A public consultation period on plans to amend local adoption laws opened on Friday, with children in the alternative care system set to take centre stage in forging the new rules.
Family Minister Michael Falzon announced the start of the consultation at a press conference at the museum of modern art, MUŻA, in Valletta on Friday morning.
The changes are intended to create a more robust legal framework for local adoptions, which are considered to be highly sensitive due to the severing of ties of the child’s natural family and the consolidation of new legal ties with an adoptive family.
Proposals include regulating open adoptions, where the child retains some sort of contact with his or her biological family. While existing laws allow for open adoptions, they are not regulated in any depth, the minister said.
"The law needs to regulate such access and needs to provide safeguards in case this contact does not remain in the best interest of the adopted child. The law needs to provide recourse for all the stakeholders involved to enforce their rights," Falzon said.
Keeping original surnames
Other proposals include allowing adopted children to keep their original surname if they so wished and explicitly defining what information about the birth family the child should have access to prior to coming of age, explained Daniela Bonanno, a legal consultant on the consultation.
Plans also include updating the law to ensure adequate support systems for the child as well as the adoptive family, to help the child come to terms with their family history in a healthy and structured way.
Moreover, the law will seek to enact safeguards for the child to act on these wishes, should they create tension within the adoptive family.
Children to be consulted
As well as defining the roles and responsibilities of the National Agency, the Social Care Standards Authority and the Adoption Board, the new adoption rules will also aim to regulate post-adoption reports with the authorities as well as regulating access with the natural family in the case of open adoptions.
Authorities say they intend to consult children within the care system as they fine-tune the proposed amendments.
University professor Andrew Azzopardi, who serves as Dean of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing, said this was essential to understanding the challenges faced by children in the care system and how laws could best address their situations.
There are currently around 500 boys and girls in foster care or residential care homes.
Family Minister Michael Falzon.Azzopardi said the children were suffering and that the state has a duty to identify the barriers they face and make recommendations best suited to overcome them.
“It’s time to have a hard look at our social politics,” Azzopardi said.
“We are a very generous country and now we have to adapt our help so that welfare is a tool that helps people take control of their lives and be in the centre of the decisions they make and not rely solely on the services that we give.”
Legal responsibilities
The proposed new laws would make the director of social care responsible for alerting the courts to minors suitable for adoption, Foundation for Social Welfare Services CEO Alfred Grixti explained.
The courts would also be empowered to place a child under a protection order up for adoption, even if the child’s family does not consent to that.
Three-stage process
Prospective adoptees would go through a three-stage selection process under the proposed changes.
First, professional adoption services will look at all possible matches for the child. At the second stage, alternative care managers will conduct an in-depth evaluation and shortlist three prospective adoptive parents.
Finally, the director of the adoption board, together with directors for other social welfare agencies, will decide on the final match.
Adoption statistics
Grixti said that the agency was eyeing the way forward on local adoptions to go through foster care. Currently, a team of eight social workers is working on 21 adoption cases and 29 post-adoption reports for the child’s country of origin.
This year, 68 people have received training to become prospective adoptive parents, some of which was carried out virtually. Some 70 children who have already been in foster care for five years, or are approaching that date have already been identified as having a strong case for local adoption and were being guided to begin the adoption process.
A further 20 children who live in residential homes and have no possibility of returning to their natural families are in the process of being matched to prospective adoptive parents, and work is being carried out for them to move into a family care environment as soon as possible.
A total of 250 children live in residential care homes, and while no one was disparaging the good work done in these institutions, Grixti said the hope was that the majority would get the opportunity to transition into family-oriented care.
The public consultation period begins on Friday and ends on December 31. Submissions can be sent by email to localadoptions@gov.mt