Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei
Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.
About Us - AdoptionNZ.com
AdoptionNZ.com is managed by two adopted people, Fiona and Susan. Both women were adopted in New Zealand under the Adoption Act 1955. Through this site they aim to continue their mahi raising awareness about the impacts of adoption, supporting people impacted by adoption, and campaigning for adoption law reform in Aotearoa New Zealand. Fiona and Susan's adoption work, including this website, are fully self-funded endeavours. AdoptionNZ.com has no presence on any social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Our story
Beginnings
We met in 2005, at an adoption conference organised by the Canterbury Adoption Awareness and Education Trust in Christchurch, New Zealand. The conference was attended by people involved in or impacted by adoption, including adopted people, parents, adoptive parents and professionals working in the adoption space. The key speaker at the conference was Nancy Verrier, author of The Primal Wound.
We left the conference with the aim of establishing a support group for adopted people and with a determination to continue the fight for adoption law reform, joining the voices of people impacted by adoption, child advocates and human rights campaigners since the 1970s.
The Wellington group Adoption Support for Adopted People: ASAP aka AdoptionNZ.com
Our first meeting of the Wellington support group, Adoption Support for Adopted People (ASAP) took place in a room at the Johnsonville community centre in 2005. We advertised the monthly meetings through local networks and media, who published interviews with us about ASAP and our own adoption experiences.
We contacted Keith Griffith a fellow adopted person who also lived in Wellington. We had both met Keith before and knew of his wealth of knowledge about adoption, law reform and working with people impacted by adoption, so we asked him if he would be willing to advise us on convening the group. Keith agreed to help us and offered his resources, support, and time freely. Keith suggested we provide a support group for adopted people only, as in his experience, adopted people are often unable to fully explore their experiences and emotions in ‘mixed’ adoption groups. We took his advice and were able to offer adopted people a safe space to work deeply on adoption issues. Keith attended every ASAP meeting he could until his health made it too difficult for him to come along. We are incredibly grateful to Keith for his generous spirit, wise head, and wealth of knowledge, and also of his wife Helen’s support of Keith’s adoption mahi.
Adoption support groups had wound down in the decades following the enactment of the Adult Adoption Information Act 1985, which it was hoped had solved the ‘problems’ caused by ‘closed adoption’. However, there was, and remains, no support for, and in many cases no understanding of the underlying issues of adoption or the challenges faced by people impacted by adoption. We are constantly contacted by people about matters arising from both ‘closed’ and ‘open’ adoptions, and by domestic, intercountry and international adoptions. There is no doubt that adoption law and practice remains harmful, discriminatory, and draconian. So, with one hand we do what we can to help and support people, and with the other we do what we can to lobby for the reform of adoption law and practice in Aotearoa.
When we started ASAP almost 20 years ago, we hadn’t anticipated that Fiona would receive a plethora of calls and emails from non-adopted people also. From day one a steady stream of natural parents, siblings, adoptive parents, aunties, cousins, partners of adopted people, children and grandchildren of adopted people reached out to Fiona for the information and support they were unable to find elsewhere. In many cases, people have remained in contact with Fiona over the years – the years during which her children started school, then high school, then university, then joined the workforce, and through the years when Fiona also developed her own career outside of her adoption work. Through ASAP/AdoptionNZ.com Fiona also became a contact point for the media, politicians, government agencies, academics and others wanting to locate adopted people and people impacted by adoption to inform their stories, programmes, policy and research.
Over the years people have shared us with their deepest fears, pain, anger, and tragedies, and also their joys and triumphs. At times it can be overwhelming, exhausting and frustrating. However, with the support of our families and with the guidance from our mentors past and present, we keep going.
Campaigning for adoption law reform
Since at least the 1970s many people have called for adoption reform in Aotearoa New Zealand. A few politicians (past and present) have called for adoption reform, and a number even directed the Ministry of Justice to progress with adoption reform when in Government. However, the work was always stymied, and a raft of reasons have been posed as to why this is the case. For further reading on law reform failure see here and here.
We felt a joint effort might be a more successful means to bring about change. Our first step on this path was our meeting with retired lawyer Robert Ludbrook in 2009 as Robert has significant expertise and experience as a family lawyer, adoption reform advocate and children’s rights campaigner. The seeds of Adoption Action Inc were planted at that first meeting and with Robert’s expert guidance, Adoption Action became an incorporated society in 2010. Robert, Keith Griffith, Mary Iwanek (former National Manager Adoptions for the then CYPF), Bill Atkin (Professor of Law at Victoria University), adoption writer and researcher Anne Else, members of the Wellington Community Justice Project, and others with an adoption background, or interest, formed Adoption Action Inc with the primary goal to advocate for the reform of the 1955 Adoption Act.
In 2013, after several years of countless meetings and communications with MPs (in and out of government), with children’s advocacy organisations, with the media, and with social justice and human rights proponents, Adoption Action Inc took a Part 1A claim under the Human Rights Act to the Human Rights Review Tribunal (the HRRT) in respect of the Adoption Act 1955. Robert Ludbrook poured hours and hours of work into preparing the papers and presenting Adoption Action’s case. At the hearing Robert acknowledged that Adoption Action’s primary focus regarding adoption reform is to centralise the child’s rights and interests, and that the Part 1A claim under the Human Rights Act was in part a diversion into adults’ rights but stressed that this action was taken out of frustration with successive government’s inaction to reform adoption. Adoption Action hoped the claim would highlight the draconian and harmful aspects of the Adoption Act 1955 and garner support and traction from government to reform adoption in Aotearoa New Zealand.
In 2016 the Tribunal reported on their findings and declared the Adoption Act 1955 to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. Yet despite this, the Adoption Act 1955 remains the legal instrument under which children unable to be raised by their family become ‘legal fictions’. The implications of this Act are life changing and lifelong. The Act does not deliver the ‘happy ever after’ to many parties subjected to it, whether the adoption order was made last century or yesterday.
In 2017 the sixth Labour Government was elected and the then Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, said the Labour Party is "very committed to a complete re-write and review of the Adoption Act". Since then (2017-2023), the Ministry of Justice has been working on developing a set of proposals for reforming the Adoption Act 1955. We both participated at all stages of the review’s consultation process, including online and in-person focus groups, meeting and communicating with the Ministry, making written submissions, supporting people impacted by adoption that also engaged in the consultation processes, and keeping people informed of the reform progress via AdoptionNZ.com.
We simultaneously made personal submissions to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and Faith Based Organisations, as it belatedly included adoption in its scope in 2021 and, according to the Ministry of Justice, the Commission’s findings would inform the Ministry’s adoption law reform work.
Over many decades we have heard MPs and successive governments say they will reform the Adoption Act 1955 (including the Law Commission’s review in 2000). With each new pledge to act, we join the circus again and hope that this time change will come, that this time people impacted by adoption will have access to the files and documents that concern them, their family and whānau, and most importantly, that this time children will have their rights, whakapapa and well-being protected.
We remain hopeful that the principles of openness, honesty, and integrity will drive adoption reform, and that it will be informed by robust research and the multidisciplinary understandings of neuroscience, and that it is not highjacked anymore by the overt or covert wants of adults.
We are thankful for the opportunity to have known (and know) people who had the grit, focus and resilience to keep fighting for justice, particularly for the children too young to speak for themselves, and for people not yet able to speak out.
Keith Griffith, Robert Ludbrook and Mary Iwanek have been great mentors for us. They demonstrated the meaning of this whakataukī by their actions … Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei
Translation … Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.
Meaning …. Aim high, be persistent and don't let obstacles stop you from reaching your goal.
To read more about law reform in Aotearoa New Zealand click here.
Visit Adoption Action’s website here.