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Too fat to adopt a child

Christine_72
Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
edited September 2017 in Debate Club
I just now heard this on the radio. It is incredibly difficult to adopt a child in Australia, and now on top of all that they now want to reject prospective parents for having a too high BMI. A woman actually had weight loss surgery to qualify for adopting.

What do you all think of this?

ETA: It seems some people cant access the link, so i'll copy and paste the article below.
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Replies

  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    It said I needed to have a subscription to read the article. :neutral:

    Did they base it purely on BMI and not on any other health-related factors? Were they morbidly obese or overweight?

    I can see how they might want to make sure a prospective parent is going to be around to raise the child, but basing health only on BMI isn't the best way to evaluate that.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,204 Member
    They don't "want to" - they already do.

    One of my closest friends adopted in Australia, and they made her lose weight because her BMI was above healthy.

    BTW, Herald Sun is behind a paywall.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    That paywall thing is so weird! When i click on the link i posted i can't access it, but when i google it i can read it..

    Try this:

    https://www.google.com.au/search?source=hp&q=australians+turned+down+for+adoption+for+being+too+fat&oq=australians+turned+down+for+adoption+for+being+too+fat&gs_l=psy-ab.3...435.22052.0.25161.57.42.0.0.0.0.574.7519.2-6j8j1j5.20.0.foo,cfro=1,nso-ehuqi=1,nso-ehuui=1,ewh=0,nso-mplt=2,nso-enksa=0,nso-enfk=1,nso-usnt=1,nso-qnt-npqp=0-1701,nso-qnt-npdq=0-54,nso-qnt-npt=0-1,nso-qnt-ndc=300,cspa-dspm-nm-mnp=0-05,cspa-dspm-nm-mxp=0-125,nso-unt-npqp=0-17,nso-unt-npdq=0-54,nso-unt-npt=0-0602,nso-unt-ndc=300,cspa-uipm-nm-mnp=0-007525,cspa-uipm-nm-mxp=0-052675...0...1.1.64.psy-ab..37.7.2520.0..0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i10k1j0i22i30k1j0i22i10i30k1.-ulKs69LAQI
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    I'll just copy and paste the article:


    EXCLUSIVE

    THEY’RE desperate to give Australian children a forever home, but prospective adoptive parents are being turned away because they’re “too fat”, according a new report.

    News Corp Australia can today reveal the Adopt Change ‘Barriers to Adoption’ research which uncovers a shocking picture of delays and unfair hoops families are having to jump through in order to achieve their dream of giving a child a permanent home.

    And the losers are the vulnerable children being shifted from one foster placement to another.

    Body mass index is just one factor being used to justify rejecting local adoption, even when prospective parents are deemed to be otherwise healthy.

    It is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in metres squared.

    In one case a 25-year-old woman was told she could not adopt because her BMI was too high, despite having run three triathlons in the year prior and regularly attending the gym.

    She went on to have gastric sleeve surgery — permanently removing a part of her stomach — just to meet the requirements and adopt a child.

    In another case a 41-year-old adoptive parent’s BMI was too high because he had lost weight and built up more muscle mass.

    According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare there are more than 30,000 children who have been living separately from their birth families for over two years who need permanency in Australia.

    Last year only 196 Australian children were adopted, five per cent less than the previous year and the lowest number on record.


    A couple couldn't adopt as the husband was considered to be too fat based on his BMI being too high. Picture: David Caird
    Adopt Change’s research of 1053 people found 83 per cent of survey respondents had experienced barriers in the adoption process.

    A total of 57 per cent experienced delays, including 40 per cent who spent five or more years in the adoption process.

    And 82 per cent found the entire experience overwhelming with only 33 per cent getting adequate support from their foster agency or department.

    Adopt Change CEO Renée Carter said some of the barriers to adoption, such as BMI but also age and length of marriage, were just “bizarre”.

    “The current system is broken and we need urgent change in order to provide these children with a more permanent and supportive environment, rather than barriers to belonging,” she said.

    Assistant Minister for Social Services Zed Seselja said the state governments needed to do more to ensure kids weren’t missing out on the prospect of a forever home.

    “Frankly some states need to show they are serious on this issue,” Senator Seselja said.

    “They haven’t done enough to address the barriers that exist.”

    Opposition social services spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said assessment criteria needed urgent reform and a rejection for reasons such as BMI was “not fair”.

    “The adoption rules need to be focused on ensuring what’s best for the child,” Ms Macklin said.

    “That should mean reforming the assessment criteria so that it’s focused on factors directly related to the likely success of an adoption.”

    Australian Medical Association President Michael Gannon said he was “shocked” that BMI was being used as a consideration to deny adoption.

    “BMI is a long way from being a perfect measure of someone’s weight or wellbeing,” Dr Gannon said.


    AMA President Dr Michael Gannon said hse was shocked by the BMI being used as a way of denying adoption. Picture: Ray Strange.
    ‘I HAD RUN THREE TRIATHLONS’
    SHE’D just completed her third triathlon in a year, and was going to the gym daily, but was told she couldn’t realise her dream of adopting a child... because she was too fat.

    Or rather, the politically correct message was her BMI was too high.

    And so began a seven-year battle for Melissa* and Chris* to start their own family.

    Today, with their beautiful two-year-old boy James* in their arms, it all seems a distant nightmare.

    But most people wouldn’t have survived the rigorous scrutiny and changes demanded by authorities to have the couple meet the criteria to adopt.

    Melissa said she had to undergo gastric sleeve surgery — permanently removing a part of her stomach — to continue their adoption dream.

    “I was 100kg at the time we were rejected on the basis of BMI. Absolutely I was overweight but I had run three triathlons in that year beforehand and I was not unhealthy or unable to care for a child,” she told News Corp Australia.
    “I also had polycystic ovarian syndrome and one of the side effects of that is being overweight.”

    Melissa said she lost 50 kilograms to ensure the couple could be approved for adoption.

    But even after the surgery they were told they could not adopt because they did not have enough experience with children — despite Chris being a teacher.

    Eventually they got a break and were approved to adopt little James, but the whole process took more than seven years.

    Melissa said it should not have been so hard, with the assessment criteria outdated.

    “I recognise the need for vetting of adopted parents but BMI should not be a knockout indicator of whether or not we could care for a child,” she said.

    “I think there are a lot of wonderful people who could be great parents who haven’t been approved because of these arbitrary measures that really don’t contribute to how good a parent they could be.”


  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    Wow. BMI as the only measure of health being used to disqualify prospective adoptive parents? Disagree.
  • AlabasterVerve
    AlabasterVerve Posts: 3,171 Member
    edited September 2017
    Going by just this article it seems outrageous - children should be in permanent homes and it seems that's not happening? I have a problem with that.

    I don't know enough (or anything really) about adoption to say any BMI restrictions are unreasonable or a bad idea altogether though. China has restrictions for BMIs above 40 and that doesn't seem outrageous to me considering that a BMI of 40+ is extreme, class III obesity.
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,565 Member
    But what happens when adoptive parents put on weight a year or two after the adoption? That makes no sense at all.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,204 Member
    mph323 wrote: »
    But what happens when adoptive parents put on weight a year or two after the adoption? That makes no sense at all.

    Yup, it does make it pretty stupid.
  • skymningen
    skymningen Posts: 532 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »

    Fat =\= drug addicted
    Fat =\= felons
    Fat =\= chronically ill

    1) What about food addicted? There are very similar biochemical 'reward' reactions for people with eating disorders after a binge than for drug addicts after a fix or gaming addicts after gaining a level.
    2) No. Sure. Nobody said that.
    3) As @jdlobb said, debatable.

    Where I live, there are rules for the maximal age of parents to adopt a child. So they will be alive and healthy long enough to actually care for it. So it does not go through losing them or not being able to rely on them but instead having to care for them. The same applies to morbid obesity. You put the child in a position where it could have severely ill parents soon, parents that need care instead of giving it. I would not want an orphan child into this position.
  • Rosemary7391
    Rosemary7391 Posts: 232 Member
    sijomial, I'd agree that they can afford to be choosy if there isn't a shortage of parents wanting and able to adopt. However, it seems from the figures given that Australia might not be in that situation. In that instance, they should allow any parent to adopt who can provide a better life than the care system - which probably isn't a high enough barrier to justify making BMI a barrier for otherwise suitable people who are able to lead normal lives despite their weight. An advisory to lose it, sure, maybe even seeing them start the process before they're approved, but not to get all the way down to a healthy BMI.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Rosemary7391 wrote: »
    sijomial, I'd agree that they can afford to be choosy if there isn't a shortage of parents wanting and able to adopt. However, it seems from the figures given that Australia might not be in that situation. In that instance, they should allow any parent to adopt who can provide a better life than the care system - which probably isn't a high enough barrier to justify making BMI a barrier for otherwise suitable people who are able to lead normal lives despite their weight. An advisory to lose it, sure, maybe even seeing them start the process before they're approved, but not to get all the way down to a healthy BMI.

    @Rosemary7391
    I agree that children remaining in care is a systemic failure and is a far worse outcome for the child when suitable homes with loving parents are available. Would take issue with the very low goal of just being better than a care home though. Need to aim a lot higher than that.
    By the way normally there isn't just one set of criteria - the criteria for baby adopters can be very different than if you are offering a home to an older or handicapped or emotionally disturbed child for example.
    It may seem cold and unemotional but it is supply and demand.

    Don't know the Australian system but my we started our application to get on the adoption waiting list when we had a barrier to eventually getting approved. Background: Four miscarriages and four failed donor egg IVF attempts.
    We had to demonstrate with certainty we had given up on IVF attempts as we had to be fully and solely committed to adoption - which we did.
  • Gianfranco_R
    Gianfranco_R Posts: 1,297 Member
    Christine_72 wrote: »

    News Corp Australia can today reveal the Adopt Change ‘Barriers to Adoption’ research which uncovers a shocking picture of delays and unfair hoops families are having to jump through in order to achieve their dream of giving a child a permanent home.

    Pretty good revelation, considering that the research is supposed to start tomorrow
    https://www.adoptchange.org.au/events/10/barriers-to-adoption-national-research-launch

  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,204 Member
    Gianfranco_R wrote: »
    Christine_72 wrote: »

    News Corp Australia can today reveal the Adopt Change ‘Barriers to Adoption’ research which uncovers a shocking picture of delays and unfair hoops families are having to jump through in order to achieve their dream of giving a child a permanent home.

    Pretty good revelation, considering that the research is supposed to start tomorrow
    https://www.adoptchange.org.au/events/10/barriers-to-adoption-national-research-launch

    News Corp Australia is not exactly the pinnacle of reporting prowess.
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  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member
    I am not super knowledgeable about the adoption processes in the U.S. but a friend of mine is an attorney who handles family law including foster-to-adoption situations and he says that they DO take the health of prospective adoptive parents into consideration and weight is one of the BIGGEST ways they determine health/fitness. He had a couple who were both morbidly obese, but full-time employed and reasonably physically active, who fostered a preteen boy for 7 years of his life but were turned down for adopting the boy due to their "disabilities". They aren't disabled aside from their obesity and like I said, full-time employed, etc.

    As another post mentioned, they'll pretty much let anyone foster a child (barring criminal offenses)...old, fat, sick, whatever. But when it comes to permanent placements they're pretty picky, which can be a safeguard, but more often would seem unfortunate in my opinion.
  • Mezzie1024
    Mezzie1024 Posts: 380 Member
    I'd like to foster, but can't because my husband's and my work schedules don't allow us to go to the trainings at the same time (nevermind the fact that that schedule would allow us to be available to a kid in crisis 24/7). It's truly a frustrating process -- even more so for those trying to adopt, I would imagine.

    Meanwhile, I have teenage students bouncing from foster home to foster home while I could easily give at least one a stable home through adulthood (and beyond -- it's not like family support ever ends) if I could just jump through the right hoops.
  • richardgavel
    richardgavel Posts: 1,001 Member
    It's one thing to call it an automatic disqualifier, but I don't have a problem with the idea that it's something that would go in the minus column in terms of evaluation. And in terms of being told to lose weight to adopt, I would imagine that is probably of of the minus evaluation points that can be changed the quickest anyway.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    seltzermint555 wrote: »
    I am not super knowledgeable about the adoption processes in the U.S. but a friend of mine is an attorney who handles family law including foster-to-adoption situations and he says that they DO take the health of prospective adoptive parents into consideration and weight is one of the BIGGEST ways they determine health/fitness. He had a couple who were both morbidly obese, but full-time employed and reasonably physically active, who fostered a preteen boy for 7 years of his life but were turned down for adopting the boy due to their "disabilities". They aren't disabled aside from their obesity and like I said, full-time employed, etc.

    As another post mentioned, they'll pretty much let anyone foster a child (barring criminal offenses)...old, fat, sick, whatever. But when it comes to permanent placements they're pretty picky, which can be a safeguard, but more often would seem unfortunate in my opinion.

    Yeah, agreed. It seems a different situation than when qualifying for an infant adoption (when generally there are a lot more potential adoptive parents than infants too). Kids who have been in the foster system may have a tough time getting adopted and it seems like having legal parents if they are otherwise qualified and caring and had the longstanding relationship and were actually not disabled in that situation would be more beneficial.

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