Why adoption has become “institutionally invisible” in Queensland

Queensland’s child protection system is facing an urgent and deeply troubling question: why are children who cannot safely return home being left in state care for years, often moving from placement to placement, without genuine consideration of adoption?

The recent Child Safety Inquiry has put that question squarely on the table. Its findings are confronting. No child has been adopted from Queensland state care since 2019, despite legislative requirements, repeated recommendations and years of government commitments intended to make adoption a real option for children needing permanent care.

This is not simply an administrative failure. It is a failure with lifelong consequences for children.

Adoption is a permanency option, not a historical relic

Adoption has, in effect, become institutionally invisible within Queensland Child Safety. That is the central concern identified by the inquiry, and it is difficult to argue with.

Adoption is not appropriate for every child. Reunification with safe family should always be pursued where it is possible and genuinely in a child’s best interests. But for children who cannot go home, there must be a serious, informed and timely consideration of every lawful pathway to permanency.

Adoption is the only permanency option that removes a child entirely from the child protection system. It gives a child legal parents and creates a legal relationship that endures beyond childhood, into adulthood and across generations.

That matters enormously. A guardianship order may provide stability for a period, but it does not offer the same lifelong legal belonging. Nor can parenting orders under the Family Law Act 1975 create legal parentage. Parenting orders regulate responsibility and care. They do not make someone a child’s legal parent.

Only adoption, and in a different context a surrogacy parentage order, can achieve that legal transformation of parentage.

For a child who has endured trauma, disrupted relationships and repeated moves, the difference between being cared for temporarily and being legally, permanently and unambiguously part of a family can be profound.

Children in care need certainty, stability and belonging

Children in long term care can experience an extraordinary number of placements. Twenty, thirty or even forty placements are not unheard of. Each move can mean another school, another bedroom, another set of carers, another loss and another reason to doubt whether anyone will stay.

That is not stability. It is not permanency. It is not what any child deserves.

The Queensland child protection framework requires decisions to be made in a child’s best interests. The Child Protection Act 1999 provides the legal framework for protecting children and supporting their care arrangements. Yet laws are of little value if practice does not follow them.

There are foster carers who have cared for children over the long term, provided secure homes and sought to give those children a permanent family foundation. In some cases, they have attempted to pursue adoption or Family Court orders. Too often, the experience has been that the department is difficult to engage with and fixed in a way of doing things that loses sight of the child’s need for permanence.

The issue is not whether departmental officers care. The issue is whether the system is structured and practised in a way that consistently asks the right question: what legal arrangement will give this child the greatest prospect of lifelong safety, stability and belonging?

A decade of recommendations has not changed the outcome

The inquiry found that Queensland has had clear warnings for more than a decade. The 2013 Carmody Inquiry recommended that adoption be routinely considered and pursued, particularly for children under three. The government accepted that recommendation.

Yet the practical result was dismal. There were only nine adoptions over the following five years. The recommendation was later treated as having been implemented, despite evidence that the department had not in fact done what had been asserted.

Following the death of Mason Jet Lee, the Deputy State Coroner also found that the earlier recommendation had not been implemented in any meaningful sense. Further recommendations and legislative amendments followed. Still, there have been no adoptions from state care since 2019.

That cannot sensibly be explained away as a series of isolated errors, difficult individual cases or workforce pressure. The pattern is too consistent and has persisted for too long. It points to institutional culture.

Guardianship orders are being used when permanency should be considered

The inquiry’s evidence on permanency is especially alarming. More than 80 per cent of long term guardianship orders are made in favour of the chief executive. That places children under the continuing guardianship of the state, rather than providing a permanent family based legal outcome.

There is a review mechanism designed to prevent children remaining indefinitely on long term guardianship and custody orders in favour of the chief executive. But fewer than 10 per cent of children in the inquiry’s sample received the review required by law.

That means the other 90 per cent did not receive an important statutory opportunity to reconsider whether their future could be secured differently.

Children in stable, long term family placements are not necessarily being considered for the guardianship arrangements that would give their care a permanent foundation. The review system is not being used as it should be. Adoption is not entering the conversation at all.

That is why the description “institutionally invisible” is so accurate. The department’s adoption practice material sits separately from its general child safety practice material. As a consequence, adoption is not necessarily a routine part of the day to day decision making of child safety officers.

Contemporary adoption is not forced adoption

There is, rightly, continuing concern about the terrible legacy of forced adoption in Australia. Those historical wrongs were real, and the suffering caused to mothers, children and families must never be minimised.

But contemporary adoption operates in a fundamentally different legal and ethical environment. It involves judicial oversight, legal safeguards, careful assessment and a focus on a child’s lifelong best interests. It can also involve openness, preserving a child’s understanding of identity, history and relationships with birth family where safe and appropriate.

Historical trauma should inform careful practice. It should not become a reason to deny children who cannot return home the possibility of lifelong legal belonging.

The inquiry rightly identifies a fundamental distinction: fear of repeating historical wrongs is legitimate, but it is not a licence to allow prolonged impermanence to cause a different form of lasting harm.

The state’s duty as corporate parent

When the state assumes guardianship of a child, it becomes that child’s corporate parent. That responsibility is not symbolic. It extends through every major decision made about the child’s life.

It includes decisions about:

• where the child will live;
• who will care for the child;
• whether a suitable guardian is available;
• whether adoption should be considered;
• whether disability, trauma and support needs are properly identified;
• what planning occurs as a child approaches adulthood; and
• whether the system reviews its own conduct when care fails.

When a child remains in unstable care for years, or when the consequences of system failure are catastrophic, the question must be asked: did the corporate parent do all that it could and should have done?

Children cannot be left to drift through a system simply because adoption has become administratively unfashionable or culturally uncomfortable.

Restoring adoption to its lawful place

The inquiry recommends a major reorientation of practice. Adoption needs to be restored as a genuine, lawful and actively considered option for children who cannot safely return to their parents.

This does not mean adoption at all costs. It means proper case by case decision making, early assessment, meaningful statutory reviews and an honest focus on what will give each child enduring security.

It also means examining adoption models that better reflect modern understandings of identity, openness and relationships with birth family. The aim is not to erase a child’s origins. The aim is to ensure that a child has both an honest understanding of where they came from and the legal certainty of where they belong.

Queensland’s children deserve more than a succession of temporary arrangements. They deserve stability. They deserve safety. They deserve the chance to grow and prosper in childhood and adulthood with the confidence that they have a permanent family.

For families navigating complex child protection, parenting or permanency issues, experienced family lawyers in Brisbane can provide advice tailored to the circumstances of the child and family involved. For confidential enquiries, contact Page Provan.

About Stephen Page

Stephen Page is a director of Page Provan and is widely recognised as Australia’s leading surrogacy lawyer. An accredited family law specialist, he has extensive experience in family and fertility law, including complex parenting, child protection, surrogacy and LGBTIQ legal matters. Learn more about Stephen Page’s experience and credentials.