Jigsaw Qld calls for Urgent Adoption Law Reform

Jigsaw Qld COI Submission

On the 13th anniversary of Queensland’s Apology for Forced Adoption, Jigsaw Queensland has today released our formal submission to the Commission of Inquiry into Child Safety and the Review of the Adoption Act 2009. We urge the Queensland Government to take decisive and long overdue action to protect the rights, identity, and lifelong wellbeing of people affected by adoption.

This submission represents a significant moment for the adoption sector in Queensland. Drawing on nearly five decades of service delivery, lived-experience engagement, and national and international research, Jigsaw Queensland has put forward a detailed blueprint for modernising adoption in this state.

Our key recommendations include:

Replacing plenary adoption with simple adoption, ensuring children can achieve stability without losing legal identity or kinship.
Using simple adoption only as a last resort when a child cannot safely remain with their family.
Protecting and strengthening rights to records access, following the damaging removal of access rights two months ago.
Introducing Integrated Birth Certificates, which accurately reflect both sets of parents.
Creating an easier, no-fault pathway to discharge an adoption, acknowledging the lifelong impacts of trauma, coercion and identity loss.
Allowing people to add a father’s name to pre-adoptive birth certificates, resolving longstanding injustices.
Establishing a National Framework governing identity, records access, and ethical standards across adoption.
Recognising adoption as a form of out-of-home care, ensuring adopted people abused in their adoptive homes can access reporting pathways and redress.
Ensuring the Commission hears from national experts, including Professor Daryl Higgins and Professor Emeritus Nahum Mushin, alongside adult lived-experience voices — both notably absent from the Commission’s current consultation approach.
The introduction of a Queensland Forced Adoption Redress Scheme, inclusive of mothers, adopted people and fathers who were denied their right to raise their children.

On this symbolic day, we honour those who suffered through past adoption practices and stand with families who may be impacted by adoption in the future— and are firm in our belief that apologies must be followed by action.

A .pdf of our full submission is available above.