Domestic adoption as Flemish youth protection instrument

Some children in Flanders grow up in out-of-house placements (i.e. residential institutions or foster care) in the framework of youth protection while having no feasible prospect of returning to their biological parents’ care. While the Flemish youth protection system (and human rights law) maintain(s) the temporary nature of out-ofhouse placements, the federal instrument of domestic adoption might provide a permanent solution for these children. Nonetheless, in Belgium, no specific regulatory framework concerning domestic adoption as a youth protection instrument exists. Youth protection law and the instrument of adoption have evolved and have been regulated independently at respectively the level of the Communities and the federal level. Consequently, in Flanders, domestic adoption and youth protection are treated as two different paths with divergent aims and courses of action. Hence, the following question arises: is their complete separateness still tenable at a legal level and desirable at a practical level? If not, could the federal instrument of domestic adoption serve as a youth protection instrument? Accordingly, which legal problems would arise as a result? Currently, no clear-cut answers can be found in the existing state-of-the-art. Therefore, this research aims to analyse, clarify, and question the unexplored use of domestic adoption as a possible means to improve the Flemish youth protection system from a comprehensive and comparative point of view.