Baby Erin’s life changed forever when her teenage mother handed her into the loving embrace of her new family. For her adopted mom, it was a bittersweet moment she will never forget.
Now, three years later, Laura remembers the day the long wait ended and she could finally take Erin home.
“It really was the most incredible moment of my life. Her mom was a lovely girl who felt like she was making the right choice for her baby.
“It was kind of strange when I first laid eyes on Erin. But when I got her home, it felt like I had just given birth to her. Now, I’m the one who is changing her nappies, I’m the one she is looking to. Suddenly I became her mom.”
Today, three-year-old Erin is a talkative, outgoing child who thinks she runs the family’s Pretoria home. The couple’s biological sons, Caleb, eight, and Samuel, six, adore her and are fiercely protective of her.
“Of course, there’s normal jealousy and sibling rivalry. Obviously, her brothers get very annoyed when she smashes their Lego,” laughs Laura. “But somehow there’s something very special about Erin. We know God has chosen her to be in our family.”
Laura’s husband, Tim, had always wanted to adopt a child and and said so even before they were married. For Laura, though, it was a decision she pondered for several years into their marriage.
“Eventually, it just became a question of not why, but why shouldn’t we adopt? We’re a happily married couple. We’re not wealthy, but we could find the money for another child. It’s like saving a life as opposed to creating a new one.”
Erin is black, and the act of adopting itself elicits judgment from an ignorant public. “We get all the thoughtless comments from strangers like, ‘Don’t you have your own children as well?’ I tell them Erin is completely my own, just as much as my sons are.
“Obviously, there are racial issues. Erin is black and we’re white. It’s very public and people stare and judge us, but it’s okay because it’s what you signed up for. We may look different, but we’re a family just like everyone else.”
Erin is among the few fortunate South African children who have found a “forever family”. The need for a safe, permanent home runs deep, and everywhere, with one-and-a-half to two million abandoned, orphaned and vulnerable children. But only about 2 400 people adopt children every year and even that low figure is on the decline.
Now an ambitious new campaign hopes to turn around this bleak outlook for South Africa’s children.
The National Adoption Coalition is launching an adoption project to raise awareness about the plight of “adoptable” children and encourage people to open hearts – and homes – to them.
The coalition spans the Department of Social Development, NGOs and social workers in private practice who aim to crush the “great mistrust” about adoption and help break down cultural barriers. It has now set up a website and call centre to guide birth and prospective parents – or anyone else who is interested – about adoption.
The coalition says South Africans are in a state of “shock and denial” about the crisis.
“The low prevalence of marriage in South Africa, and the resulting vulnerability of single mothers, the weakening of the traditional extended family, and the impact of poverty and HIV/Aids are increasing the number of abandoned babies,” it says.
The preference for foster care, a temporary measure, over adoption is also placing a huge strain on the system, with nearly 40 percent of adoptable children in foster care – giving them no sense of belonging to a family, or long-term stability. Adoption has proven to be the best solution, globally, for children outside the family.
Megan Briede, of Child Welfare SA, says until now, South Africa has not had a strong culture of legal adoption. “We had a strong sense of community before, where a family member took on a relative’s child and cared for them. Now, with more social problems, there are more and more children needing adoptive families who don’t have any family link at all.
“We’re saying we have to look out of our family, out of our own smaller community circle and into the larger South Africa, to the needs of all children… those children whose parents I don’t know,” says Briede.
In Cape Town, there hasn’t been a sudden significant increase in adoptions, “but there’s been a gradual steady growth in cross-cultural adoptions”, says Cape Town Child Welfare direct service manager Penny Whitaker.
“In some communities, there are certain cultural ideas and thinking on adoption, and that’s why there’s a need for awareness promotion and education. A lot of our Xhosa-speaking community, as a result of the country’s history, are living in poverty, and they themselves are struggling to meet the needs of their own families. That’s why more don’t step forward to adopt.”
Whitaker emphasises that her agency desperately needs the government to allocate more social worker posts.
At present only two social workers are handling an average of 30 finalised adoptions a year.
Eloise Loots, head of adoptions at Procare in Cape Town, says cross-cultural adoption is very common, because too few black families choose to adopt.
“All the adoption agencies basically now have a task to see that we sensitise and try to inform specifically the black community of the option of adoption. Every meeting we have, it’s a very big discussion among the social workers on the need for specifically black couples to adopt,” said Loots.
At the Orlando Children’s Home in Soweto, director Mirriam Mazibuko, 62, strives to capture the spirit of ubuntu. Her children’s home runs with “mommies” in family-centred units because it does take a village to raise a child, she believes.
Most of the children there do find permanent homes, but there are those who never do. “You and I know that group care is not the ideal. We want our children to go out of these facilities and form one-on-one relationships with caring families.”
She stands in the sunlight, surrounded by toddlers.
“When the children arrive they are malnourished and in poor health. We need to do so much to make them attractive for adoption.
“But the more challenges we have, the more people come to help us to make a difference for our children. If we fail, what will become of our country and our society?” asks Mazibuko.
It’s a constant battle to find adoptive homes for children classified as having special needs – those who are HIV-positive or suffer from other chronic conditions. Children over six are “skating on thin ice”, she says.
“We also find most girls get adopted, but only about 45 percent of our boys. There is a fear that boys will act out later in life.”
Sometimes, even after the careful screening of prospective parents, children fall through the cracks. “They are abused or neglected. We speak of this as second abandonment… People need to know when you take a baby, you’ll have sleepless nights and you’ll experience the heartache of a teenager.”
But most adoptive parents, she says, return to her, boasting about their wonderful children.
Local actress Bonnie Henna recounts first setting eyes on her adopted child, Haniel, as a “mystical experience”.
She had spent years volunteering at Baby Haven, when she saw a photograph of a new baby who had been brought in.
“We just knew it was him. It’s weird. You think you’ll go for the cutest baby, but it doesn’t happen like that. It’s like there is something about this person’s destiny that is linked to mine,” says Henna.
Haniel, now eight months, and her biological son, Micaiah, who is 19 months old, are “thick as thieves”. But there is hardship – Haniel’s own mother abandoned him at hospital and the trauma lingers.
“Haniel doesn’t understand the circumstances of his life, but he is here now. It has been so worth it to adopt a child and I don’t think Haniel is the last.”
Henna speaks of the cultural stigma. “In my culture, if a child is not from your family line, then people have a negative idea about it.”
Pam Wilson, the head of adoptions at Joburg Child Welfare, says these barriers are being gradually overcome. “Most of the children in the system are black, so placing them in the same cultural group is the first priority, but there is stigma. More black families are coming forward, but it doesn’t keep up with the number of children.”
The campaign, she says, also seeks to break down myths about adoption and its costs. “You don’t have to be wealthy and NGOs work on a sliding scale according to income. A couple living in an informal settlement can adopt – if you’ve got the love and will to look after a child, and want to be parents, you can, no matter if you’re a nurse or a domestic worker.”
She deflects criticism about the “red tape” involved. “We’re making a decision for a child and if there’s no one else to do that, then we have to make sure it’s in the best interest of the child and get to know a family. I don’t think anyone would leave their child with a babysitter they’d never laid eyes on.”
Wilson says until now efforts to publicise adoption have been piecemeal. “The adoption campaign is probably the most exciting thing to have ever happened in adoption. We’re looking at how we’re going to reach all those people who may have thought about it, but never known where to go, or how to go about it, or even the need for it. There are so many children waiting for a home, but we never have enough families for them. A lot of children leave the country to go to homes in other countries.”
The campaign also aims to stem the crisis of abandoned babies and to help mothers in crisis pregnancies opt for foster care or adoption. “We’re saying to these mothers: there are people willing to support you.”
Dr Tebogo Mabe, the director of adoptions and international social services at the Department of Social Development, has thrown his weight behind the campaign, saying it falls in line with the department’s own strategy to raise the numbers of adopted children through targeted campaigns with local communities and churches.
Dee Blackie, a business and brand strategist, took three months off work to help set up the coalition after seeing a picture of a dead baby, dumped on a rubbish heap.
* For more information, visit www.adoption.org.za or contact the call centre on 0800 864 658.
* Additional reporting by Timna Axel - Weekend Argus