Headlines blared of Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton's "joy" after adopting little Edith into their existing family of three boys.

"It's extraordinary. It's been an absolute gift and we're utterly besotted," she has since told Fairfax Media.

"We've been talking about it since our first son [Dashiell, 13] was born ... There's a lot of children out there in need."

The actress is the latest in long line of celebrities who have adopted young children and babies, from Sandra Bullock to Charlize Theron, Madonna, Sharon Stone, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. But while these adoptions seem like fairytales, the reality for prospective parents in Australia can be less happy ever after.

Alice* has spent the past ten years trying to adopt a child with her husband, Ben*. The couple tried unsuccessfully to adopt a child from Korea and then China, but the programs were either wound down or slowed to a trickle amid increasing emphasis in those countries to have children adopted locally. They then turned to long-term foster care in NSW, in the hope of adopting a child from Australia, and have been looking after a boy, now 6, for the past four years.

"We love him as our own and are keen to adopt him to provide further emotional stability for him, but we cannot even get onto an adoption program," Alice says.

"Whenever my friends see Cate Blanchett or some other celebrity adopting a child, they want to know why it's so easy for them but hard for us. I wish I had the answer."

One explanation is that the US adoption system, which Blanchett used, is privatised, so it is possible to simply adopt through lawyers or private agencies. In Australia, the system is federal and state government-controlled or outsourced, which inevitably means more regulations. There are also more children available to adopt in the US, a country that actually sends children to Europe and Canada for adoption.

According to statistics released late last year, Australian adoptions are currently at their lowest level since records began at the end of the 1960s. At its peak in the early 70s, there were almost 10,000 adoptions a year. In 2013-14 just 317 adoptions were finalised - a 9 per cent drop from 2012-13 and a 76 per cent drop since 1989-90.

There are certainly fewer children available to adopt. It is no longer a taboo for unmarried women to have babies and there are specific payments that support single mums. Treatments like IVF mean that some couples who may have previously looked to adopt can now have biological children, while the mainstream use of effective birth control now means fewer unwanted babies are born.

There has also been a push back towards keeping children with their biological parents, where possible.

For adoptions overseas, some countries like Korea and China are putting more emphasis on keeping children in the country. Others are putting in place quotas and cracking down on corruption.

But adoption advocates have also been pressing federal and state governments to make it easier to adopt children, arguing that the process is strangled by bureaucracy for both overseas and local adoptions. And that it simply takes way too long.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the median time it takes to adopt a child from overseas was five years, but the times vary greatly between countries. For example, the median wait time for a child from Taiwan was three years, and almost eight years for one from China.

The institute says that countries of origin are taking longer to allocate children after receiving files from Australia and, in many respects, there is little that Australian authorities can do to affect processing.

But Prime Minister Tony Abbott has taken on the cause as a personal mission. Under his direction, the federal government is examining adoption agreements with new countries, such as Vietnam, the US and Poland. A new intercountry adoption agency is due to open next month to help parents through the adoption process.

Actor and advocate Deborra-Lee Furness, who has adopted two children with her movie star husband Hugh Jackman, launched National Adoption Awareness Week in 2008 to "shift the anti-adoption culture" in Australia. Barnardos Australia chief executive Louise Voigt says that the horrors of the Stolen Generations have made authorities and social workers hesitant to adopt children out, even though practices have vastly improved and often facilitate ongoing contact with a child's biological family.

There is currently no national data in terms of the time it takes for local adoptions. Anecdotally, this can be a quicker experience than for overseas. Voigt says that it can happen within 18 months.

After they had been unable to have a biological child of their own, Central Coast couple Simone and Michael Gardoni initially thought of adopting a child from Cambodia, where Simone had volunteered in an orphanage. But when they were told they would have to live in Cambodia for two years before they could apply, they realised it would not be possible.

At the suggestion of Michael's mum, they looked into adopting locally. It is common for people to assume that there aren't any children available to adopt in Australia, but last year more than 60 per cent of adoptions were of local children. Fifteen per cent were of children had no previous relationship with their adoptive parents – that is, they were not adopted by a step-parent or relative.

Ten days after the Gardonis called Barnardos in January 2012, a case worker came to their house to begin what would be ten months of intensive interviews about every part of their lives. By October, they had been approved to adopt and were put in a pool of approved parents, who could be matched to a child.

In March 2013, they received a call. "They told us they had a little boy for us, he was 12 months old," Simone recalls.

Jack, whose biological parents are not able to care for him on a day to day basis, has now been with the Gardonis for two years.

"It's the most amazing gift that we could have ever been given," says Simone. "Nothing can be better than having Jack arrive on our doorstep."

But as Alice and Ben's situation shows, others have not had such a fuss-free experience.

The agency she and her husband are with is currently not taking any more adoption cases.

"We have been led to believe it could take them three to five years to even open our case."

Voigt thinks there should be more emphasis placed on adoptions for Australian children. And more help from government to speed up the process, so that children are not bounced around from foster carer to foster carer.

"People think there's terrible things [happening] overseas. You don't see the thousands of children that each state in Australia brings into care each year," she says.

"We have a very damaging foster care system, with a real lack of permanency."

But Griffith University senior lecturer in social work Patricia Fronek cautions that adoption "success" should not be measured by numbers or speed.

"Adoption is a serious business and is important to remember who it is about. It is not a means for people to form families. It is about acting in the best interests of children," she says.

"If we really have children as our focus, we should celebrate when children don't have to be separated from their communities, families and their culture."

*Names have been changed.