Advocacy

Some 1,100 former wards of the Crown enter adulthood yearly. What can be done to improve their chances for success?

You’re 19, officially an adult. Happy birthday. Now get out of the house.

As parents, few of us would take such a brutal approach. Yet in our role as citizens that is exactly the style we adopt toward teenagers “in care” of the Crown -- for whom the government is, institutionally speaking, their legal “parent.”

Donor conception–a type of adoption?

As a donor-conceived person, I have used the phrase “half adopted,” because for some of us donor-conceived people that is how we see our family situation. In the classical sense of donor conception (DC), we have one parent who is biologically related to us and another who is not. In essence, this non-biological parent is in fact agreeing to raise and care for a child who has been conceived by their partner and another person. In effect, they are agreeing to adopt this child as their own.

Across North America, a new kind of special needs adoption is on the rise: the international adoption of children living with HIV.

As recently as a decade ago, stigma, fear, and strict immigration policies meant adopting a child with HIV wasn’t even an option. Now, through increased awareness, advocacy and education have led more and more families to consider this possibility. In British Columbia in the past two years, two families have completed the first international adoptions of children known to be HIV+.

Despite being in 10 different foster homes in five years, how did I manage to not let instability take over my life?

The stereotype of foster children is that they will age out of care and enter a life filled with poverty, unstable relationships, and overall instability. I did not - well poverty maybe - but what student who supports herself doesn’t carry the label “starving student?”

In BC there are a host of services to help diagnose special needs and offer support to families. This guide explains where BC families can go to get help and what to do if it isn’t forthcoming.

Infants 0 - 6

Infant Development Program

In the 34th of our series, our mom of three kids finds it frustrating that her son’s teacher thinks he needs even more medication.

What is up with the push for Grant to be so heavily medicated? His teacher is driving me insane with her insistence that he’s not medicated enough.

If we overlook single people as possible adoptive parents, we could be missing out on wonderful parents for our kids.

There’s little doubt about it, the chances of adopting if you are single are slimmer than for couples. This not only affects single people, it also means that children miss out on a loving, committed parent.

Galya was adopted from Russia at age 11. Her new parents quickly learned ways to help their child with this momentous transition. They also fought the school system, which so often fails to acknowledge the challenges faced by an internationally adopted child.

Galya was almost 12 years old when we brought her home from Novosibirsk. It was just three weeks before a new school year began.

Two innovative AFABC programs prove that, in many cases, there are people in a child’s existing network who are willing to adopt the child. Social worker Anne Melcombe, of Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, and Kirsty Stormer of Fraser Kids, explain how their programs work.

“You mean I have 50 people who are actually related to me! All these people are my family!” -- Eight-year-old foster child who is shown his family tree after extensive research was done to uncover it.

Adoptive mom says there's nowhere to turn for adoptive families with mentally ill youth. She also describes the services she'd like to see.

It’s estimated that 10 to 20% of Canadian youth have a mental illness or severe behaviour disorder.

You can bet that these youth are highly represented in the adoption population where mental health concerns are often combined with FASD, ADHD, and the brain damage caused by early abuse and neglect.