Abandonment: desertion of a child by a parent or adult primary care giver with no provisions provided neither for continued child care nor with any intention of returning to resume care giving of a child.
Adoption: A court action in which an adult assumes legal and other parental responsibilities for another, usually a minor. To take legally into one’s family and raise as one’s own.
Adoption Decree: The document that a judge signs to finalize an adoption. It formally creates the parent-child relationship between the adoptive parents and the adopted child, as though the child were born as the biological child of its new parents. It places full responsibility for the child on its new parents and changes the name of the child to the name selected by its new parents, and orders a new birth certificate to be prepared and issued for the child. If the parental rights of the biological parents of the child are being terminated by way of their voluntary consents as part of the adoption action, the Decree will also formally terminate those parental rights.
Adoption Triad: Birthparents, adoptive parents and the adopted child(ren).
Adoption Service Provider: A licensed agency that is provincially licensed to assist families with the placement of a child.
Artificial Twinning: is a term used by international adoption standards to describe the process of adopting two children at the same time who are less than nine months apart in age and biologically unrelated. It is discouraged by some provincial mandates and agencies and encouraged by others. Right or wrong, time will tell whether this is a good practice or not. It is not encouraged by the domestic adoption world.
Attachment: The formation by a child of significant and stable emotional connections with the significant people in its life. This process begins in early infancy as the child bonds with one or more primary caregivers. A failure by a child to establish these types of important connections before the age of about five years may result in the child experiencing difficulties with a wide variety of social relationships for significant periods of time in its life. Severe cases can fit within the definition of a more permanent condition known as "reactive attachment disorder."
Attestation: the act whereby one is in attendance at the signing of a document and by signing one’s name to it, affirms that it is genuine. The act of witnessing a signature for the purpose of declaring that a document was properly signed and declared by the signer to be his or her signature.
Authentication: for the international adoption process this often goes hand in hand with legalization, in that the documents are once again verified that the Foreign Affairs office recognizes the signature that they have put their stamp to.
Bonding: The process that a child goes through in developing lasting emotional ties with it's immediate caregivers, which is seen as the first and most significant developmental task of a human being, and is central to that person's ability to relate properly to others throughout it’s life.
Confidentiality: The legally required process of keeping identifying or other significant information secret; the principle of ethical practice which requires social workers and other professional not to disclose information about a client without the client's consent.
Dossier: A set of legal documents which are used in an international adoption to process a child's adoption or assignment of guardianship in the foreign court.
Extended family: A child's relatives (other than parents) such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, birth family members, and sometimes even close friends.
Finalization: the final legal step in the adoption process; involves a court hearing during which the judge orders that the adoptive parents become the child’s legal parents.
Grief: A feeling of emotional deprivation or loss. Grief may be experienced by each member of the adoption triad at some point.
Hague Convention: An International agreement to safeguard Intercountry adoptions. Concluded on May 29th, 1993 in The Hague the Netherlands, the Convention establishes international standards of practices for inter-country adoptions. The convention aims to prevent the abduction, sale of or traffic in children and it works to ensure that Inter-country adoptions are in the best interests of children. It recognizes Intercountry adoption as a means of offering the advantage of a permanent home to a child when a suitable family has not been found in the child’s country of origin. The child must be deemed eligible for adoption by the child’s country of birth and proper effort has been given to the child’s adoption in its country of origin.
Home Study: (H/S) A home study is required for all adoptions, except in some cases of kinship and stepparent adoptions where the requirement may be waived or simplified. A homestudy is valid for a period of one year from the date of approval. It must be renewed if the year passes and you have not adopted. A homestudy is prepared by those licensed for the purpose. Homestudy preparers may be licensed differently for public, private, and international adoptions. The process of the home study helps to educate prospective adoptive parents about adoption and it evaluates the suitability to adopt.
Home Study update: completed for the purpose of keeping the original study current. Often the dynamics in a family change over a year so your agency will want to ensure no dramatic changes have happened.
Institutionalization: the placement of children in hospitals, institutions or orphanages. Institution placements during early critical developmental periods and for lengthy period of time is often associated with developmental delays due to environmental deprivation, poor staff-child ratios or lack of early stimulation.
Intercountry Adoption: The adoption of a child who is a citizen of one country by adoptive parents who are citizens of a different country.
Legalization: the process of certifying a document so that it will be recognized by the legal system of a foreign country. This process applies to countries who opted not to participate in the Hague Convention of 1961. For documents within inter-country adoption this means they would be sent to the Foreign Affairs office in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and verify signatures/notary stamps on documents.
Loss: A feeling of emotional deprivation that is experienced at some point in time. For a birth parent the initial loss will usually be felt at or subsequent to the placement of the child. Adoptive parents who are infertile feel a loss in their inability to bear a child. An adopted child may feel a sense of loss at various points in time; the first time the child realizes he is adopted may invoke a strong sense of loss regarding his/her birth family.
Orphan: (as related to International adoption) as related for immigration purposes, a child under the age of sixteen years whose parents have dies, or has been abandoned or otherwise separated from both parents or whose sole surviving parent is impoverished by local standards and incapable of providing that child with proper care and who has, in writing, irrevocably released the child for emigration and adoption.
Placement: This term is used to describe the point in time when a child comes to live in an adoptive parents home.
Post Placement Reports: A post adoption process where reports are provided back to the Childs country of origin for a period of time. Completed by a social worker in the beginning, these are usually completed by the family for a period of years. Written reports and accompanying photographs are the basis for each report.
Relinquishment: Voluntary termination of parental rights, sometimes referred to as surrender or as making an adoption plan for one's child.