Age limit for adoptive parents urged by authority

Prospective parents should be no more than 42 years older than the child they are adopting, the Adoption Authority of Ireland has recommended.

It urged an age limit in law as it said number of infants available for intercountry adoption has decreased while children for adoption are getting older and most are regarded as special needs.

Because of this changing profile of children for adoption the “ need for prospective adoptive parents to be in good health and of an age to parent children with needs through to adulthood, is important,” the Authority said in its 2013 annual report which was published earlier this month.

Intercountry adoption is an “alternative to institutional care for children” so their welfare and safety “must be protected and safeguarded”, it said. “Children are being placed on average from about age four years, and have spent most of their lives in institutional care,” the authority said.

There are some 650 Irish families who are qualified (have valid declarations) for intercountry adoption . However the authority said that not all prospective adoptive parents “want to adopt older children with needs” so a significant number of Irish families with declarations were “unlikely to result in the adoption of a child”.

New medical guidelines for prospective adoptive parents were put in place last year to find out early in the process if such issues are likely to impact on the parent’s ability to rear a child to adulthood, the report said.

The age limit is among several changes the authority recommends should be made to the Adoption Act 2010.

It also recommends that parents found to be suitable should only be given declarations for two years and renewed once through affidavit and updated extension for a maximum of five years.

It recommends that Ireland introduce open adoption. In notes that Irish law is behind practice by not including this. Open adoption means biological and adoptive families have access to some information about each other and have the option of contact.

“ It is of utmost importance in all types of adoption to legally allow for the rights of all children and parents to have on-going contact with each other, by allowing the legal attachment of conditions to the adoption order.” the report said.

It also recommends that the Authority be given a legal foundation for maintaining the National Adoption Contact Preference Register as well as a clear basis upon which it may release original birth certificates.

It also recommends sanctions “on anyone who effects an adoption outside the State knowing it to be unsafe”.

The report notes that there were 116 domestic adoptions last year, more than double the 2012 figure of 49. It notes that most (86) were in stepfamily adoptions with once case of a birth father adopting with his wife.

It notes that there were 72 intercountry adoptions last year to Ireland down on 117 in 2012. That includes 17 from Russia, 26 from Ethiopia, 10 from India, seven from the United States, five from Thailand, three from China,and one each from Bulgaria, Taiwan, Colombia and El Salvador.