An abandoned or abused young girl is waiting to be adopted. She tells the child-welfare officer assigned to her case that she doesn鈥檛 want a social worker for a mother.
She wants a 鈥渇orever鈥� family to live with, for the rest of her life, and confides what she鈥檚 hoping her adoptive parents will be like.
Then the file is forwarded to an overworked branch of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, where it gathers dust for years.
According to a report just released by the sa国际传媒 representative for children and youth (Finding Forever Families), scenarios like this are becoming all too common. Every year, fewer kids are processed through the ministry.
Between 2007 and 2012, the annual number of adoptions fell by more than a third. Some kids waited six years. Some were never found homes.
The problem is not a lack of placement options. While the statistics are incomplete, it appears the number of families willing to take a child has remained constant.
There is certainly no shortage of children waiting to be adopted. More than 1,000 eligible kids are on the waiting list. Of these, 200 might be placed in a given year.
The children鈥檚 representative believes the fault lies, partly, with a ministry distracted by firefighting. Staff say they are told to deal with crises first, then do adoptions 鈥� the 鈥渢yranny of the urgent.鈥�
There is also a chronic shortfall of resources. Workers are spread too thin; vacant positions go unfilled. Their colleagues in other branches view the adoption program as a low-priority 鈥渞etirement鈥� slot.
Those are damning critiques, and the government might disagree. But the report backs them up with a litany of administrative failures.
By law, adoption placements are to be made in a 鈥渢imely鈥� manner. But no one has defined what 鈥渢imely鈥� means, and there is no system for tracking kids who鈥檝e fallen by the wayside.
The ministry has no idea how long it takes adoptive parents to move through the approval process, or why some withdraw. There is no strategy for recruiting additional families. The last provincewide publicity campaign was in 2001.
And audits are supposed to be done so the ministry can check if standards are being met, but none have been carried out.
The impact of these failures can be seen in foster care. This is the main holding area for kids who have been approved for adoption but not yet placed.
Between 2001 and 2011, the average time spent by children in foster homes rose from five and a half years to eight. It seems likely the slowdown in adoption played a part.
There are defences the ministry can offer. Society has grown more aware of developmental disorders such as fetal alcohol syndrome and autism. That might make some kids harder to place.
And about 40 per cent of the children waiting for adoption are aboriginal. A long history of exploitation and abuse has undermined the relationship between First Nations and government.
But the strong impression given by this report is that a new delivery model is required. Running an adoption program is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Leave it in the midst of a perennial crisis centre like the children鈥檚 ministry, and it鈥檚 never going to be a priority.
Perhaps an arm鈥檚-length body should be established, with a mandate and budget of its own. There are parallels in health care, where agencies such as sa国际传媒 Transplant were set up to attack specialized problems.
But something must be done, and done now. One of the most basic responsibilities of any society is to guarantee its children a loving home. All of them.
As things stand, we have not kept that faith.
