Forced adoption support services scoping study Daryl Higgins, Pauline Kenny, Reem Sweid and Lucy Ockenden Report for the Department of Social Services by the Australian Institute of Family Studies February 2014


Attachment I: Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services: Adoptions and Permanency Services



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Attachment I: Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services: Adoptions and Permanency Services

Statement of Purpose


tasmanian department of health and human services: adoptions and permanency services statement of purpose. adoptions and permanency services statement of purpose: • to provide permanent family placements for children who cannot be cared for by their biological family. • to provide appropriate counselling and access to information to persons affected by past adoptions and to facilitate reunion where this is the wish of both parties. • to provide timely financial assistance to care leavers and to provide support and access to information and reunion services to all persons who were once in state care in tasmania. vision: • to ensure that all tasmanian children who cannot live with or return to their birth families have timely access to alternative, caring, permanent families in order to secure their ongoing development and positive life outcomes. • to ensure that all persons affected by past interventions of the state of tasmania, in particular adoptions and out of home care services, have access to support, information about their identity and biological origins and the opportunity for assisted reunion if they so wish. guiding principles: • adoptions and permanent care are services for children and the welfare and interests of the children are the paramount considerations at all times. • children have a right to be raised with a safe and secure, permanent family unit in which they have legal status as a family member. • birth parents have the right to express wishes relating to the placement of their child, to be informed about arrangements that are made and to receive information on the child’s welfare, progress and development. • all persons have a right to information about their biological, social and cultural origin and identity. • all persons are entitled to have their privacy and freedom from intrusion respected. values value and what does it mean trustworthiness – we will do what we say honesty - we will tell the truth, even if it is difficult gentleness – we will be sensitive to individual circumstances and temper our truth telling with gentleness confidentiality – we will treat personal information with discretion and sensitivity wherever possible accessibility – we will make ourselves available to our clients helping them to overcome the client-worker imbalance by being humble diligence – we will fulfil all our obligations and commitments and work efficiently in all we do respect – we believe that all people are equal and inherently valuable and deserve to be treated with positive regard

Attachment J: Government website usability testing



Department

Website usability issues

Usability rating

NSW Family and Community Services



Information mainly focused on new adoptions

Clicked on “past adoptions”

Found some phone numbers of the Post Adoption Resource Centre under “additional support”

No obvious support information for people who have been adopted.

Clicked on “adoptions pre 2010”

Information mainly concerned with adoptive parents



Medium

Qld Dept Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services



Several links on the first page, no mention of support

Clicked on “past adoptions”

Clicked on “Support services and further information”

Found information linking to benevolent.org

Benevolent website provides easy-to-filter services and interactive maps to support services.


Medium/ easy

Dept Human Services Victoria



Clicked on “adoption and permanent care”

Forefront information on how to adopt in Victoria

No mention of support for past adoption services or support


Hard

Dept Health and Human Services Tasmania



Clicked on “Adoptions and Permanency Services”

Clicked on “past adoptions services”

Forefront information regarding discovering origins and identity. Nothing obvious regarding support services

Clicked on “past adoption practices in Tasmania”

Forefront information regarding the apology for forced removals

Clicked on “adoption services”

Forefront information for potential adopters. Nothing obvious regarding support services


Hard

Families SA (Department for Education and Child Development, South Australia)



Adoption links provide information for potential adopters. Nothing obvious regarding support services.

Searched “adoption support”

Top hit “past adoption support”

Links to CLAN, Benevolent, Relationships Australia SA

Clicked on Relationships Australia, information on support services for adoptees. Information about Past Adoption Support Services (PASS) but no contact information easily accessible


Medium

ACT Community Services



No obvious links to any adoption information. Clicked on the “Children, Youth & Families” link.

Found “adoption” at the bottom of the page under “human services”

Clicked on a document for support for adoptees. No information regarding support services.

Searched “post adoption support”

Came up with the same document as above. Only departmental contacts provided


Hard

Northern Territory



Searched “adoption support” resulted in text regarding applying for adoption. No links to any support or advice for post adoption. Email link and phone number ‘”or more information”

Hard

Western Australia Department for Child Protection and Family Support



Clicked the link “past adoption information & services”

Clicked the link “how can I access counseling and support services”

Provides a hyperlink to a list of non-government organisations as well as information that the department provides on free past adoption services.

Non-government organisations listed: ARCS, ASFC, Jigsaw, ARMS, IAC.

Also listed are independent counsellors


Easy

Attachment K: Overview of search tools (including electoral rolls)



Tool

Description

AEC National Electoral Roll

Access to both current and previous AEC electoral rolls is seen as essential for those who provide search and intermediary services. Often when the person cannot be found directly, it is important to be able to search laterally by going to old AEC rolls and build up a family tree, and then search for other relatives. Service providers expressed frustration at the change in policy by the AEC that prevents purchase or access to the rolls, and note that it is easier to search in the UK—where rolls are accessible—than in Australia.

State/territory electoral rolls

Agencies can only access their own state electoral rolls and in some cases, such as NSW, not even their own rolls. The WA Government and WAEC have stated that they cannot purchase other states’ rolls. State libraries around Australia have complete AEC national electoral rolls up to 2007, some have 2009, but there are no rolls available beyond and the gap widens every year.

Telephone books and WhitePages.com

Telephone books and White Pages can be very useful for cross-referencing, but not as a primary search tool. They do not list first names, thus a search for a Joan Andrews may yield many hundreds of J. Andrews as the J may be for John, Justine, Josephine, Joe, Jack, etc. It is not feasible to write to hundreds (and for some names, thousands) of people.

Many phones are only in a partner’s name, and unless you know their name, you won’t identify them in that instance. Many people do not have a landline and may not have their mobile number in the phone book.



Ancestry.com

Commercial family history tracing websites, such as Ancestry can be very useful for historical searches and building a family tree, however it does not include information beyond 1980 and there are no records for South Australia.

Online search, e.g., Facebook

Online searching can be useful for an uncommon name. However, if it is a common name (i.e., Joan Andrews) you can yield thousands of possibilities often with no ability to filter results or link people to a current address.

Messages through Facebook must not identify adoption and are often ignored. It is possible that Facebook will charge to send messages to a person’s private inbox.



Online search sites

It is an offence under a number of state/territory adoption laws to publicly identify someone as being involved in adoption. Even if that were not the case, it can cause great distress to publicly name someone as being involved in adoption. Many mothers are not computer literate and need experienced support to deal with such a contact. Often only one party is searching.

Commercial records

Paying to use commercial debt collection sites can be useful, however they are very incomplete and out of date. It is not uncommon for 30% of letters to be returned as ‘Not at this Address’ and no-one respond as being the right person. Therefore, it is not known if the right person has received a letter but does not want contact, whether the right person has not been located on the accessible records, or whether the person is a match, but they have simply moved address and the new residents are not aware of a forwarding address.

Death notices

Death notices can be used to build up a family tree of the searched for party, however once a name has been identified, their current details still need to be discovered.

Land title searches

Conducting land title searches can sometimes be helpful, however they rarely help us to locate current details.

Ryerson Index, Trove, National Archives of Australia, historical societies in country towns

These can be useful sources to obtain information and build a family tree. However, they do not provide current contact information.

Source: Based on written submission from JIGSAW WA, and supplemented with views from stakeholder workshops. For information about the AEC Electoral Roll, see:

Attachment L: Information sheets, publications, training and resources



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