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Adoption rates across Australia have fallen to their"lowest annual number on record", according to a report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare ( AIHW).
Only 317 permanent care arrangements were made for adopted children across 2014, representing a drop of more than 9 percent from last year.
The AIHW study took into account adoption rates since 1989, revealing a significant 76 percent decline over the last 25 years, when a high of 1,294 adoptions were registered.
Furthermore, it also revealed overseas adoption has declined dramatically over the last quarter of a century.
There were just 114 overseas adoptions in 2014, with 89 percent made up of children from Asia. China's Taiwan was the most common origin, with the Philippines and South Korea close behind.
The report blamed legislative and social changes for the falling adoption rate, with the process of overseas adoption becoming increasingly difficult for Australian parents. "The long-term fall in numbers can, in part, be attributed to legislative changes, such as the increased use of alternative legal orders in Australia and improvements in local adoption practices in countries (and regions) of origin," the report read. "As well as to broader social trends and changing social attitudes, which have made it easier for children to stay with their family or in their country (and region) of origin."
While the drop in Australian children being adopted is higher than that of overseas children, it is still taking significantly longer to finalize permanent care arrangements for foreign children.
On average, the process is now taking around five years, more than two years longer than was the case as recently as 2008.
