Prospective adoptive parents

It’s everyone’s favourite time of year again: tax time! This year a reader asked us for help understanding how to claim Canada’s adoption tax credit. In this article, adoptive dad and financial professional John Hakkarainen returns for the third year in a row—this time, to explain the nuts and bolts of line 313.

What is the adoption tax credit and why it is important?

My children often tell me that my jokes are taxing! I am hoping that the guide below helps you to reduce your tax liability so that you have more money to spend on cheese.

Post-adoption depression is a common experience. In this article we tell the stories of parents who have been through it and share what you can do to find help.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD)’s new online adoption portal, Adopt BC Kids, has been up and running for over a year now. We reached out to our community to find out what the process is like for prospective parents. In this article, a prospective adoptive mother shares her experience with the new system.

One evening in April

I’m not sure exactly when my husband and I decided to start our family through adoption. We both always wanted a blended family of biological and adopted children. This past spring just felt like the right time.

Tips for families in transition

On February 1, 2016, my husband and I went from being just a couple to being the parents of three kids: a 9-year-old boy, a 4-year-old girl, and a 1-year-old boy. Even though we had been praying for this for years, it was overwhelming when it actually happened! Looking back, here are seven things I wish I’d known a year ago.

We discovered this poem in an anthology of adoption poetry from 1983,  Perspectives on a Grafted Tree. The book is still in print and available on Amazon. Sheila Darst wrote it when she was an expectant adoptive mother and dedicated it to her social worker, Deborah Bonnardel. Her description of waiting for an adoption match rings true almost three decades later.

When my children were small, I lived on a ranch surrounded by woods and wildlife. Other than the chickens and the kids, I had no one to talk to for days on end. I read everything I could find about raising adopted children but in those days there wasn’t much. I had to create my own education. I researched and wrote about teens who were adopted, and recently I wrote a book about modern adoptive parenting. Today there are many more books and education options for adoptive parents.

For many youth, foster and adoptive homes can be safe places for care and support when the biological family does not provide appropriate care. Unfortunately, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth are placed in foster homes where their caretakers do not understand or accept these youth because of their gender or sexual orientation.

For almost twenty years, China has been the most popular source country for international adoptions by Canadian families. Since the peak year of 2005, however, adoption numbers have decreased while wait times have increased. The exception is China’s special needs (“waiting children”) program, which is now the largest source of international adoptions to Canadians. In this Q&A, we talk with two families who recently adopted through the waiting children program.

Online adoption education is the way of the future­. Here’s how to get the most  out of it.

Last year, my husband and I explored the possibility of adopting a teenager. It was something we’d been discussing for years, and we thought we were finally ready to move forward. AFABC’s Adopting Teens and Tweens course was the obvious next step. My husband took it in person several years ago, when our life was much less demanding. Now, with two young daughters and both parents working, our family schedule simply couldn’t accommodate an in-person course.

In recent years, over 40% of adoptions in B.C. have been completed by foster parents who adopt their foster children. To find out more about this unique path to building a family, we interviewed a mom who’s been there and done that--more than once!

Jane and her husband have been foster parents for more than a decade, and are also parents to twelve children (seven biological and five through adoption).