Australian adoptions slump to lowest levels

Australian adoptions slump to lowest levels
The number of adoptions in Australia is continuing its downward trend and has reached its lowest rate since the early 1970s.

Figures released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show last financial year there were just 412 adoptions.

That is compared with a peak of more than 8,000 adoptions a year in the early 1970s.

The institute's Tim Beard says the main reason is there are fewer Australian children in need of adoption because of the growing acceptance of births out of wedlock, better birth control and increased sex education.

He says just under half of all adoptions are of children born in Australia, with the overwhelming majority of adoptions from overseas coming from Asian countries.

"There's also other medical reasons like the development of IVF and other reproductive technologies," he said.

"Fifteen per cent of all adoptions are what we call local, so they're Australian children who don't have a pre-existing relationship with their adoptive parents.

"But then there's another 31 per cent of adoptions which we call known adoptions - they're children that have had pre-existing relationships with their adoptive parents, so they might have been a step-parent or another relative or a carer."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/15/3093425.htm?section=justin

This is why Surrogacy has become so important to Australians.Like many other couples we would have been happy to adopt, if we could. I would like to correct the ABC on one point, these are the lowest adoption numbers since the 1960's.

It is even more heart breaking when you consider that the majority of the 412 adoptions are internal, i.e a step father/mother adopting a step child, which leaves us with less than 200 international adoptions for all of Australia.

There is currently well over 10,000 couples approved and waiting to adopt and many many more beginning the expensive and time consuming process of 'being approved". Most are being told that there is a 8 - 10 year waiting time. After paying ten's of thousands of dollars with the various approval process, most will never become parents and simply drop off the waiting list.