Meeting the assessment criteria
Prospective adoptive parents must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key assessment criteria if they are to be successful in becoming adoptive parents. Couples must be able to demonstrate the following capabilities in meeting the assessment criteria:
- Demonstrating family history and personal experiences
- Meeting the child's needs and providing high-quality care
- Providing a safe and caring environment
- Understanding issues with parenting a child from a diverse cultural background
- Motivation for adoption and lifelong commitment
Demonstrating family history and personal experiences
- Understand how early life experiences have impacted on their personal development, relationships and family life, and are able to translate their knowledge and skills to adoptive parenthood.
- Have a healthy marital relationship, demonstrating positive communication and problem-solving skills, particularly through periods of stress.
- Have healthy and positive long-term relationships and mutually satisfying social connections with important people in their lives.
- Have a positive support system in the community and personal networks that would provide support with adoption issues.
- Have a good level of physical, emotional and mental health.
- Maintain confidentiality of personal information and issues that may be provided to prospective adoptive parents during the course of assessment.
- Ask for training opportunities, information and support when needed and be open to improving skills and ongoing learning.
- Understand and resolve any infertility issues that may effect attachment and care of an adopted child.
Meeting the child's needs and providing high-quality care
- Demonstrate the ability to provide high-quality care to nurture a child's emotional, social, physical, sexual and intellectual development, and access support services.
- Be able to accept the child's cultural and ethnic identity and demonstrate realistic expectations for the child's future.
- Have knowledge of child development and the ability to apply this knowledge by listening, communicating and responding to the child in a manner that is appropriate to the child's age and level of emotional maturity.
- Have sound child-rearing beliefs, be able to set appropriate boundaries and manage the child's behaviour in a manner that supports positive and healthy development.
- Be able to support and meet the ongoing needs of a child already in the family and help the child accept and adjust to the placement of an adopted child.
Providing a safe and caring environment
- Provide a family environment that ensures the child will be well cared for and safe from harm.
- Create a family network that will welcome and support an adopted child.
- Demonstrate how to keep a child safe from harm and ask for assistance if their safety or wellbeing is threatened.
- Be financially secure and provide a reasonable quality of life for the child and other members of the family until the child reaches maturity.
- Make appropriate guardianship arrangements for a child in the event of premature death.
- Be emotionally mature, reliable and responsible for providing a family for a child requiring an adoptive placement.
Understanding issues with parenting a child from a diverse cultural background
- Have the ability to support a child's cultural development and understanding of their racial background.
- Recognise that the child may be vulnerable to racism and discrimination resulting from negative racial stereotypes within the community and obtain information and support to help the child develop a positive cultural identity.
- Have the ability to respond effectively to racism and promote an anti-racist and antidiscriminatory approach to racism.
Motivation for adoption and lifelong commitment
- Have a strong enthusiasm to provide high-quality care for a child and demonstrate that the desire to form a family through adoption is appropriately motivated.
- Be able to understand and meet a child's needs regarding their birth family and access information or develop knowledge of their birth history.
- Understand that adoption is a lifelong process and that a child may benefit from accessing appropriate post-adoption support or information services at different stages of development.
- Be able to understand and promote a child's development into adulthood and respond to their medical, social, emotional or personal needs as they grow.
Next: The assessment process
- Last updated
- 19 October 2007