Guest Column: Adopting With Beginnings Family Services

Understanding Open Adoption

By Amanda Baigent

Founded in 1985, Beginnings Family Services (Beginnings.ca) is a non-profit agency providing counselling and support to expectant parents experiencing unplanned pregnancies and assisting people wishing to grow their families through adoption and embryo services.

Our approach is child-centred and dedicated to embracing connections and bringing families together.

The agency is licensed by the Ministry of

Children, Community and Social Services

and we are grateful to be considered a leader in providing professional services across the province. Beginnings works with families across the province of Ontario.

For more than 35 years, we have worked with thousands of families and helped facilitate over 470 adoptions.

What Is Private Adoption?

Private adoption is a choice; it is about making a plan for your child.

Sometimes you will hear people use the phrase: “They gave up their child.”

It is important to clarify that birth parents are making a loving and compassionate choice in making an adoption plan. In private adoption, the birth parent, or parents, voluntarily place their child for adoption.

Adoption is a decision made by women of all ages and backgrounds.

Regardless of where they are in their journey, every parent needs to feel supported and treated with care and respect.

Beginnings’ role is to be present with our clients and to provide information and support as they make decisions for their baby.

Some clients feel very alone when they reach out to us. Some have very little support around them. Knowing there is someone to talk with and walk alongside them as they explore their feelings can mean a great deal to our clients.

It is crucial to include fathers in the decisionmaking process whenever possible. For a child to know their biological father played a role in the decisions made can be very meaningful.

Extended families are also very important in adoption and add to the love and support each child deserves. While recognizing this, Beginnings ensures the choices of parents and privacy are respected and maintained.

What Is Open Adoption?

Open adoption means the birth family maintains a relationship with the child and the adoptive family.

In private domestic adoption, birth parents choose the adoptive parents, and they can decide what level of contact they would like to have with the adoptive family. This can take the form of updates, emails, phone calls and visits.

Open adoption allows adoptive families to maintain relationships with important people in their child’s life. It allows access to information about a child’s origins and background. Each situation is different, and the level of contact and openness will vary for each family.

At the beginning of an adoption process, relationships are new for everyone. Like any new relationship, it takes time.

Communication and respect for one another’s roles is important in navigating relationships. It is amazing to observe birth families and adoptive families as they see openness through their child’s eyes.

Additional family members, like grandparents, can also be involved with the child and adoptive family.

Beginnings Family Services works with birth families and adoptive families together to build an open adoption agreement. This agreement focuses on the commitment that both families make to each other in the best interests of the child.

Prospective adoptive families must complete specific training around adoption issues and attachment, as well as have a home study conducted by a professional social worker, before being considered “adopt ready”.

Beginnings has a large list of waiting prospective adoptive families for birth families to consider, when choosing a family for their child. The matching process is individual and is often based on commonalities that are evident between the two families.

The essence of openness is captured by what James Gritter writes in The Spirit of Open Adoption: “To belong, then, is to feel that all that I am — my past, present and future; my quirks, dreams, capabilities and eccentricities; my wild and independent spirit — is fully acceptable and accepted.”

Ultimately, openness at Beginnings means accepting people and situations, and validating the stories that will lead them on the path forward.

To learn more about open adoption or if you or someone you know is in need of support or counselling regarding an unplanned pregnancy, please email: info@beginnings.ca. Amanda Baigent is the Executive Director of Beginnings Family Services in Hamilton, Ontario. She has a Bachelor of Social Work Degree (1988), from the University of Windsor and a Masters of Social Work Degree (1996), from Wilfrid Laurier University. She is a Registered Social Worker with the Ontario College of Certified Social Workers and a Private Adoption Practitioner. Amanda has worked in the field of adoption for over 20 years and embraces openness in adoption and has done so since the inception of her career.