Why Dealing with Reality (Race, Age, Openness) Is Critical … and Why Adoptions Sometimes Fail

Adam Pertman Sarah McCarthy

From the Adopted People Themselves: Race Matters (and so Does Adoption)

• • Race/ethnicity is an increasingly significant aspect of identity.

Coping with discrimination is part of shaping racial/ethnic identity.

• Adoption is increasingly significant in identity, including as adults.

• • Discrimination based on adoption is a reality, but more so Whites (i.e., race trumps adoption).

Most TRA thought they were or wanted to be white as children.

• “Lived experiences” most effectively facilitate positive identity.

• White respondents: contact with birth relatives is most helpful factor for positive adoptive identity. • Transracial adoptees: travel to home country, is most helpful factor for achieving positive identity. -- Beyond Culture Camp, Donaldson Adoption Institute, 2009

Importance of Racial/Ethnic Identity at Different Life Stages

Importance of Adoptive Identity at Different Life Stages

Experiences and Services Utilized, Perceived as Helpful in Forming Identity

Source

Travel to birth country b Attend racially diverse schools a,b Having child care providers, teachers, adult role models same race/ethnicity Family travel to culturally significant places b Read information from Internet b Live in racially diverse neighborhood a,b Books/Articles on adoption b Cook food or dine at restaurants b Regular contact with people of same race/ethnicity b Exposure to multi-cultural entertainment Take classes learn history/culture of birth country b Having siblings a Events by adult adoptees/adult adoptee organizations a,b Support group for adoptees b Involve ethnically diverse religious, social groups/activities b Culture camp a,b Study birth language a,b Events sponsored by own ethnic group a,b Have traditional objects (dolls etc.) from birth country a,b Having contact with birth relatives a,b Study martial art, traditional dance etc.

Korean Adoptees

% Utilized % Helpful 62 65 74 73 62 72 30 41 41 53 79 65 73 84 74 68 49 80 62 51 59 48 56 55 49 47 38 73 72 71 70 68 68 67 64 64 63 63 62 62 61 59

White Adoptees

% Utilized % Helpful 57 51 45 42 31 55 45 51 65 53 75 44 75 77 75 70 46 70 42 46 54 12 44 28 37 72 31 58 54 62 53 66 54 51 55 30 68 47 50 40 15 43

Recommendations

• Expand parental preparation and post-placement support for those adopting across race/ethnicity/culture. • Develop empirically based practices, resources to prepare TRA youth to cope with racial bias.

• Promote laws, policies, practices that facilitate access to information for adopted individuals.

• Educate teachers, docs, practitioners, media, etc. • Conduct additional research on risk and protective factors for all the affected parties.

Age Matters: What Research and Experience Tell Us

• On average, just under 28,000 youth were emancipated from foster care in each of the last six years, peaking at 29,730 in FY2007. Percentage who leave care through emancipation has grown steadily, from 7% in FY1998 to 11% in FY2010.

• Multiple studies show a very high percentage face difficulties with education, jobs, income, housing , early parenthood, crime, substance abuse and mental health problems.

• Too many youth leave care without any of the permanent, emotionally sustaining, committed relationships that are imperative for them to reach self-sufficiency and thrive.

Learning from Research, Experience (Cont.)

• Current federal and state independence programs, while well intentioned, have not proven as beneficial as anticipated. Services without supportive relationships are insufficient.

• A range of creative methods exists to provide stable, dependable family support – and they must be used to help older youth achieve permanency and long-term connections.

• The vast majority of adoptive placements of older youth are successful; although the disruption rate for youth placed as teens is somewhat higher than for younger children, a recent study found disruption rates varied from 8-14% across all ages.

Recommendations

• Use existing knowledge, innovations: subsidized guardianship; focus on those at highest-risk; reinstate parent rights; better train, supervise and support workers on issues relating to older youth and what works.

• Increase recruitment, support for subsidized guardianship, long-term fostering and adoption (with more supports) by relatives.

• Further practices that reduce time youth stay in care such as early concurrent planning and search for kin, including fathers and their kin.

• Set true permanency goals: reunification, adoption, subsidized guardianship, long-term care by relatives, etc. – NOT emancipation, independent living, “another living arrangement.” • Provide life skills training, housing support, other services to help permanency. If no other options, connections with a committed adult. • Significantly expand research on effective policies and practices.

Openness is Happening … and it Works

• • • • • • Number of “closed” adoptions down to 5% – 55% disclosed, 40% mediated, and 95% of agencies offering open adoptions.

In the vast majority, adoptive and bio/first parents meet, and the expectant parents pick the new family for their baby.

Most report positive experiences, and greater openness is associated with more satisfaction with the adoption process.

Birth/first mothers with ongoing contact with children report less grief, regret, worry and more peace of mind. Adoptive parents report positive experiences and high levels of comfort.

Primary benefit of openness is access by adopted persons to relatives, medical information, genealogical and family history.

Adolescents with ongoing contact are more satisfied with level of openness and identify benefits to identity, communication.

Important Factors for Achieving Success

• Shared understanding by birth and adoptive parents about what open adoption is and is not, including its complexities. • Foundational relationship qualities and values (empathy, respect, honesty, trust, commitment to connection) are ideals for the parties in open relationships.

• Ability to exercise self-determination in choosing and shaping open relationships (self-determination in original agreement, setting boundaries, adaptability over time.

• Development of “collaborative” communication in planning for contact and conveying needs, as well as availability of post adoption services.

Recommendations

• • • • All parents should get counseling and training, including on challenges/benefits of various levels of openness for everyone in the Extended Family of Adoption – and on strategies to deal with tensions and maintain a child-centered focus.

All decision-making should be embedded in ethical practice that maximizes self-determination and full disclosure. Parents who feel pressured to choose a certain level of openness are less likely to feel satisfied or successful.

All parents should be offered post-adoption services – such as phone consultation and support groups – to work through any challenges they encounter in relation to openness. Additional research should be done to better understand the factors that promote successful open adoption relationships and ways in which practitioners can support them.

Failed Adoptions in the Media

•

Impermanence: When Adoptions Fail—Huffington Post, 2014

The couple claim the children were described to them as "healthy and socially well-adjusted" and that both children have "serious medical and psychiatric problems" and have made multiple threats to kill their adoptive parents. Now 12 and 14, the children are in state mental-health facilities.

U.S. Mother Who 'Returned' Her Adopted Son To Russia Ordered To Pay Child Support—Forbes,

“We are satisfied this ruling finally offers some justice for this boy,” said WACP’s president Lillian Thogersen in a statement on the agency’s website. “Adoption is a legal, lifelong commitment to a child. Sending a child alone on an international flight back to their birth country is not an option for any parent.”

Further Headlines

•

Adoption: why the system is ruining lives-The Guardian, 2012

“The children available for adoption these days have often been removed from parents who have mental health, drug and alcohol problems. They have most likely been left with those parents until the bitter end because the state believes that children do better with their own parents. By the time these children are removed, they are already damaged by years of neglect and abuse.”

Background: Broken Adoptions Project

-Trend study -Attorney/judge survey Dawn J. Post and Brian Zimmerman, The Revolving Doors of Family Court: Confronting Broken Adoptions, 40 CAP. U. L. REV. 437 (2012).

How do the broken adoption cases that we don’t hear about present in court?

• Guardianship proceedings • Neglect proceedings • Voluntary placements • Custody proceeding • Person in need of supervision petitions • Juvenile Delinquency

Behavioral Allegations

Reason for Disruption: Death or Infirmity

• Identified trend: With the death of the matriarch of the family the child(ren) frequently started experiencing repeated disruptions • Age of the adoptive parent and child at adoption and the decision making. • Kinship 66 yo and 4 yo • Non-kinship 67 yo and infant • Non-kinship 71 yo and 9 yo

Ages of Adoption and Disruption

• Average age of disruption closely mirrors onset of adolescence • On average, broken adoption clients adopted at 7 years old • Average age of disruption is 14 years old

Infancy/childhood

First enters foster care

Age 7

Adopted by foster parent

Age 14

Child is no longer in adoptive home

Percentage of Cases with Bio-Family Presence

Compared to Bio Presence – Percentage of Kinship & Non-Kinship Adoptions

• 75% of cases bio-family involvement • 58% of cases non-kinship adoptions • These adoptions would have taken place prior to the passage of open adoption legislation, which makes the number of cases with bio-family involvement surprising

Percentage of Cases - Post Adoption Services

Percentage of Cases - Post Adoption Services

• The figure 12% of cases which had post-adoption services may not be accurate as parties may mistake services that continued from FC to adoption as post-adoption services • Even assuming the figure is accurate, it appears low given the attention that was paid in late 1990’s and early 2000’s to providing post-adoption services to stabilize adoptions

SYSTEMIC IMPACT HOPES OF THE BROKEN ADOPTIONS PROJECT

     We believe that every child should have a safe and permanent family Adoption is one outcome to achieve that goal Adoptive families who need support should have a resource to contact even years after the adoption We believe that data should be collected to ensure that issues surrounding adoptions are identified with an eye to solve them Decision to move forward with an adoption should always be with an eye that the bonding and commitment is there for the child and parent for the long term