Jigsaw puts its views

Press, 8 February 1985, Page 3

Jigsaw puts its views

The time has gone when the need of adopted children “to know” could be patronisingly dismissed as a psychologically bizarre whim, according to Jigsaw, New Zealand’s biggest voluntary agency involved in adoption. Jigsaw presented detailed submissions to the Parliamentary select committee hearing evidence on the Adult Adoption Information Bill and the McLean amendment to it.

Jigsaw handles 100 adoption inquiries a week and helps about 1000 contacts a year between parties to the adoption triangle of child, birth parents, and adoptive parents. It has been active for about eight years and its president, Ms Anna Coffey, of Auckland, said that about 20 per cent of those who approached Jigsaw eventually made the contact they sought. About 80 per cent of Jigsaw’s work was in counselling its inquirers. In the last 20 years there

had been tremendous changes worldwide in social attitudes towards adoption, Jigsaw said. Many countries had, in fact, expressed those changes in both legislation and adoption practice. “But here in New Zealand we are in the curious position of retaining our present negative law on the adult inquirer in spite of having made enviable progress both in the way these inquiries are handled and in the way adoption placements are now made,” Jigsaw said. This meant there was a wide contradiction between the law and its practice. Public interest in adoption was now widespread, there were now hundreds of inquiries a year to the Social Welfare Department, showing the need for reform. Overseas research into adoption tended to be uniform, no matter in which country, and also tended to

agree with the experience of Jigsaw. The case for access to background material and identifying information had been established beyond dobt.

“Jigsaw sees the substantive bill as a positive step towards legal recognition of what is now known about the emotional truths of the adoptive situation,” Ms Coffey said.

“On the other hand, the proposed McLean amendment would have the effect of betraying this positive intention.” There was now an overwhelming volume of evidence to show that the adoptive family was, in very real ways, different from the natural family. “The negative effects of perpetuating legal fictions can no longer be disregarded by those who cling to the wishful hope that no differences exist,” she said. “We must accept the fact that these differences are real, and cease to pretend

that they are not. When the' law is consistent with this, adoption will be a happier and safer process for all parties concerned. “If adoption is to be truly in the best interests of the child (the reason most often given to justify it) it is time the adopted party was permitted to come of age,” Ms Coffey said.

She answered criticism of the substantive bill that it involved “breach of contract” and “invasion of privacy” for birth parents not wanting to be contacted. “There is a clear distinction between the desire for information and the desire for contact.” Ms Coffey said. “Perhaps it is confusion over this in the minds of those who are not personally involved that has been responsible for the progressive emasculations which this legislation has suffered. “Both the title and the spirit of the legislation are for information, not for contact.”