Meeting with Ottawa Children's Aid Society

On April 9, we (Holly and Lucy) met with Robin May of Ottawa’s Children Aid Society (CAS) to discuss some of the advocacy items on our wish list from the first meeting. Here are some of the highlights:

Adoption Numbers
Last year CAS placed over 90 children for adoption. Of these, 35 were adopted to LGBTQ families. That’s nearly 1/3 of all placements. What a success!

Adoption Challenges
Right now many of the children awaiting adoptive families are larger sibling groups of 3 to 4 children and tend to be older in the 6 - 10 age range. With few families being able to adopt so many children at once, CAS is evolving their recruitment strategy.

This past year it was decided that a sibling group would have to be placed separately – 2 children in one family and 2 children in another – with the idea that there would be sibling contact. It so happened that the first sibling pair were matched with a lesbian couple, and then the second sibling pair were also matched with a lesbian couple. The two couples had agreed to sibling contact, and upon meeting one another, decided to blend their transition process.

Some times the sibling groups would meet independently with their new adoptive parents. This was alternated with all four children meeting with one set, and then the other, adoptive parents. This arrangement has formed two new families, but at the same time, one large blended family.
This model worked out well for the both the adoptive parents and kids that CAS is now actively exploring how they can place more large sibling groups this way. Internally they’re trying to match parents with other parents open to this arrangement, CAS is very interested in potential adoptive parents who come forward to them as a pair/triple willing to explore this arrangement.

Rainbow Audit
As the parents in our group had expressed many concerns about the queer cultural competency of staff and the subtle homophobia (unintentionally and unintended) in the adoption process, we felt it was important to illustrate how we may have experienced this or how it is built into the adoption process.

For example, we pointed out that questions around affection and sex may be perceived as threatening to some. While CAS may be asking these questions to gauge the health of a relationship, for many LGBTQ people these kinds of questions can be perceived as intentionally invasive, targeting and judgemental.

This past winter CAS conducted an agency wide rainbow audit. One of the outcomes of this audit was the development of a mandatory agency-wide training on LGBTQ issues in foster care and adoption. On April 21 and 22, this training took place and included a panel of LGBTQ youth in care, foster and adoptive parents who shared their stories with the entire agency.

We’ll keep you posted on any new developments as we’re planning to hold regular meetings between the Post-Adoption Group for LGBTQ Parents and CAS. If you have any questions or opinions, please feel free to comment or email.