Contact and Adoption Plans for Children Adopted from Out-of-home Care in New South Wales

ABSTRACT

In New South Wales (NSW), legislation prioritises open adoption over long-term foster care when restoration is not possible, and suitable kin or guardians cannot be found. The adoption application includes an adoption plan that outlines the nature of a child’s post-adoption contact with his or her birth family. There are efforts to include the views of the child, birth family, and prospective adoptive parents when developing this plan. This paper reports on the analysis of 89 adoption court files for 117 children from out-of-home care, finalised in 2017 by the Supreme Court of NSW. It focuses on the views of birth parents with respect to contact arrangements specified in the adoption plan. Three researchers independently coded the data, using an inductive approach based on grounded theory. The findings highlight the complexities in the changing relationship structures associated with adoption. Patterns of contact prior to adoption proceedings are highly predictive of plans for post-adoption contact. There are implications for social workers supporting positive contact experiences for children prior to an adoption order as well as the relationships between children’s prospective adoptive families and birth families.

IMPLICATIONS

• Post-adoption contact decisions are informed by the views of birth family, children, and prospective adoptive parents, as well as the contact that has occurred pre-adoption.

• Birth parents expressed preferences for a specific amount and type of experience for contact, reflective of their relationships with the adoptive parents.

• Supports are needed to ensure that positive contact for children and relationships between children’s birth family and adoptive family are established and maintained.

在破镜无法重圆，找不到适当的亲属或保护人的情况下，新南威尔士的立法更倾向于公开领养，而不是长期抚养。领养申请包含一个领养计划，大致勾勒了领养后与儿童出生家庭联系的性质。人们在形成这个计划时尽力容纳儿童、出生家庭、未来抚养父母的视角。本文分析了2017年由新南威尔士最高法院终案、涉及117个无家儿童的89份 法院文件。本文集中讨论了领养计划中生父母对接触安排的看法。三位研究者采用基于扎根理论的归纳方法，对资料进行了独立编码。研究指出，改变与领养相关的关系结构非常复杂。领养程序之前的接触模式对于领养之后的接触模式有着高度预示性。以上发现对于社会工作者在领养前帮助形成积极的接触，对于未来领养家庭和出生家庭之间的关系，都有参考价值。

KEYWORDS:

• Open Adoption
• Out-of-home Care
• Case File Review
• Contact Arrangements
• Birth Parents
• Permanency
• New South Wales

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge and appreciate the assistance of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in providing access to and assistance with the retrieval of the case files for this study. This research was funded as part of a grant from the New South Wales government.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Betty Luu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4461-500X

Amy Conley Wright http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7421-005X

Judith Cashmore http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8747-9541