Jun. 5, 2005. 12:01 PM
GILLIAN LIVINGSTONChildren's Minister Marie Bountrogianni is scheduled to visit a boys' and girls' club to outline changes that sources say will make adoption regulations more flexible, removing barriers that prevent Crown wards from being adopted.
Bountrogianni has long insisted that the province's existing adoption rules fail to meet the needs of children because they're outdated and too rigid.
"The objective is to get more children adopted, more children into permanent homes," said a government source familiar with plan.
The province has more than 9,000 permanent Crown wards — children in the care of the Children's Aid Society — and current rules prevent about three-quarters of them from being adopted. For example, if a child's birth parents have an access order that allows them to contact their child, then the child can't be adopted — even if the parents make no effort to maintain a relationship with their child.
More than 50 per cent of Crown wards covered by access orders don't have regular contact with their birth parents.
Many Crown wards are in foster homes, and could be adopted by their foster families if the rules were changed. Others live in group homes.
Earlier this year, Bountrogianni signalled her intention to change the rules, which she said ought to allow a child to be adopted without having to sever ties with his or her birth family.
Some 900 permanent Crown wards were adopted last year in Ontario.
Monday's changes come amid an ongoing review of the Child and Family Services Act, which is conducted every five years.
The Liberal government created a ministry for children when it came into power in 2003 in what it characterized as an effort to put more focus on the needs of the province's young people.
Bountrogianni, a child psychologist, has undertaken a review of the child welfare sector with a particular focus on the province's adoption system.
In February, Bountrogianni said she would examine ways to revamp the Children's Aid Society so that families could more easily adopt those in its care — kids who were being bounced between group homes, foster homes and their biological parents.
As part of the review, the government also focused on having children's aid societies develop more prevention and counselling programs.
On the adoption front, the government has already taken steps to make it easier for families to adopt children from overseas.
In the wake of the devastating Boxing Day tsunami in southeast Asia, the government eliminated the processing fees on international adoptions — $460 for relatives and $925 for non-relatives — to lower the cost of bringing in a child from another country.