Adoption in crisis: Reactions to the Children’s Amendment Bill

With 2.8 million orphans and more than 3500 children who survive abandonment every year in SA, adoption is a small light in this dark tunnel which is now under threat.

The Children’s Amendment Bill 2019, which was submitted to parliament in February, is causing major upset as the national department of social development has proposed changes to the powerful Children’s Act.

This proposed bill will prevent private social workers from charging a fee for their adoption services – ultimately resulting in the shut down of private adoptions.

Attorney Debbie Wybrow has been fighting against the proposed changes and said they are “structurally unsound and fundamentally flawed”.

“If the Children’s Act amendments are accepted in their current form, our specialist social workers will no longer be able to charge professional fees, fund raise or even recoup their costs for guiding and facilitating the adoption process.

Private social workers will be forced to stop offering this vital service and even those working for child protection organisations, who are entitled to partial subsidies, will struggle to survive.

Eventually only government social workers will be left to perform adoptions,” said Wybrow, who founded Wandisa Child Protection & Specialist Adoption Agency, a non-profit serving children throughout South Africa.

To highlight her concerns, she started a petition on Change.org which has already been signed by over 51 000 petitioners.

“The petition opposes the Amendment Bill and calls for it to be completely withdrawn and reworked, this time taking into account the input of stakeholders, those with first-hand experience of serving children and vulnerable children themselves.

“Our foster system is in chaos but if the suggested “solutions” are implemented, the crisis of those without parents will explode even further, with long term detrimental effects on society. The voices of children have not been heard; their best interests have been ignored.”

Adoption is not African

Wybrow said it has been evident over the years that social development is anti-adoption which was publicly confirmed recently.

“The national spokesperson insisted that children should be re-placed into their communities of origin before any “outsiders” are allowed to care for them. In addition, the head of adoptions in South Africa commented at an international conference in May that children without parents should be placed into institutions – children’s homes – in their own communities, rather than being adopted by ‘outsiders’.”

Ballito dad and founder of The Baby Home Justin Foxton said he had seen the negative sentiment to adoptions over the years.

“Even as an adoptive parent and a fierce advocate for adoptions, I believe we have been going about it the wrong way.

Private adoptions are predominantly run by middle-aged, white, very religious women and basically 99,9 percent of all adoptions in the country are white people adopting black children.

We might think this looks like ubuntu, but it might actually be seen as the ultimate expression of colonialism,” said Foxton, who has an adopted daughter.

“People expect their adopted child to take on their culture and speak their language. If my daughter wants to date a Zulu man one day, she needs to understand the culture and speak the language – it is part of her roots.”

He said adoption as a concept is a Western idea and needs to be adapted to make it more African for it to work.

“We have been arrogant about the way we handle adoption.

“It is time to open the dialogue and listen to each other to find better, positive ways to fix this massive problem of orphans and abandoned children.”

On the other hand, fellow Ballito father and founder of foster care project Hearts that Hope, Kent van der Yacht said the proposed amendment was highly frustrating for them.

“We would like to see adoption become easier, not more difficult, as there are so many orphaned and vulnerable children out there and the people/families willing to adopt are not going to get the opportunity to bring these children into their loving and caring homes.

To us it’s just very frustrating as we feel that government is blocking something positive instead of doing what they were created to do – give justice to a country,” said Van der Yacht.