Disclosure and contact veto stats

On Friday the website InsideToronto published some figures on the numbers of forms relating to adoption disclosure recently received by the Ontario government.

These include the final stats for disclosure vetoes received before the June 1 deadline and stats on contact vetoes, contact preference forms, and post-adoption birth information requests. If you're not sure about exactly what these forms are, you can read the Ontario government's explanation or this summary from a Toronto adoption support group. Briefly, disclosure vetoes block information release, contact vetoes offer information on condition of no contact, and contact preference forms let you say how you want to be contacted.

What am I interested in? Stats on disclosure vetoes, obviously. The more filed before June 1, the less my chances of finding something in the next few weeks. Of course my application is long since in so there's nothing more I can do now, but until I actually get a response I might as well play this guessing game.

I've combined these numbers with earlier published accounts plus figures from responses by the Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS) to private inquiries. The result is the following table, summarizing the numbers of forms received by MCSS from last September to now, which shows some interesting trends.

Forms relating to adoption disclosure received by MCSS, Sept 2008 to present

		Sept–Dec 2008	Jan–Apr 2009	May 2009	Jun 1–19, 2009	Total
Disclosure Veto	All	921	1,490	2,243	1,367	6,021
	Filed by birth parent	543	490	?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	358	1,000	?	?	?
No Contact Notice (contact veto)	All	1,050		265	152	1,467
	Filed by birth parent	650		?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	400		?	?	?
Notice of Contact Preference	All	1,500		100	219	870
	Filed by birth parent	625		?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	875		?	?	?
Post-Adoption Birth Information		0			3,443	3,443

(The ? symbols indicate a lack of information on my part.)

I'll comment more on the figures later; hope you find them useful.