Forced Adoption in New Zealand - Nights with Bryan Crump

Earlier this week (22 August 2013), Radio NZ's 'Nights' host Bryan Crump featured a program focusing on the issue of forced adoption in New Zealand. Featuring interviews from those who have had various experiences with forced adoption (including yours truly) and a discussion panel with Kevin Hague MP with the Greens Party and Ann Else, an adoption researcher, it was an interesting look at how this issue is seen by different persons.

To listen to the program for yourself, the audio is available here

Piece of My Heart - NZ Film

"Piece of my Heart" is a New Zealand film based on the true stories of women who experienced forced adoption in the late 1960's. Available to purchase by ordering at leading DVD stores.  Visit the website for more information on the movie.

Synopsis

Flora Thornley has been in hiding for most of her life. In 1968 when she was seventeen, Flora had a daughter and gave her up for adoption. She has never told anyone, including her husband and two grown sons. But now, she has contacted her daughter for the first time and gets a brutal rejection letter in reply.

Devastated, Flora runs away from home to the only person she thinks will understand. Kat was her closest friend in the home for unmarried mothers where they both gave birth in 1968, but they haven’t seen each other since. Meanwhile, their lives have been very different, and Kat’s place isn’t the safe haven Flora hopes it will be. Also living there is Ani, a stroppy teenager two weeks away from giving birth and in complete denial about the reality of life with a baby.
As Flora writes to her daughter, explaining how and why a woman could give away her baby, we go back to 1968 and learn what really happened. In the present, Flora has to face up to what a life of deception has done to her as she tries to reconnect with Kat, deal with Ani and tell her husband Mike the truth after thirty years of lying.

PIECE OF MY HEART is a drama about reconciliation – between the present and the past, between a mother and her child, between a husband and a wife. Adoption is a part of so many New Zealand families and their stories – this is the story of one particular woman as she finally acknowledges the past in order to change the future.

PIECE OF MY HEART is written and directed by Fiona Samuel adapted from the novel 'Does This Make Sense To You?' by Renee. The four leading roles are played by Annie Whittle (THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN), Rena Owen (ONCE WERE WARRIORS), Emily Barclay (IN MY FATHER’S DEN) and Keisha Castle Hughes (WHALE RIDER).

The Adoption Act 1955

You can read the entire legislation of the Adoption Act 1955 through this website.

Adoption (NZ) in the early 2000's

From the "Encyclopedia of New Zealand"

Adoption rules

Adoption in New Zealand remained regulated by the Adoption Act 1955, which set up the governing framework.

To read the section in its entirety, please visit the page here.

Don't amend Adoption Act 1955 - scrap it and start again!

This is a blog post from 2009 by Labour MP Lianne Dalziel which raises some ingteresting points:

Don’t amend Adoption Act 1955 – scrap it and start again

Posted by Lianne Dalziel on August 20th, 2009 I made a contribution to Red Alert some weeks ago that people should judge the Chief Justice’s speech “Blameless Babes” after they had read it – and a couple of phone calls I received from the media yesterday, suggest to me that I should offer the same advice to those interested in the recent speech of the Acting Principal Family Court Judge [PDF link].
You could be excused for thinking it only recommended extending the existing adoption laws to same sex and de facto couples. It doesn’t – it recommends a total overhaul of the law and I agree. Apart from de facto couples and same sex couples the speech covers step parent adoptions and the severing of links with the birth parent and his or her extended family; Maori customary adoption (whangai) – banned by the current law; and inter-country adoption and surrogacy.
These are challenging issues and, as someone who has sat on select committees and been a Minister at the forefront of legislative change, I know how hard it is to construct a rational platform for constructive debate on such matters. That is why I am suggesting that we flick it back to the Law Commission. I know they reported on this in 2000, but that report was not limited to adoption – it proposed a fundamental overhaul of all guardianship laws and that is where the Care of Children Act 2004 came from. However, we omitted adoption, and that was for all the reasons spelled out in the judge’s speech. We also left it out of the Statutory References legislation, which was a Bill that removed relationship-based discrimination from countless pieces of legislation in one hit. That was for the same reason – extending a flawed piece of law doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
To summarise why we did not address adoption in the Care of Children Act there are four points to make:

• First there was the need to update our guardianship laws, which are the primary legal source of parental responsibilities to their children.
• Second was the reality that adoption severs legal relationships with wider family members as well as birth parents, for example grandparents (this is hugely challenging when you think of step parent adoptions and the impact on grandparents).
• Third was the absence of any legal arrangements around whangai adoption and the implications of applying the current law to whänau, hapü and iwi – the Law Commission recommended an alternative status called an “enduring guardian”.
• And finally there was the simple fact that less than a quarter of adoptions today are stranger adoptions, meaning that adoption is now much more often about providing a legal framework around an existing set of relationships.

The Care of Children Act 2004 says that the “welfare and best interests of the child must be the first and paramount consideration” and it applies in equal respects to all couples regardless of whether they are married, in a civil union or in a de facto relationship, same-sex or otherwise. This is the vision I have for modern adoption laws – a child-centred approach that ensures that their interests lie at the heart of any decisions that are made. The current Adoption Act says that the court has to be satisfied that the welfare and interests of the child will be promoted by the adoption, but it does not make that the paramount consideration as does the Care of Children Act.
Having seen what the Law Commission has done with other subjects that involve a legal framework alongside wider societal and cultural values, I think it would be helpful if they were to develop an issues paper on adoption, so that all of the factual information and evidence could be placed on the table, enabling a constructive debate to occur and a modern adoption framework to emerge.
It may well be that the best approach would be to amend the Care of Children Act 2004 to include adoption, as well as some of the other legal issues around parenthood, such as surrogacy, because that would build on legislation that already has the best interests of the child at its core and it is already non-discriminatory in its application.

Read the original post here

Change.org petition - Inquiry into New Zealand Adoption Act polices and practises

Have you been affected by the Adoption Act 1955?  We are gathering signatures to put forward to the government to convey the need for an Inquiry into the policies and practises of the New Zealand Adoption Act 1955.

Please sign and pass along.

Thank you!

Petition can be found here.

"Adoption and its Alternatives: A different approach and a new Framework"

In 1999, then Minister for Justice Tony Ryall, requested the Law Commission to produce a report on adoption in New Zealand.  The following report was released and has since then, been swept under the carpet and virtually ignored.

Report