There had always been confusion between deprived children in need of care and protection, and children who were available for adoption. This was so even internationally and many persons thought that the many hungry children in some Asian countries were available for adoption. Two Years The difficulty- experienced in filling New Zealand’s original quota of 50 Hong Kong Chinese childreh,.showed up this error. It took two years to find the 50, and there were more Hong, Kong citizens wanting to adopt children than there were children available.

After the Second World War there had been a popular impression that there would be vast numbers of orphan children in the war-torn countries of Europe available for adoption elsewhere. This was not so, Mr Anderson said. Most of the children had one parent alive, and the orphans were wanted in their own countries. The Vietnam situation was, of course, different, because genuine orphans there would suffer or die if those in the more prosperous countries did not do something.to help. Before 1955 it was possible in New Zealand for a child to be in an “orphanage” and for his parents to contribute nothing to his upkeep and take no personal interest in him, yet the child was not available for adoption. If the parents would not consent to the child being made available for adoption, there were no legal grounds for asking the Courts to dispense with the parents’ consent.

The child was not neglected, he was in good hands, and he was not technically abandoned because the parents could say that they had put him in good hands. New Zealand's excellent Adoption Act of 1955 changed the position, Mr Anderson said. Since then one of the grounds on which the Court might be asked to dispense with parents’ consent was “ . . . that the parent or guardian has failed to exercise the normal duty and care of parenthood in respect of the child.” This meant that a child left in a children’s home without interest or support from his parents could be made available for adoption. Australian States had recently been revising their adoption laws, although in Queensland adoption orders were made not by a Court but administratively by the Director of Children’s Services. “When I was attending in

Australia a conference of child welfare administrators I heard reference to the difficulty of doing something about children left indefinitely in children’s homes and I drew attention to our 1955 provision. “It was eagerly seized upon and has since been incorporated, in one form or another, in the legislation of the States. I may add, lest anyone thinks I am boasting about my own country, that the exchange of practical ideas was a two-way traffic, and we have adapted in New Zealand many practices used in the various Australian child welfare services,” Mr Anderson said.