First adoption records sent out as new legislation comes into force

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/06/2015 (3776 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Provincial staff mailed out roughly 80 adoption files today, the first batch of historic records unsealed and finally available to adoptees and birth parents.

Before noon today, another four or five people visited the provincial adoption office on Portage Avenue, hoping to pick up their records in person.

Today, provincial legislation unsealing adoption records came into force, allowing adoptees and birth parents access to birth certificates, adoption documents and other identifying information that was previously kept confidential. That means, in the next few weeks and months, hundreds of people will find out the name of their parents or the new name of a child they placed for adoption years ago. It’s a change adoptees in the province lobbied hard for.

“It’s exciting, it’s overwhelming and it’s historic,” said Janice Knight, manager of adoption and post-adoption programs in the Family Services Department, Monday afternoon.

Roughly 1,000 people have already applied to see their files. Provincial staff began pulling the records months ago so the documents could be released quickly after changes to the Adoption Act and the Vital Statistics Act became law.

Staff also made a priority list of about 400 people – adoptees or birth parents who have long lobbied the province to open the records or who were well-known to provincial reunification staff.

The fear was those people would get lost in the avalanche of requests for records, said Knight.

Her office has hired several contract and summer staffers to help deal with the initial influx.

Meanwhile, fewer than 60 people, mostly mothers, filed disclosure vetoes asking the province to keep their records secret. That’s a small number amid an estimated 50,000 files, but roughly the number provincial officials expected.

Manitoba’s adoption records have been sealed since 1925. In 1999, the province took a half-measure toward fully open adoption records, allowing anyone born after 1999 to see their file once they reach adulthood. Since then, adoption advocates have lobbied Manitoba to follow other provinces and unseal all records, even though the province originally promised birth parents they’d be kept secret.

 

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca