Creating families through adoption
Updated: 01 July 2013
What's Important To Us
Adoption is a means of providing some children with security, and meeting their developmental needs by legally transferring on-going parental responsibilities from their birthparents to their adoptive parents, recognising that in doing so, we have created a new kinship network that forever links those two families together through the child.
In adoption as in marriage, the new legal family relationship does not signal the absolute end of one family and the beginning of another, nor does it sever the psychological tie to an earlier family. Rather it expands the family boundaries of all those who are involved.
The child’s best interests are the paramount consideration as birthparents consider their options for the care of their child. It is the core component in sessions during which adoptive applicants prepare to parent a child not born to them, and when placements are made between families who are compatible and cooperative in meeting the child’s needs for attachment and identity throughout life.
This policy outlines the key practice requirements for Oranga Tamariki social workers in four areas of work.