It will be easier for children's aid societies in Ontario to find permanent homes for kids who are wards of the Crown under proposed changes to adoption rules the Ontario government announced Monday.
Children's Minister Marie Bountrogianni outlined the changes to make the regulations more flexible and to remove barriers that prevented Crown wards from being adopted.
"The current system is too rigid," Ms. Bountrogianni said.
"We need to help more children find a permanent, caring home by making adoption more flexible for individual children and friendlier for parents."
The old rules prevented about three-quarters of the estimated 9,000 permanent Crown wards - children in the care of the Children's Aid Society - from finding permanent new families.
For example, if a child's birth parents had a court order allowing them to contact their child, the child could not be adopted - even if the parents did not maintain a relationship with their child.
More than half of Crown wards are in that boat.
"Children move between foster homes and group homes an average of every two years," Ms. Bountrogianni said.
"This kind of instability can affect a child's education, self-esteem and their ability to form meaningful relationships as they grow up."
Many in foster home or group homes could now be adopted.
About 900 permanent Crown wards were adopted last year in Ontario.