Adoption Basics

The Basics

Adoption is the permanent, legal transfer of all parental rights from one person to another person or couple. Adoptive parents have the same rights and responsibilities as parents whose children are born to them. Adoptive parents are real parents. And adopted children have all the emotional, social, legal and kinship benefits of birth children.

Types of Adoption

There are two common kinds of adoption: One involves relatives - a step-parent, grandparent or other family members; the other involves adopting a child or children who are unrelated to the adopting parents.

It is the second kind – the “unrelated adoption” – that this guide addresses. Within that “unrelated” category, several options are available to adoptive parents. You can:

     • Adopt a child from the public child welfare system;
     • Adopt an infant within Canada through the private adoption system;
     • Adopt a child from another country; or
     • Adopt a child, if you are Aboriginal, by completing a custom adoption or other customary arrangement.

Your Adoption Partners

There are several ways in which you can complete your adoption. You can:

     • Use a public child welfare authority;
     • Use a private agency;
     • Use an approved adoption practitioner or licensed authority (licensee);

Adoption practitioners can do home studies and post placement services and must work with a Ministry or agency.

Public and Private Agencies

Adopting through a public child welfare agency or government adoption department is the most traditional route to finding a child in Canada. A public child welfare agency could be the local branch of your province or territory’s social service department. With either a public or private agency, finding an infant placement may be difficult. Most of the children available from public agencies tend to be over the age of two and may have special needs. Some agencies specialize by placing only certain types of children. Some may focus on infants; another on international adoption; and others on the adoption of children with special needs.

Direct Placement

There are lawyers who specialize in direct placement adoptions. Frequently, the lawyer has his/her own resource of children and may be able to locate a child for you and provide the legal services needed.

Families looking for a child may spread the word of their desire to adopt in various ways: through a lawyer or doctor, taking out an advertisement in a newspaper, by contacting adoptive parent groups to learn how others adopted, attending conferences where waiting children may be profiled, or by printing business cards to hand to friends and acquaintances. Always check with your provincial or territorial adoption specialist, as some jurisdictions do not allow prospective adoptive parents to advertise or use lawyers.

If you elect to use a lawyer or an approved adoption practitioner or licensee, make certain you feel confident in their ethics and their knowledge of law. One way to find a good adoption attorney or adoption practitioner or licensee is to ask local adoptive parent support groups if any members have adopted children independently. If so, ask them for a recommendation.

Open Adoption

In the past, adoption was shrouded in secrecy. Birth parents and adoptive parents were not given identifying information about each other and all records were sealed. Today, the trend is toward openness. An open adoption is a catch-all phrase referring to some type of communication among the adoptive parent(s), the birth parent(s) and the adopted child. This can range from continuous contact to simply writing a letter to each other annually.

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