Enduring Familial Relationships and Identity Preservation Make Simple Adoption the Preferred Permanency Option for Children in Out-of-Home Care

Abstract

ABSTRACT Large numbers of children in Australia are in long-term out-of-home care (OOHC). Legal frameworks available for their care are long-term foster care, guardianship, and plenary adoption. Views of individuals with OOHC or adoption experience on these legal frameworks were explored via an online survey. A legal framework called simple adoption, which makes children legal members of adoptive families without legally excising them from birth families, was also considered. The respondents (N = 1019) evaluated aspects of these frameworks as strengths or weaknesses from which scores were calculated. Overall, simple adoption had the highest strength score, followed by plenary adoption, guardianship, and long-term foster care. The highest weakness score was for long-term foster care, followed by guardianship, plenary adoption, and simple adoption. That simple adoption enabled enduring familial relationships between children and their adoptive families while retaining legal identity and legal connection with birth families contributed to its favourable evaluation. IMPLICATIONS The legal severance of children from birth families and the supplanting of legal identity that occurs in plenary adoption makes this form of adoption unacceptable to many. Simple adoption, allowing for children to be full legal members of both their adoptive and birth families and preserving legal identity, makes it attractive to individuals with a variety of experience backgrounds. An exploration of legislative reform to allow for simple adoption in Australia should be undertaken.