A senior bureaucrat has denied that indigenous children cannot be adopted by non-indigenous parents in the ACT despite a prospective adoptive mother being told that was the case.
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A day after a report found there were nine adoptions in the ACT in 2014-15, Dr Mark Collis, director of the Office for Family, Youth and Family Support, said there was no legal impediment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being adopted in the territory.
"Yes they can but it would be a very rare event," he said.
A Canberra carer, who has two children in her care, said she had been waiting for a year to get a court date for their adoption application to be considered.
However, she said the whole process had been brought to a halt after a claim was made by the biological family that the children had Aboriginal heritage, through a distant relative who may have identified as being indigenous.
The carer said the children's Aboriginal heritage was now being determined and a decision on that was expected next year.
She would then need to get a date for the adoption application.
"Care and Protection seem hesitant to prioritise or move towards adoption. They even reference "you know about the stolen generation"," she said. "I would reiterate I am totally respectful of the awful history and events that have occurred in the past, and would engage the children in learning about their indigenous heritage if that is the case. The children's needs should be put first, and each situation viewed on an individual basis. Not under such a blanket approach as "indigenous children can simply not be adopted". And reference I am not alone."
The woman said she was subject to an order which allowed the children to be in her care until they were 18 but which meant the territory still had control of all major decisions affecting them, from whether they should be allowed to travel overseas to if they should have surgery.
She was also paid a fortnightly allowance and was eligible for other subsidies.
She could not go into detail but said the children had a traumatic start to life. She believed adoption was the best course of action.
If the children were adopted, there would be no involvement by the territory and no financial allowances would be made.
"My line is, I want to be left alone to parent," she said.
"These children should not be in the system."
Dr Collis said adoption meant the identify of the child was changed, including their biological parents being removed from their birth certificate.
He said in more recent times that had raised concerns about indigenous children losing a link to their heritage.
"Over recent years and recent decades, particularly as a consequence of the Stolen Generation and other such inquiries, the Australian community and the Aboriginal community have been very strong around the fact there has been a systematic disruption to knowledge of ancestry and heritage of Aboriginal people in Australia," he said.
"And adoption, where the birth certificate is changed like this, would represent precisely that. That is the sensitivity."
Dr Collis said there was still nothing legally to stop the adoptions but they rarely occurred,
"Typically, courts require the adoption agency to be very, very thorough in searching for the ancestry of children, particularly when there's a claim made that includes Aboriginal ancestors," he said.
"Courts have responded very strongly to the social signals around this."
Dr Collis said children could be put into the care of someone other than their biological parents through an enduring parental responsibility order which lasted until the child reached 18. The carers would continue to receive a payment and other subsidies but be the person responsible for all decisions for the child.
"For us, as a general rule, adoption and enduring parental responsibility, that permanency, is the gold standard, we want children in the position," Dr Collis said. "But I do respect the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to say that those children, should they have links to family and language groups and land, that link should not be broken either by documents or by history.
"The bottom line here is frequently the birth family lose contact with the adopted children, however the child has links to significant other family and they need to know about that."
