A CHANGING WORLD: Shaping Best Practices Through Understanding of the New Realities of Intercountry Adoption
supports to adoptive families, just one related to ICA, calling for more online information, while 11 sought to encourage domestic and aboriginal adoption instead of ICA. In response to why prospective adoptive parents choose ICA, Canada stated that they may not want contact with birthparents, may be immigrants adopting from their country of birth, may have preferences regarding children’s age and sex and may have "humanitarian reasons." Regarding age: “Newborns are more often available through the Canadian domestic adoption program, whereas newborns are rarely available through the intercountry adoption process.” The federal Citizenship and Immigration does not provide statistics on ICA on its website. xxxix Denmark Denmark stated that its “biggest step” was getting caseworkers to implement subsidiarity – reviewing each case and applying the best interests standard, not just relying on the COO’s social report. As somewhat of an anomaly in this regard, it said that special needs ICA “is quite limited” and usually involves children with minor issues. It ascribed the reason to cultural differences in accepting and being prepared for children with issues (compared to countries like the U.S.) and “hav[ing] a rather strict approval system so you would also have analysis and have to have really good resources to get an approval to such children.” Denmark reports about 20 domestic (both private infant and child welfare) adoptions annually. Finland In 2011, there were 163 intercountry adoptions by Finland, down from a high of 305 in 2005. While Finland does not record special needs data because of different organizations’ and countries’ definitions of the term, it estimates about 50-60 percent of ICA is special needs (defined as children over 7 years old). It reported that “[a]ctually, this new law has changed very much,” in part because domestic adoptions are also processed by the central authority. Finland does not keep statistics, but estimates there are about 30 to 50 domestic adoptions annually. Ireland Ireland reported it is "[e]ssential that subsidiarity is used by the State of origin and that ICA is considered only after domestic adoption,” and it uses Irish-accredited agencies in certain countries to help ensure that. It also remarked that “the main focus of intercountry adoption under Hague has become seeking families for children in need and not seeking children for prospective adoptive parents,” its system is child-centered, and parents understand there are uniform, reliable protocols and regular fees in all Convention countries.
Donaldson Adoption Institute
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