Adoption Awareness Month

It is National Adoption Awareness month! This month is all about raising awareness of open adoption and the importance of permanency for all children and young people in care. Through open adoption, children don’t have the added stress of moving on, having to make new friends or of the uncertainty of what’s to come next. It is ultimately a pathway to permanency and a loving home for children who cannot safely return to their families. Open adoption practice also comes with serious complexity, grief and loss and impacts later in life. It’s important as practitioners that we learn from forced adoption practice and advocate for the voices of children, young people and their families.

To bring some awareness for Adoption Awareness Month the Adoption Team have pulled together a few interesting films, podcasts, websites for you to explore. We hope you enjoy listening, watching, and reading and let us know what you think.

Website

We recommend you explore Home - Adopt Change. This is a non-for-profit organisation set up by Deborra-lee Furness (Hugh Jackman’s wife) who adopted two children. They believe that every child has the right to grow up in a safe, nurturing, and permanent family home, and that all families need the appropriate supports for children to thrive. For National Adoption & Permanency Awareness Month they are asking the community to support through #yesvember ensuring #AHomeForEveryChild. As you are all a fashionable group, they have also teamed up with Adopt Change – Aje (ajeworld.com.au) who have designed a t-shirt if your interested in purchasing in store!

Podcasts

Led By A Heartstring on Apple Podcasts
A few staff from Key Assets recently attended the adopt change permanency conference and one of their ambassadors is Jonah. He has a weekly podcast following his journey as an adoptee to find his parents. He will share the emotions and on-going journey that adoptees and families face every day through interviews and journals. By the end of each episode, he will be one step closer to finding his family.

Born in June, Raised in April — April Dinwoodie
Another speaker at the conference was April Dinwoodie. She has a podcast which leverages the rich and personal lens of adoption and foster care, to explore beauty and the complexity of her closest and most powerful relationships with her family and herself and how those relationships impact her identity and place in the world.

Movies

Instant Access Rent - In Utero (inuterofilm.com).
IN UTERO brings together for the first time convincing data that explains that we are not only our genes but a product of our environment as well. Through enlightening and oftentimes poignant interviews with experts and pioneers, IN UTERO paints a complex tapestry of the human experience from conception to birth. Tapping into cultural myths, popular movies, and technological trends, the film demonstrates how our experiences in utero – particularly traumatic events – preoccupy us throughout our lives, impacting our decisions and shaping society.

Lion (2016) - Plot Summary - IMDb
A five-year-old Indian boy is adopted by an Australian couple after getting lost hundreds of kilometers from home. 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family. Saroo’s mother Sue Brierley spoke at the adopt change conference about the emotional affects of adoption.

Oranges and Sunshine (2010) - IMDb
Oranges and Sunshine. Recommended by our own @Annie Parkes . It is based on a true story about a social worker from Nottingham in the UK and she uncovered one of the most significant social scandals of recent times in 1986: The deportation of thousands of children in care from the UK to Australia. It is available on SBS until 19th November 2021 Oranges and Sunshine | SBS On Demand

Short Videos

Heartbreaking moment mother abandons baby | A Current Affair - YouTube Jessica Boatwright talks at our Open Adoption Information Sessions about her experiences as an adoptee from foster care. We consult Jess on projects, documents and practise the adoption team are working on. These videos show her story and she speaks about adoption being the best permanency pathway for her.

For professionals

Video Resource for Professionals | InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)
These videos give a good insight into the challenges intercountry adoptees face. Topics they discuss can really inform and support our practise when making decisions for a child now and later in life as practitioners.