FACTS & STATS

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GLOBAL:

• There are more than 147 million orphans in our world today

  • 87.6 million orphans live in Asia

  • ​43.4 million orphans live in Sub-Saharan Africa

  • ​12.4 million orphans live in Latin America and the Caribbean​

  • Get some greater context on these stats in this fantastic resource On Understanding Orphan Statistics

• More than 20 million of these children are waiting to be adopted worldwide 

 

• Every year 12 million children become orphans

• Every 14 seconds an AIDS death leaves another child orphaned​

 

• In Ukraine and Russia, 10%-15% of children who leave orphanages commit suicide before the age of 18

• In many countries, children who are not adopted by the age of 5 are transferred to mental institutions where they live the remainder of their years in cribs or “laying rooms”​

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CANADA - ADOPTION:

• Approximately 63,000 children across Canada were living in government care in 2022 (Infobase)

  • Government care means they’ve been removed from their family homes due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment and placed in the care of their local child welfare agency.

  • Child welfare agencies are provincially regulated organizations mandated to protect the rights and well-being of children in their local communities.

  • Children living in government care are typically placed in a kinship arrangement with extended family members, with a foster family, or in an institutional setting like a group home.

• In Canada, there are more than 30,000 children waiting to be adopted

  • Only ~2,000 children are adopted each year (https://cafdn.org/)

• If ONE out of every 1000 people adopted ONE of Canada’s waiting children, there would be no more waiting children in our nation

• ​​In 2023/2024, there were:

  • 130-133 adoptions within BC:

    • 53 children adopted out of government care

    • 55 international adoptions,

    • 21 through domestic placements (typically infant adoptions), and

    • less than 10 direct placements through agencies.

  • 446 adoptions in Alberta:

    • 139 children adopted out of government care,​

    • 63 international adoptions,

    • 181 private/relative/direct adoptions,

    • 63 licensed agency adoptions.

  • 81 adoptions in Manitoba:

    • 27 children adopted out of government care, ​

    • 12 international adoptions, 

    • 8 private adoptions,

    • 3 extended family adoptions,

    • 22 spousal adoptions,

    • 9 adoptions by someone who was already parenting the child for 2+ yrs.

• Hundreds of children are waiting to be adopted in Canada

  • Many are school aged

  • Many are part of a sibling group of 2 or more

  • Many have complex support needs (physical disabilities, medical conditions, psychiatric diagnosis)

  • Many have prenatal exposure to substances

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CANADA - FOSTER CARE:

• In Canada there are more than 70,000 children in foster care

• In BC there are more than 8,100 children in foster care

• Approximately 1,000 youth age out of the BC foster care system every year

  • Children who age out of foster care typically don’t have a family to go back to, nor do they continue to receive government support as a child in care

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• In 2023-2024 there were approximately:

  • 790 children in care in Nova Scotia and about 630 foster families (Department of

  • 8,919 children in care in Manitoba

  • 1,227 children in care in NWT

  • 116 children on average, per month in care in PEI

• ​In Ontario, in a monthly average, there were almost 8,600 children and youth in care from 2021-2022 (oacas.org)

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CANADA - GENERAL:

• The child welfare system is run primarily by individual provinces, and the figures vary

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• More than half of the children in Canadian foster homes are indigenous, as of 2021 (bbc.com)

  • Indigenous children make up less than 8% of the country's child population

  • There is a huge need for parents with Aboriginal heritage

• The the 2020-2021 Annual Report of the Director of Child and Family Services showed that 98 per cent of children and youth receiving child and family services in the Northwest Territories are Indigenous (www.gov.nt.ca)

  • Only 57 per cent of children and youth in the Northwest Territories are Indigenous

• In Manitoba, approximately 90% of children in care are indigenous

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OTHER:

• Children need the love of a family for proper, healthy development

  • ​Attachment is crucial in children aged 0-5 for critical brain development​

  • Orphanages and residential care settings can not provide the love and attachment afforded by a family

 

• If left unmitigated, there are huge linkages between early childhood trauma/experience in the child welfare system and later life issues including:

  • addiction​

  • incarceration

  • homelessness

  • physical health issues

  • early death

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• Fostering and adoption are not the only ways to make a huge difference in the lives of children without families:  

  • Mentoring​

  • Respite

  • Getting to know and love them and becoming a safe place

  • Supporting foster families

  • Supporting birth families

  • Supporting aging out youth

  • Engaging with organizations supporting these families and children

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• There are 2 billion Christians in the World

• 34% of Christians consider adoption

  • only 1% actually do it

  • If ONE family out of every TWO churches adopted a waiting child in BC, there would be no more waiting children in BC child welfare system

  • “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. -James 1:27-