Unleashing the adoption revolution

The most interesting response to SBS TV’s ‘Struggle Street’ documentary series was the article by Mamamia founder, Mia Freedman, who declared “our priority as a society must be to remove children from parents who cannot take care of them.”

Endorsing child removal is a big statement, with potential to generate a politically correct backlash, given how debate about child protection is framed by the history of past practices, especially the Stolen Generation.

But if Freedman is serious about wanting to see children removed from dysfunctional parents, she needed to use and endorse an even more culturally contentious word – adoption.

Defenders of the current practice of ‘family preservation’ argue it is unaffordable to take more children into foster and other forms of ‘out of home’ care. This argument is self-justifying because child protection authorities simply refuse to countenance the use of adoption to give maltreated children new, stable and permanent homes.

Adoption is the affordable way to better protect children because it shifts most of the cost of caring for children off limited government budgets.

In Australia, few politicians are willing to endorse the use of adoption because they fear being accused of ‘stealing’ children.

In the UK, however, the reelected Cameron government undertook a series of reforms that significantly increased adoptions.

In a major speech on family policy last August, Mr Cameron declared his government had only just begun unleashing the “adoption revolution”. The Prime Minister also took pride in the “staggering” increases in the number and speed of adoptions, and in sweeping away “ridiculous” restrictions preventing “placing black children with white families”.

Imagine the Twitter reaction if Tony Abbott were to make a similar speech advocating increases in colour-blind adoptions. Fear of the social media pile-on that would ensue is one of the political factors preventing politicians from exercising leadership on adoption.

Those who want to better protect the most vulnerable children in Australia need to talk not only  of removal but also of the need for adoptions. Thought leadership on this issue by influential media figures would help pave the cultural and political way here for the arrival of a Prime Minister willing and able to speak of their determination to unleash the adoption revolution.