Stage One: Starting the adoption process

This might seem obvious but the decisions you make during this stage may determine how successful your adoption process will be. It involves:

• Making the decision to pursue adoption. If you have a partner, you need tomake this decision together.
• Choosing a social worker and / or agency. Popular culture has led people to believe that they can adopt without a social worker. This is incorrect and frankly inadvisable. You need a social worker to help you navigate through all of the legal challenges of adoption and shield you from exploitation (there are always people who will take advantage of you if you are desperate for a child).

Top tips:

1. Only social workers accredited for adoption are able to process adoptions. Be sure to check your social worker’s credentials before you begin.
2. Where possible, try to get a personal recommendation before you choose a social worker. If in doubt, contact the National Adoption Coalition for a list of reputable social workers and agencies.
3. Remember that your social worker will evaluate your suitability to be adoptive parents and drive the process of selecting your child so it is essential that you are compatible and able to trust her.
4. Agencies and social workers vary is their pricing, timing and policies. Be sure that they disclose these details and that you take them into account when selecting one.
5. If possible, avoid agency hopping—it can be a cause of concern for social workers.

Stage Two: The screening process

The screening process may seem quite daunting but don’t be put off— while time consuming, these tasks are relatively easy for you and your partner to complete. They include:

• Participating in a series of qualifying interviews with your social worker
• Obtaining a police clearance
• A medical, including blood tests and a chest x-ray
• A psychological assessment
• Compiling a summary of your finances
• Obtaining clearances from the National Child Protection Register and National Register of Sexual Offenders
• A marriage assessment (or an evaluation of your previous relationships)
• Submitting references (three per partner)
• A group session
• A home visit from your social worker
• Creating a family profile (without identifying features). This is given to biological mothers who want to choose their child’s adoptive family and the social workers who will match your family to a suitable child.

If everything is in order, your social worker will confirm your eligibility, list you on the national adoption database and start looking for a child for you.

Top tips:

1. Social workers are very busy people but for the most part, the screening process will move as quickly as you want it to.
2. Some of these tasks involve expense (such as the medical, police clearance and psychological assessment). Be sure to budget for them.
3. Social workers are open to you stating your preferences regarding your child (including age, gender, health, race and whether the child was abandoned or given up for adoption consensually). Be specific, but realistic (for example, if you are an older couple with children and you want a white new-born baby, you may not be successful). Also remember that some criteria make it harder for the social worker to find you the right child and this will make your wait longer.

Stage Three: Waiting for a child

This is often the hardest part of the process. After a period of heightened activity everything goes quiet for a bit and it seems that not much is happening.   But nothing could be further from the truth. While you are waiting, your social worker is busy looking for suitable children and your child’s social worker (usually not the same person) is ensuring that the child selected for you has been qualified for adoption.

Stage Four: Meeting your child

And finally you get the call—your social worker has a child for you. She will brief you about the child and ask if you want to proceed. If you agree, she will organise for you to meet your child.

Places of Safety handle these meetings differently. We visited our daughter for three days before taking her home. We learnt her routine and preferences and were allowed to feed, bath and change her, put her down for naps and introduce her to our family.

While everyone is understandably anxious to take their child home immediately, this time is essential for bonding and if the child is older or particularly anxious, homecoming may be delayed.

When you take your child home, the Place of Safety will provide you with a “leave of absence” which will authorise you to keep him or her in your home until such time as the legalities are finalised.

Stage Five: Completing the legalities

The last stage involves completing the legalities through the Children’s court. This includes:

• The social workers submitting all of the documentation to the court.
• Adoptive parents signing papers to effect the child’s change of name.
• The court granting the adoption order and changing the child’s surname to that of the adoptive parents (if required).
• Sending the order to the National Adoption Register for registration.

The child then becomes the legal child of the adoptive parents (as if s/he were born to them) and has all of the same rights as a biological child.

Once the legalities are complete, adoptive parents can apply to Home Affairs for a new birth certificate which includes the adoptive parent’s details and the child’s new name. This should take three to six months.

The adoption process may seem lengthy and complex, and to some extent it is. But from experience, I know that one day when you look into your child’s eyes, it will all be worth it.

About the Author: Robyn is a writer, survivor of IVF and a passionate adoption advocate.  She is mom to a biological son (7), an adoptive daughter (2) and two step-daughters in their twenties.

The post Your guide to adoption in South Africa appeared first on All4Baby.

I adored my son (conceived miraculously from the only embryo we produced in our first attempt at IVF) and my step-daughters,but the thought of not having any more children was devastating.

Here I was, driven, goal-oriented and time urgent (the typical infertility profile) and for the first time, I was without a plan.

It is only now, four years later that I’m grateful there was no plan B. At the time, adoption was not an option for us because my husband wasn’t keen. So, I had to fully grieve the loss of the daughter I had dreamt about, the little girl with my features and my husband’s temperament that I was planning to conceive and birth.

Little did I know that in letting go of her, I was preparing for the daughter I was intended to have—the one we adopted. She is two now and everything I had hoped for, and more.

Adoption was definitely the right option for us. But is it for you? Ask these five questions to find out.

Question one: Are you emotionally ready to adopt?

Some people recover quickly from the struggle with infertility. For others, moving on from the failure is a prolonged and painful process (this is often a function of how long you struggled and how devastating the loss was). For the latter group, rushing to adopt can make coming to terms with your new family much harder. Emotional preparedness is essential if you want to avoid post-adoption depression or attachment problems.

My top tips for preparing emotionally are:

1. Take time to mourn the loss of the biological child you hoped for. Your grief is completely valid and creating a memorial (for me it was a memory box), going for counseling, obtaining spiritual support or finding creative outlets are all options for dealing with it.
2. If the grief of a failed fertility procedure is still raw or you are finding it hard to move on, consider getting some help.
3. Process these questions as honestly as you can:

• Are you ready to parent a child who is different from the picture that you have in your head?
• Can adoption be the best and most perfect option for your family or is it just plan B?
• What are your motives for adoption? We have all heard people say, “adopt, then you will definitely fall pregnant.” It does happen, sometimes. But if that is part of your thinking, it is best to acknowledge it. At the end of the adoption process you will have a son or daughter but if that doesn’t lead to biological children too will you be content with your family?

Question two: Do you and your partner both want to adopt?

If you have a partner, this is one of the first questions that your social worker will ask. You will be co-parenting so you need to be in agreement before you proceed.

The 18 months I waited for my husband to choose adoption were unbelievably hard but in the end,a child’s life and our family’s happiness were at stake so it was well worth the wait.

Question three: Are you ready for the process and the wait?

The adoption process is actually not as long and invasive as some people make it out to be. In fact, it took eleven months for our social worker to screen us and find us a baby, exactly the same amount of time as it took me to conceive my son through IVF and carry him to term.

But at the time, it felt excruciating, especially after all our years of infertility.I therefore encourage woman to be prepared for the process and the wait, and to remember that as a rule of thumb, the more specific you are about the child you want, the longer it is likely to take.

On the plus side though, while the adoption screening is intensive and requires time, honesty and self-disclosure, there are no internal examinations!And, unlike the majority of my IVF attempts, we actually got a child at the end of it.

Question four: Is trans-racial adoption an option for you?

The media is full of adoption stories involving white, coloured and Indian children but in truth these are quite rare. Because of South Africa’s demographics, the vast majority of adoptable children are black. For this reason, most agencies either have strict criteria for same-race adoptions or a closed list (that is, they will not accept new applicants). So, if  you are only willing to adopt a white, coloured or Indian child, it’s best to prepare for a long wait or for disappointment.

However, if you are prepared to adopt trans-racially (or are a black family wanting to adopt) and you are approved, you are certain to get a child, and relatively quickly.

Question five: Can you love your adopted child as much as a biological child?

This was the first question I asked my husband when we decided to adopt. He is a wonderful dad and I knew that if he didn’t love our adopted daughter as much as his biological children, I would know, and so would she. Turns out I had no reason to be concerned. He was committed, and from the first moment he held her and she snuggled into his arms,he knew that he would take a bullet for her. In the end, love is a choice and when it comes to children—biological or adopted—it isn’t a hard one.

About the Author: Robyn is a writer, survivor of IVF and a passionate adoption advocate.  She is mom to a biological son (7), an adoptive daughter (2) and two step-daughters in their twenties.

The post Is adoption for you? Five questions for infertile couples to consider appeared first on All4Baby.

Growing social crisis of child abandonment

The research undertaken by Dee Blackie, a consultant to the National Adoption Coalition of SA, is the result of an intensive, 1-year long research project that will provide NACSA with the understanding and insights needed to address the growing social crisis of child abandonment and declining adoption rates in South Africa.

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Blackie’s fieldwork, conducted from March 2013 to February 2014, involved in-depth interviews and participant observation with young women experiencing unplanned pregnancy, women who had been apprehended for abandoning their children, community members, police officers, nurses and social workers, baby home managers and caregivers, adoption social workers, foster care and adoptive parents, psychologists and psychiatrists, legal experts, traditional healers and abandoned children (predominantly in Alexandra, Soweto and Tembisa).

Little understanding of the alarming social change

“Child abandonment continues to rise in South Africa, but there is little to no understanding of this alarming social challenge. This together with the increasing numbers of orphans due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is placing extreme pressure on temporary care solutions such as children’s homes and foster care.

Adoptions have decreased by more than 50% over the past decade with research indicating that much of the decline is due to the implementation of the new Children’s Act in 2010 and what has been referred to as ‘cultural barriers’,” says Dee Blackie.

A number of challenges

Contemporary South Africa has a number of the challenges associated with child abandonment including restrictive legislation, high levels of poverty, mass urbanisation and migrant labour, high levels of violence especially rape, gender inequality and diminishing family support. All of these issues lead to the increasing vulnerability of young women in the urban environment and can result in child abandonment as a ‘survival strategy’ on the discovery of an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

Ancestral beliefs an influence

Blackie’s research found that both child abandonment and the decline in adoption are influenced by indigenous African ancestral beliefs. She found that some mothers and community members believe that, in the eyes of their ancestors, to abandon a child is better than formally relinquishing their rights as parents so that the child can be adopted.

The research found that ancestral beliefs play a significant role in child abandonment in South Africa.

“Formally placing a child up for adoption is seen as a conscious act, and similar to the choice of abortion, amounts to the rejecting a gift that the ancestors have given you. Many young women believe that the punishment for doing this could be extreme suffering and bad luck and in some cases, they believe they may even be rendered infertile as a result of their actions. Other circumstances such as depression, high levels of stress possibly due to how the child was conceived such as rape, or that she had been abandoned herself by the father of the child or her own family, which is often the case, are often contributing reasons for abandoning the baby. In this instance, the mother can then sacrifice something to call her ancestors, and then when they appear, apologise to them at which point they could choose to forgive her,” explains Blackie.

Unknown ancestry to cause problems

“Adoption is also viewed with great concern as bringing a child with an unknown ancestry into a family is thought to cause problems for both the adoptive family and the child. Most research respondents believe that a child who does not know their ancestors – the decedents of their father’s line – will live a difficult life and may also not be able to fulfil many of their traditional roles and rituals in their family.  These include paying damages for a child, paying lebola (to get married), celebrating big milestones such as matriculating, graduating or getting a new job.  Ancestors are also important for guidance and support, for understanding where illness may come from, and assisting a person in making important life decisions. ”

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“Many black adoptive parents choose not to disclose that their children are adopted for fear of rejection from their extended family or community. However, if this is discovered later on in life, it can cause high levels of trauma for the abandoned child” adds Blackie.

Solving the issue at a community level

But the research also revealed that despite the negative perceptions of adoption, all of the sangomas (traditional healers) interviewed confirmed that they could assist a child who has been abandoned to find their ancestors. They can also help a family who chooses to adopt a child, through a process called ‘ubigile’ or the announcing of the child to the ancestors.

“The sangomas believe that despite child abandonment being increasingly associated with postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome, the only way to solve this issue is to fix it at a family and community level, rather than through the medication and counselling of the individual mother or child,” adds Blackie.

Research to inform initiatives

The comprehensive research will inform a number of initiatives planned by the National Adoption Coalition in their attempt to curb this growing social crisis.

Pam Wilson, spokesperson for NACSA adds: “Getting to the heart of cultural and ancestral beliefs is crucial if we are to address this challenge by understanding the reasons behind high levels of abandonment and declining adoptions. It will inform and shape our messaging and approach, particularly as we are about to embark on a campaign specifically aimed at unplanned pregnancy and helping families to support the young women in their homes. The research information will also be used to expand on the Coalition’s Community Engagement Programme specifically around option counselling for unplanned pregnancy to help young pregnant mothers to make informed decisions. Finally, in support of the call by sangomas and traditional leaders, this year’s adoption conference planned for October, will focus on trying to find more culturally relevant approaches to adoption and otherchild protection strategies,” says Wilson.

During Child Protection Week 2014, the National Adoption Coalition will focus on the insights revealed from the research and use this as a basis to inform its actions going forward around the plight of South Africa’s adoptable children and provide accurate process information to birth and prospective adoptive parents, particularly around the issues of ancestry and cultural beliefs in South Africa.

For more information on the National Adoption Coalition call 0800 864 6580800 864 658 or go to www.adoptioncoalitionsa.org

The post New research on child abandonment and declining adoption rates in SA released by the National Adoption Coalition appeared first on All4Baby.