Extra care and guidance for adoptees

Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and Family Hilde Crevits is strengthening care and guidance during adoption and is investing 425,000 euros in this. The aim is to make society more aware of intercountry adoption and also to offer more opportunities for the exchange of experiences between first parents, adoptive parents and fellow sufferers. The guidance process when adoptees go in search of their origin will also be strengthened. In this way, Minister Crevits meets some of the recommendations of a 'care and guidance' working group that was set up in response to the final report of the expert panel on intercountry adoption.

“A great job has been done by all those involved to provide us with very concrete proposals for better care and supervision of adoption. We will ensure that there are more opportunities to exchange experiences and to strengthen knowledge about adoption into education and assistance. In this way we want to avoid that those involved in adoption, foster care and other forms of growing up outside the original family are sometimes approached on the basis of erroneous assumptions or social ideas, which could lead to new and avoidable difficulties. In addition, it is also important that people can share their positive stories and their concerns. The question “who am I” and “where do I come from” sooner or later preoccupies every adoptee. We are therefore strengthening the ancestry center in order to provide even better assistance to people who are looking for their roots or close relatives.” –Flemish Minister of Welfare and Public Health Hilde Crevits

The final report of an expert panel on intercountry adoption in mid-2021 gave rise to a number of recommendations for reforms within the adoption landscape. The Flemish Government then set the guidelines for the future of intercountry adoption. This is also followed by Growing up. An important theme is better care and guidance. A working group led by Professor Nicole Vliegen set to work on this and provided very concrete recommendations, some of which Minister Crevits wants to implement immediately.

A better understanding of adoption

Minister Crevits has instructed the Adoption Support Center to further deepen knowledge about adoption in Flanders. The theme of adoption must be more strongly embedded in education and assistance, among other things, so that teachers and care providers can deal more sensitively with questions from children and young people with an adoption story. With the resources, the Adoption Support Center will be able to recruit additional employees who, together with adoptees, will introduce professionals to certain sensitivities specific to adopted children and specific themes such as racism and diversity through training and workshops. In this way, therapists and primary care providers, among others, can better pick up signals when they come into contact with them in the event of a request for help.

The Adoption Support Center will also be instructed to further embed and professionalize contacts with fellow sufferers regarding adoption. Not only for adoptees, but also for adoptive parents and first parents. There are currently few or no opportunities to exchange experiences, especially for the latter group. Through intensive contacts with peers, the threshold for first-time parents to talk about their feelings of grief and loss can now be further broken. By organizing an offer for each target group, everyone also gets the chance to share their story, seek support or discover how others deal with certain emotions or experiences

Strengthening the lineage center

One of the recommendations of the expert panel was also the further strengthening of the Descent Center. That center was set up in 2021 to assist everyone with questions about their origin. Among others, adoptees, adoptive parents, donor children, donors and metis can go there.

Since April 2021, the Descent Center has received 484 questions, ranging from initial information requests to intensive guidance. About 44% of the questions come from intercountry and domestic adoptees. In addition to providing psychosocial support before, during and after each lineage search, the additional subsidy should also be used to further expand the centre's central database. In this way, all questions can be dealt with more quickly in the future and the operation is further optimised. The subsidy can be used for the next two years, after which an evaluation will follow.

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