The Adoption Option
Concept Paper
January 1992
New York State Department of Social Services
40 North Pearl Street
Albany, New York
Gregory M. Kaladjian Joseph Semidei
Acting Commissioner Deputy Commissioner
Division of Family and
Children Services
NEW YORK STATE
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES
40 NORTH PEARL STREET, ALBANY, NEW YORK 12243-001
Gregory M. Kaladjian
Acting Commissioner
January 3, 1992
Dear Friend in Adoption:
Significant changes have occurred in the field of adoption over the past decade. The children being placed for adoption today are predominantly older, and have been permanently removed from their parents� custody by court order, in contrast to the voluntary surrender of newborn infants by young unmarried women as was often the case in past generations. Today�s adoptable children are frequently minority, may be siblings, and often have special needs. Today there are 15,000 children in the foster care system with a goal of adoption in New York State. At no point in history have we had so many children in need of permanent families. It is the position of the Department of Social Services that, in order to meet the needs of these children, the public adoption system must also change.
In order to respond effectively to the changing needs of adoptive children and their families, the Department has developed an initiative called the Adoption Option. The Adoption Option provides the foundation for identifying and implementing necessary changes in the field of adoption in New York State. Enclosed you will find the Adoption Option Concept Paper which describes recent developments in the field of adoption. The paper also highlights the goals which the Department is committed to achieving in our adoption program.
As we move forward, the Department is seeking to join with you, and professionals across the State, in achieving these outcomes. In order to accomplish this, we need the best thinking of all those who are committed to improving the adoption process and finding permanent families for these children. Please take time to review the enclosed Concept Paper and contact the Department with your ideas, comments and recommendations. Send comments to the attention of: Linda Kurtz, Adoption Option Project Director, 259 Monroe Avenue, Monroe Square, 3rd floor, Rochester, N. Y. 14607, (716) 238-8201. We look forward to hearing your comments and working with you on this exciting and important initiative.
Sincerely,
Gregory Kaladjian
Acting Commissioner
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER
Executive Summary
The first priority of the Department of Social Services is to strengthen and preserve families. With an increasingly complex set of societal issues facing them, families are finding it more and more difficult to provide their children with the care and nurturing necessary for them to become healthy self-sufficient adults. In carrying out its responsibility to identify families in need, and provide services in a way that supports family preservation, the Department is continually being challenged and tested. However, whenever a family has the desire and the ability to provide for their children, the Department is committed to supporting that family in the care of their children.
In some instances, the family is not able to provide for their children. In the case of unplanned or unwanted pregnancy, particularly among young women who themselves are not far beyond childhood, the mother may choose to place her child with an adoptive family where (s)he can be reared and loved. This difficult decision allows the child to grow up in an environment where (s)he is wanted and cared for.
In the case of children who are neglected or maltreated by their parents, a foster care placement may become necessary to protect the child from further harm. Still, the goal is to reunite the child with his or her family through the provision of services targeted at improving parental skills. However, if the child is not able to return safely to his own family, a permanent family will be sought for that child through an adoptive placement.
In recent years, there have been profound changes in the field of adoption. An increasing number of children who are placed for adoption are the result of protective removals from the child�s family. The birth parents are not young women relinquishing custody of their infants in order to avoid the stigma of raising a child out-of-wedlock. The children being placed for adoption today have often lived with their birth parents for some months or years before entering the foster care system. These are predominantly older children who were permanently removed from their parents� custody by court order. These children are more frequently minority, may be part of a sibling group, and often have special needs. The adoptive families too have changed. No longer typically a childless, infertile couple,
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adoptive parents are increasingly apt to have been the child�s foster parents. They often have biological children of their own, and are experienced parents. They have known and often worked closely with the birth family in parenting their child.
Put succinctly, all members of the adoption triad, the child, the birth parent, and the adoptive parent, have changed in the past twenty years. It is the position of the Department that the public adoption system must also change. It is time for a comprehensive review and overhaul of our attitudes and practices concerning adoption. We must re-examine procedures for freeing children for adoption, methods for recruiting prospective adoptive parents, and the support services provided to all members of the triad before and after the finalization of an adoption. We must also review, and where necessary revise, the laws and regulations related to adoption.
In order to respond to the changing needs of adoptive children, adoptive parents and birth parents, the New York State Department of Social Services undertook an initiative in the form of interviewing adoptive families and professionals statewide. The results became the basis for the Adoption Option. The Adoption Option focuses on five areas:
� Supports for the Adoptive Family and Child
� Connections
� Foster Care/Adoption Interface
� Timeliness
� Services for Birth Families
The Adoption Option provides a comprehensive set of interrelated outcomes which, when implemented as a whole, will provide an infrastructure for supporting adoption in New York State in the 1990s.
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These changes will make adoption a real and viable option for parents and children. The result will be an adoption program which will meet the needs of children, adoptive parents, and birth parents both in the short term and, as importantly, throughout their lives.
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Introduction
There are three groups of people involved in every adoptive placement: the child, the birth parents, and the adoptive parents. Over the last twenty years, the profiles of the children being freed for adoption in New York State have changed. The majority of children are older and manifest a variety of service needs. Adoptive parents have also changed. They are no longer young and childless. They typically have foster family experience, or the experience of having raised their own children. The birth parent is now less frequently a young unmarried mother are more often a parent or parents whose rights have been terminated through court action. Professionals must respond to the needs of these groups by changing as well.
In the past, professionals viewed adoption as an event, the culmination of a process intended to place a healthy infant with an adoptive family. The client was the potential adoptive couple. The child was given to them to meet their needs to have a family when they were unable to have one of their own. The adoptive child was matched to the adoptive couple in every way possible: hair color, skin color, eye color, and potential talents. The professional was in the business of creating families. The emphasis was on confidentiality and placing children in new families as early as possible(Berman & Bufferd, 1986). Every adoption caseworker from that period remembers the joyful day of placement when the adoptive couple took home their newborn infant; a perfect family.
Adoption, however, is not a one-time event. To the adoptee, to the adoptive parents, and to the birth parents, adoption is a life condition (Watson, 1988). It begins with the moment the child is removed from the birth parent and it lasts throughout the lifetime of all concerned. For adoption to be a viable option, mechanisms must be developed to support the life condition of being adopted. Supports must be available for families to nurture children not born to them. Assistance is needed for parents who made a difficult decision in placing their child for adoption or whose rights to parent their child were terminated through court action. Most importantly, adoptive children must be provided every opportunity to develop into healthy adults. Professionals must work in partnership
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with adoptive families, adoptees, and birth families to make adoption a real and viable option for all parties concerned.
In New York State, there are hundreds of children awaiting adoptive placement. Through no fault of their own, these children have been denied what many would consider their most basic right�a family. They legally belong to no one. They are in the custody of a commissioner of social services, and they are growing up without a mother, a father, siblings, or extended family. Most of these children have special needs. They may be medically fragile, developmentally disabled, or the victims of child abuse and neglect. Many are part of sibling groups. The purpose of this concept paper is to examine the changes that have occurred in the field of adoption over the past twenty years, and to explore the changes that must be made if adoption is to remain �one of the most successful components of current child welfare practice� (Berry & Barth, 1990).
In the first part of this paper, the many issues facing adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents will be examined. The second part of this paper will provide suggestions for addressing some of the problems facing adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents in order to make needed improvements in the field of adoption.
What Has Changed?
The Child
In past decades, white, infertile couples could rely on adoption as a solution to childlessness. White, unmarried mothers surrendered their infants for adoption resulting in an adequate supply of healthy babies for those who wanted them (Small, 1987). That has changed. Today�s cultural climate is more accepting of unmarried parenthood (Watson, 1986), readily available contraception makes it possible for women to have sex without pregnancy (Small, 1987; Watson, 1986), and abortion is available and recognized as a woman�s constitutional right (Small, 1987). Consequently, there are
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fewer healthy infants available for adoption from public agencies. The children who are available for adoption today are older, minority, often part of a sibling group, and usually have special needs.
Children With Special Needs��In New York State, there are 1,00 children, ranging in age from infants to eighteen years, who are legally freed and for whom no adoptive family has been identified. These are the children who are photolisted in the New York State�s Waiting Children book, more commonly referred to as the Blue Book. This photolisting device allows families to identify children they may be interested in adopting. The average age of these children is just under ten years old, and about fifty-six percent are between the ages of seven and thirteen years old. Only seven percent of the children are three years old or less. Fifty-nine percent of the children are black, twenty-three percent are white, and fifteen percent are Hispanic. Fifty-seven percent of the children freed for adoption are males and forty-three percent are females. Virtually all of these children are in foster care placements.
The demographics presented above, however, tell only a small part of the story. The child who is available for adoption in New York State may have any number of physical, emotional, or medical special needs. Many of the children available for adoption have experienced some degree of maltreatment by their family of origin. For example, of the 1,991 children who were freed for adoption in 1989, seventy-seven percent were freed through court ordered termination of parental rights. Ninety-five percent of these court actions to terminate parental rights were the result of permanent neglect or abandonment proceedings.
Physically abused and neglected children typically experience three types of harm: medical, developmental, and psychological (Martin, 1980). The consequences of abuse and neglect are manifested in a variety of ways. These children exhibit more behavior management difficulties than non-abused children (Egeland & Sroufe, 1981). The difficulties may include tantrums, aggression toward peers or adults, and noncompliance. There may also be problems with school adjustment and
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performance (Martin & Beezley, 1977; Reidy, 1977). Research related to the effects of sexual abuse indicates long-term adverse emotional effects (Finkelfor, 1979). Abuse and neglect, however, are not the only problems related to the special needs of children waiting to be adopted.
In 1989, the U. S. House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families reported that infants and young children with medical complications as well as physical and mental limitations comprised the fastest growing groups of children entering foster care (Ford & Kroll, 1990). These children may include mentally or physically disabled youngsters, drug-exposed or drug-addicted infants, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) infants, and children who have tested HIV positive.
The problems faced by these children are many, and some of these children will require extensive medical, psychological, and educational supports. For example, prenatal exposure to opiates can damage fine motor coordination, attention span, frustration tolerance, and sleep patterns (Finnegan, 1986). Fetal alcohol syndrome retards prenatal and postnatal growth, causes central nervous system deficits, and facial feature abnormalities (Jessup & Kroll, 1990). Mentally and physically disabled children may require a variety of medical, educational, or therapeutic services.
A different type of special need is encountered by sibling groups. With the increasing number of older children becoming available for adoptive placement in New York Sate, there is a large number of sibling groups needing placements. Currently, forty-six percent of the children available for adoption have siblings also awaiting adoption. In most cases, the siblings are emotionally attached to each other. In many cases, the only security they have known has come from their affection for one another (Plumez, 1987). In spite of the obvious need to keep these sibling together when they have been separated from their family of origin, it has been difficult to find placements where sibling groups could live together. In addition, when sibling group placement is made, the
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likelihood of disruption is far greater than for single-child placements (Barth, Berry, Yoshikami, Goodfield, & Carson, 1988).
Timeliness and Attachment��The children becoming available for adoptive placement in New York State today are less frequently children who were surrendered at birth. Following their removal from their family of origin, these children are typically placed with a foster family and generally remain there for a period of approximately two years, before the decision is made to free them for adoption. Abused and neglected children, for example, are freed for adoption only after attempts to successfully and safely maintain and/or reunite the child with their birth family are deemed no longer possible. At that point, the public agency initiates a termination of parental rights court action. This will generally involve several months to several years of establishing, to the satisfaction of the court, that the agency has diligently attempted to reunite the child with the birth parents. Only when the agency has been able to prove this diligence to the satisfaction of the court, will the court grant a termination of parental rights, and therefore make the child available for adoptive placement.
Similar problems are faced by medically fragile children. many of these infants have spent their first months of life in a hospital setting and, as a result, may also be developmentally delayed. Those who are abandoned by their parents are typically placed with a foster family and, like children removed from their homes because of abuse and neglect, must also go through a lengthy freeing process.
Once children are freed for adoption, placing them with an adoptive family has become an increasingly lengthy process. For children who will be placed for adoption with their foster family, an adoption home study must be completed before the child is legally �theirs.� For those children who will not remain with their foster family, a prospective adoptive family must be located. For the children registered in New York State�s Waiting Children, their average wait is currently twenty months. During the time children are waiting to achieve adoptive placement status, they have no legal parents.
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Even for children who have been placed in adoptive homes, achieving the permanency of being adopted has significantly slowed in New York State. Statewide, there are currently 3,000 children in adoptive families waiting to be finalized, and they have been waiting an average of fifteen months in this status.
With the variety of problems facing these children, timely adoptive placement has become an issue that was rarely encountered twenty years ago. Delayed adoptive placement can exacerbate the problems facing children with special needs and thus impact negatively the likelihood of successful adoption.
Throughout the termination proceeding, the children are in a legal limbo. They are legally unable to return to their birth parent, and they cannot be legally placed for adoption. This uncertainty is even more protracted for children who are freed for adoption and for whom no adoptive family has been identified. While children who are placed for adoption with their foster family do not experience the same profound sense of psychological instability associated with moving to a new adoptive family after becoming attached to a foster family, the attachment of the foster parent to the child is always in some danger of disruption until legal permanent status is achieved.
The uncertainty and instability associated with the termination process and the use of multiple foster caretakers during the search for a permanent adoptive placement has been shown to lead to social deficits and problems in interpersonal relationships (Ford & Kroll, 1990). As noted, it has also been related to adoption disruptions. Barth, et al., (1988) found that one of the key predictors of adoption disruption was the delayed placement of children into adoptive homes. Westhues and Cohen (1990) reviewed a number of studies with similar findings. Erickson, Sroufe, and Egeland (1985) reported �striking evidence� that secure attachment was critical to the competent functioning of the child in later years.
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Attachment, according to Watson (1988), is the psychological connection between people that permits them to have significance to each other. It is characteristic of infants about seven months and older and leads to a feeling of basic trust and the expectation that people are reliable (Watson & Lindgren, 1979). Children who were securely attached as infants have been found to be more independent, empathetic, and socially competent than children who were anxiously attached as infants (Erickson, et al., 1985). They also exhibited greater self esteem and expressed more positive affect.
Attachment, in contrast to bonding which typically refers only to the unique tie between a child and that child�s birth parent (usually the mother), is a learned behavior (Watson, 1988). Depending on what happens during the first few years of life, a child may learn the capacity to attach to other people or may suffer from an attachment disorder. In extreme cases where infants experience maternal deprivation (i. e., institutionalized children) poor attachment bonds have been linked to depression (Spitz, 1948) and a condition in which infants literally waste away (Ribble, 1943). Less extreme effects may result from the interruption of a child�s primary attachment or by the unexpected loss of a primary attachment through sudden death or the violation of basic trust through physical or sexual abuse (Watson, 1988).
As with other learned behaviors, attachment disorders can be remedied. When a child becomes part of an adoptive family, the adoptive parents can be instrumental in helping the child with the attachment issue (Watson, 1988). Naturally this becomes more difficult the longer the child is in the temporary status of foster care, and the more often the child is shifted from placement to placement.
Searching for Birth Family��For more and more adoptees, there has been a recognition of the need to search for their birth family. There are many motivations for searching. Some adult adoptees report the need to fill a void in their lives (Rosenzweig-Smith, 1988). A fairly consistent reason given is that adoptees hope to change the way they view themselves as people and that they are dissatisfied
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with their lives (Anderson, 1989). The reason given most often, however, has to do with medical history. Some authors (e.g., Anderson, 1988) suggest that this reason is usually invalid; that by the time one is old enough to search he or she is already too old to develop most hereditary diseases, and that it is unlikely that a healthy adoptee would pass such a disorder to any children. Regardless of the reason for searching, there is growing recognition of adoptees� need to know their own history and heritage.
It is often difficult for the public to understand an adoptee�s desire to know about their family of origin, especially when the adoptee may have been abused, neglected, abandoned, or had their health compromised through the maternal use of drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. This need becomes more apparent when one considers that asking an adoptee why they are searching is the same as asking, �Why are you interested in your mother, your father, your grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, ancestry, history, proclivities, aptitudes, liabilities�in short, why are you interested in you?� (Andersen, 1988).
Research indicates that adoptees support policies permitting the release of information regarding the identity of their birth parents. In one study, (Sachdev, 1989) 81 percent of the adoptees surveyed supported disclosure with the birth mother�s consent. This finding is consistent with recommendations offered by those who have advocated for more openness in adoption. They have suggested, however, that agencies which have promised confidentiality to birth mothers should proceed slowly in releasing identifying information. Breaking these promises presents an enormous problem, but not breaking them can present an ethical problem as well (Watson, 1988).
While in 1983 New York State established an Adoption Information Registry, housed in the Health Department for the purpose of giving access to adoptees and their parents regarding medical information, this registry was not designed to meet an adoptee�s needs for maintaining or establishing connections with their birth parents or siblings. Birth parents and adoptees (with the consent of their
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adoptive parents) can register for a fee of approximately $75, and give permission for identifying information to be shared if both parties consent. However, the number of �matches� is extremely low (fewer than ten to date) probably due to lack of public awareness combined with the burden of the fee. Significantly, sibling information, which is often viewed as more critical to the adoptee, is not available on the registry. Other than the Adoption Information Registry, there is currently no established mechanism for adoptees to search for their birth families in New York State.
Interestingly, available information indicates that adoptees are more likely to ask about birth parents and siblings than to actually try to locate them. In one study of 372 adoptive families, (Fiegelman & Silverman, 1986) about seventy percent of the parents reported that their children asked for information about birth parents and siblings. For those parents with children over eighteen years old, however, only six percent reported children who made contact with birth parents. Eight percent reported children who made contact with siblings.
The Adoptive Family
Information on adoptive families is sparse. Most research focuses on characteristics associated with successful and unsuccessful adoptive placements. Information that does exist indicates that the parents who adopt today differ from parents who adopted twenty years ago. Generally, today�s families are older and have already had experience with parenting. Many couples with biological children are now turning to adoption when their grown children leave home (Berman & Bofferd, 1986). Others may decide to adopt a child after the death of a biological child or other family member (Berman & Bofferd, 1986).
Infertile couples, who have historically made up the largest percentage of adoptive parents, are waiting longer to adopt. Through recent advances in medical technology, infertile couples can take advantage of fertility counseling, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and other techniques for producing children (Miall, 1989). Only after many years of failing to produce a child
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will they turn to adoption. Thus, those infertile couples who do adopt today are apt to be older than similar couples who adopted twenty years ago.
Another area that has seen some change in recent years related to single parents. In past generations, women gave up their babies in order to avoid the stigma of single parenthood. Not only are fewer women making this choice today (Churchman, 1986), but adoptions by single parents are becoming more common. In 1990, single-parent families comprised almost one-half of the adoptive families adopting New York City children. Upstate, they comprised almost twenty-five percent of all adoptive families.
Perhaps the most dramatic change seen in adoptive families over the last twenty years is in the acceptance of foster parents as adoptive parents. Although outcome data on foster parent adoptions are mixed, (Barth, et al., 1988) many agencies now encourage such placements. In New York State, adoptive placement with the child�s foster family has become the norm, and foster families have been given legal status as they became �the family of first consideration� in choosing adoptive families for children who have been in their care for one year when they are freed. This law, which recognized that the child should remain with the foster family when attachment has occurred, has radically altered our adoption picture.
Today, over eighty percent of all public adoption are with the foster family with whom the child has been living. In New York City this is the case in approximately nineteen out of twenty adoptive placements. Upstate, children are adopted by their foster family in about seventeen out of twenty cases. For many children, this has made adoptive placement less traumatic. The children do not need to be placed with strangers in order to find permanent families. They can remain with the mothers, fathers, and siblings who have provided care for the last year or more.
Perhaps even more importantly, the foster family often has a link to the child�s birth family. The child has a sense of connectedness, a link to their origins and heritage. For many, the child and
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foster/adoptive family know the whereabouts of the birth family and may even maintain some contact. The child�s history is not a secret, hidden away as though it did not exist. The foster family as an adoptive placement can provide the child with security, connectedness, and an ability to weave together past, present, and future into one whole.
Birth Parents
Twenty years ago, somewhere between fifty-four and eighty-nine percent of pregnant adolescents would have decided to put their children up for adoption. Today, less than ten percent make that decision (Churchman, 1986). Today�s cultural climate is more accepting of unmarried parenthood, and, therefore, there are fewer adoptive placements resulting from out-of-wedlock births(Watson, 1986). In addition, the number of births to adolescents has been decreasing. Between 1975 and 1985 the number of births to adolescents in New York State decreased from 31,353 to 25,470(NYSCCF, 1988).
There is great concern as to whether or not the young woman making this critical decision has had the opportunity to explore fully all the options available to her and the implications of each. A young woman who makes the decision to raise her child as a single parent must bear alone all the concerns of financial self-sufficiency. She must locate and maintain a home, a job, and child care, often with a support system which is tenuous. A young woman who chooses abortion or adoption often does so without understanding the long-term emotional impact.
Concurrent with the decrease in children being surrendered for adoption, there has been an increase in the number of children who are freed for adoption as a result of a court hearing to terminate parental rights. While it is clear that the population of birth parents has changed dramatically over the past twenty years, very little accumulated knowledge has been recorded about parents whose legal rights have been terminated. They are, in many respects, �a hidden population� (Berman & Bufferd, 1986). No comprehensive evaluation has been undertaken which would indicate whether
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or not these families were adequately served by the system, or whether better early identification and more accessible services could have prevented the need for the removal of their children. What is known is that they were, for some period of time, a family. Practice wisdom suggests that these parents, whose children were removed permanently from them by a court of law, are likely to become parents again.
It can be said of the birth parents that they are the most stigmatized of the adoption triad (Watson, 1986). Depending on the circumstances of the particular family, the birth parent may have broken one or more of society�s most time-honored taboos � they have voluntarily relinquished custody of their own flesh and blood, or lost custody of their children as a result of abuse or neglect. This stigmatization may further hinder the ability of the birth parent to become an independent contributing member of society.
Birth parents, like the adoptee and the adoptive parents, have to deal with loss regardless of whether they lost custody of their child through the courts or voluntarily relinquished their parental rights. Voluntary relinquishment can be psychologically devastating (Curtis, 1986). In fact, there is some indication that mothers relinquishing a child for adoption tend more toward grief symptoms than bereaved parents (Blanton & Deshner, 1990). Parents who lose custody of their children through termination of parental rights proceedings experience different loss issues. They have not only lost their child, but a court has determined they are not able to parent this child. They have lost self-esteem.
The relinquishment/termination of parental rights usually signals an end to the service delivery system�s involvement with the birth parent. After the child is placed, records are sealed and birth parents are expected to go on with their lives. Denial of the existence of a birth family was the basis of traditional adoptions (Watson, 1986). Professionals are beginning to realize, however, that removing a child from a family does not eliminate the needs of the birth parent. If the conditions and
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problems which led to the child�s removal or surrender are not resolved, and the unfinished business of grieving is not dealt with, they are apt to become obstacles in parenting additional children.
Adoption Option
New York State Department of Social Services (NYSDSS) has historically provided national leadership in the field of adoption, shaping policy and practice concerning the best interests of the child for the nation to follow. Now, with 1,00 children awaiting adoptive placement, and 15,000 more children waiting to be freed for adoption, New York is once again in a position to provide leadership. Children need families to grow into healthy adults. It is the role of government, when children have been freed for adoption, to ensure that they have families, and that those families are sufficiently prepared and supported so that the adoption can be successful.
To prepare to make the necessary reforms in a field which has seen such widespread changes over the last several decades, NYSDSS recognized the need to creatively research and understand adoption as it is experienced daily by the adoption triad. To undertake this effort a committee was established, with the charge of making adoption a real option for children who need a family other than their own. Utilizing a key expert approach to analyzing the barriers to adoption, the committee conducted interviews with adoptive families, adoptees, birth families, and professionals in the field, while simultaneously conducting a comprehensive literature review. In all, 75 key experts were interviewed. The interviews included:
� Approved adoptive parents who are awaiting a child
� Prospective adoptive parents (currently in study)
� Adoptive parents who have successfully adopted a special needs child
� Foster parents who have adopted a foster child in their home
� Adoptive children
� Adult adoptees
� Birth parents
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� Commissioners of local departments of social services
� Executive Directors of voluntary adoption and foster care agencies
� Caseworkers
� Supervisors
� Adoption trainers
� Judges
� Adoption advocates
The Adoption Option Committee used the information gathered through the interviews to analyze barriers to adoption in the 1990s. Their task was to develop proposed solutions to those barriers, to create an adoption program which will meet the needs of the adoption triad in the short-term and throughout their lifetime. The recommendations proposed here are the result of this work.
The identification of improvements in the adoption system began with a recognition that adoption has changed so significantly over the years that it needs to be reconsidered from the bottom up. It was increasingly clear that, given the child�s need for connections, the tradition of placing a child in an adoptive home while trying to imitate, as much as possible, the creation of a family through the addition of a biological child was no longer viewed as practical or desirable. Neither was it desirable to view the adoption as a one-time event that left the adoptive family on its own after finalization.
The focus in adoption has turned to the best interests of the child rather than meeting the needs of childless couples. This has led to an increase in the adoption of children by their foster families, who are in the best position to provide a sense of continuity and stability to children they already know and love. The legalization of abortion and the cultural acceptance of single parenthood have resulted in a decrease in the pool of healthy infants available for adoption. The pool of adoptable children now includes more older children who have been in the foster care system and subsequently have been freed for adoption.
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There is now a recognition that the children who have been separated physically from their birth families still have a psychological connection with their birth parents and siblings, and a resulting need to maintain some level of connection with them. And, because the children themselves have special needs, there is no way to continue to pretend that adoption is the creation of the perfect, traditional family with no ongoing service needs. Adoptive families need training in how to care for and understand their special needs children. Supports are needed not just until finalization, but as long as the child has physical, mental, or emotional needs.
What is needed is reform in adoption practice and, more importantly, in our attitudes toward the needs of children, adoptive and birth families. A program which has served many children well in the past needs to be revitalized in order to work effectively in the 1990s. New outcomes must be established which will meet the needs of all the members of the adoption triad: the children, the adoptive parents, and the birth parents. What follows is a description of interrelated initiatives which will provide the needed reform. When viewed as a comprehensive package, these initiatives provide a framework for ensuring that children needing homes are placed in a more timely manner, and that once placements are made, necessary supports are in place for adoptive parents, adoptees, and birth parents. In addition, the implementation of these initiatives will ensure that adoption occurs in a way that meets the long-term needs of all members of the triad. The initiatives include:
� Supports for the Adoptive Family and Children;
� Connectedness for the Adopted Child;
� Foster Care/Adoption Interface;
� Timeliness, and
� Services to Birth Families.
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Adoption Option Outcomes
The groundwork has been laid. The barriers to successful adoption in New York State have been analyzed. Now is the time for action. The action called for is a comprehensive and sweeping challenge to our current thinking about adoption�What is adoption to the adopted child? What should adoptive parents be expected to provide to their child? What supports do birth parents need and what are our responsibilities to them? What is the responsibility of government in supporting adoption? Our answers to these questions lie in the outcomes described below. The New York State Department of Social Services is committed to achieving of these outcomes [sic], which comprise the Adoption Option. The outcomes require changes in state policy on adoption, in the day-to-day work of adoption, and in our attitudes toward and understanding of the family dynamic we call adoption.
Supports for the Adoptive Family and Child
An important issue for adoptive families may surface either pre- or post-finalization is related to parent training and support. It is a need which frequently goes unaddressed. Adoptive parents often have a need � sometimes a desperate need � for support during difficult times throughout the adoptive process. They typically do not have significant contact with other adoptive parents and, as a result, have no readily available role models. In addition, while the preparation for biological parenthood is gradual and has a known timetable, adoptive parenthood has no regular timetable and may occur abruptly. Nonetheless, parent training in adoption is rare, and is often not rigorously structured or practiced.
Children who are placed for adoption have increasingly manifested a need for a variety of long-term services. When a child is removed from their own family and placed in a new family, regardless of the age of the child, there are always separation and loss issues which must be dealt with both short- and long-term. Much of the support for dealing with separation and loss will be provided by the adoptive family, who will need to be prepared for this process. At the same time, supports are
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needed to help the members of the adoptive family integrate into a cohesive family. Some support may need to be provided professionally through counseling or support groups.
In addition to general placement issues, the children being placed for adoption today typically have experienced some level of abuse, neglect, or maltreatment in their family of origin. Many have gone through a period of psychological limbo while the courts determined the legal status of their parents� rights. An increasing number of children have suffered in utero from fetal alcohol syndrome or parental drug abuse, are HIV positive, or have disabilities ranging from learning disabilities to technological dependency. The various medical and emotional needs have caused families to fear breaking free from their supervising agency, even though they want to finalize their adoption.
While the need for training and support services cannot be overemphasized, it must be balanced with the newly formed family�s right to privacy and autonomy. Legal finalization should mean an end to monitoring and supervision of the family by the adoption agency. The family, however, must be able to access services in order to be able to successfully parent the adoptive child. New service delivery methods are needed to effectively strike this balance.
The availability of these services is a critical sign that we recognize the vital contribution adoptive families make to our society. Post finalization services should be made available to adoptive families for as long as they are needed. These services include:
1. Medical services for any medical condition present at placement or arising thereafter;
2. Services to address the short- and long-term effects of physical abuse, neglect, and maltreatment;
3. Services to address learning and developmental disabilities including but not limited to those resulting from fetal alcohol syndrome and maternal prenatal drug use;
4. Counseling and support group services to deal with separation/loss/abandonment issues, and forging an adoptive family;
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5. Training targeted at understanding the needs of adoptive children, and the process of becoming an adoptive family; and
6. Training targeted at professionals who deal with adoption to equip them to support adoptive families. These professionals may include adoption and foster care caseworkers and supervisors, mental health professionals, and teachers.
Connections
Historically, when children have been placed for adoption, they were severed permanently from their past. There was a belief that a child placed with an adoptive family became totally a part of that new family. There was little recognition of the adoptees� needs to know their own history and heritage, their need to know where particular talents and interests came from. Little in our society condoned adoptees wondering about what their birth parents might have looked like or their need to understand why they were placed for adoption. In fact, such interest was considered unhealthy and a potential sign of an unsuccessful adoption placement.
It is one of the major challenges for those involved in the adoption process to come to understand that heritage is as much a part of an adoptee as height and weight, innate abilities, or ethnicity. Who we are and where we come from is more than a curiosity. Those of us who are not adopted do genealogical charts, or ask if we have inherited grandpa�s nose, or attend family reunions to gain a sense of who we are in relation to our entire family system. Man�s insatiable interest in his past is part of understanding himself, and to deny adoptees that awareness has been to relegate them to a life of secrecy and unanswered questions. We have fought to protect, but instead we have denied.
While not all adoptees actually look for information about or desire contact with their birth families, many wonder about their origins and the reason for their placement. These adult adoptees describe themselves as having feelings of being incomplete. Many adoptees describe themselves as
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experiencing low self esteem or feeling hollow. In spite of having a loving and nurturing adoptive experience, they often lack a sense of belonging.
For older foster children being placed for adoption, children who have experienced some portion of their life with their own birth family followed by a foster care placement, the connections are more complex and even more important to support. These children have experienced a patchwork quilt of life, living with more than one significant other, often in more than one community, perhaps experiencing more than one school placement, probably having more than one group of parents and siblings. These experiences can create a profound sense of confusion and loss in the adoptee. For these children, not only their family of origin, but also the significant others they have known throughout their lives must be accessible. Family, friends, neighbors, and the professionals with whom the child has had an important relationship are part of the psychological make-up and memories of each adoptee.
The potential adoptive families coming forward to care for adoptive children in New York State today must understand the significance of these connections. It is essential for adoptive children and adult adoptees to have access to whatever information and connections they desire in understanding themselves, their past, and their heritage. The preparation process should, therefore, include preparation of each prospective foster and adoptive family to help them accept and support the child�s need for connections.
New York State�s adoption system should be structured to provide adoptees with the information they need and want. This may mean offering adoptive families access to the birth family from the date of placement on. Access can include a number of different things however. At one end of the continuum, it might include detailed written information about the birth family including health histories, genealogical information, or a letter from the birth parent(s) to the adopted child. At the other end of the continuum is open adoption. Open adoption refers to supporting the members
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of the adoption triad � adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents � by eliminating as much confidentiality as possible. Varying degrees of openness may be required so that the participants in an adoption can choose their own comfort level (Watson, 1988). Different adoptive families and adopted children will require different levels of access to connections. The state�s adoption system must be prepared to respond at all levels. This may include:
1. Information which identifies birth parents,
2. Narrative information about the birth family,
3. Exchange of information between the birth family and the adoptive family,
4. A one-time meeting,
5. Visitation.
In order to provide the members of the adoption triad with the level of connectedness they need, the following steps should be taken:
1. Training and preparation should be provided to all prospective foster and adoptive parents to help them fully understand an adoptee�s need for connections.
2. Identifying information regarding the birth family should be made available to adoptive parents when the adoptive placement is made.
3. A mechanism should be developed to allow adoptees to establish connections after the placement is finalized.
Foster Care/Adoption Interface
Historically, when children in foster care entered the adoption system, a move to a new family was required. The foster family was prepared through training to provide temporary care for the child, and the adoptive family was prepared through training to become a permanent placement for the child. Now, eighty percent of our public adoptions are with the child�s foster family. These families typically intended to provide temporary care for the child in placement, but when the child
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became available for adoption they applied to adopt. When the decision to adopt is made, current practice requires that the foster family undergo an adoptive homestudy as well as a preparation process for becoming a permanent family.
The potential for adoptive placement with the child�s foster family is becoming well recognized. When considering the decision to become �caregivers,� therefore, families need to be prepared for the role of both foster family and adoptive family. Every prospective foster and adoptive family should go through the training, preparation, and assessment process. This process should be a pre-service mutual assessment which allows the family and the agency to decide together whether the family can be a foster family, an adoptive family, or both. If the family selects to become a foster family and later decides to adopt the child in their home, they should not need to repeat the process. Similarly, all in-service training and preparation should be offered to both foster and adoptive families.
In light of the growing acceptance of foster families as adoptive families, steps should be taken to eliminate all duplicative and conflicting standards between foster and adoptive families. Families should be recruited with the understanding that they may eventually fill either role. The training they receive should prepare them for foster or adoptive placements. The supports available should be identical. Every foster care placement should be made with an expectation that the foster family may become a permanent resource to the child.
We need to reach as close as we can toward an ideal. In this ideal, when a child comes into foster care, he would be placed with a foster family who understands their role to be working with the birth parent in order to return their child to them. The foster parents and the birth parents would work as partners toward reunification of the birth family. The foster family would reconsider themselves as a resource to the child and the birth family.
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In this ideal, if additional siblings in the family need foster care placement, those children would be placed with the same foster family. The foster family would continue to work toward reunification for as long as that is the permanency goal, by role modeling, by supporting regular visitation, and by sharing the parenting of the children with the birth parent as appropriate.
When the children are returned home from foster care, the foster family would continue their relationship with the birth family, recognizing that they have become significant to the child and his parents. If the children then become in need of placement again, they would return to the same foster family. This foster family would be available to provide care and stability for as long and as often as the children need them.
If the child�s goal is changed to independent living, the foster family would assume responsibility for helping the child learn independent living skills as well as establish the necessary support network to help bridge the gap from childhood to self-sufficient adulthood. If the child�s goal is changed to adoption, the foster family would become the child�s adoptive family, fully cognizant of the child�s need for connections with his birth family.
In the everyday world, it will not always be possible to achieve this ideal. There will always be individual case circumstances which preclude a child having one resource family available to him for as long as he needs them. However, it should never be our policies which preclude us from achieving this ideal. New York State policies should support the concept of a resource family being available to a birth family for as long as they are needed.
Just as the policies of New York State need to be reconsidered in order to support the notion of a resource family, so will our attitudes need to be reconsidered. We have become very categorical in our thinking about foster families and adoptive families. This categorical thinking can get in the way of providing children with the continuity and stability they need. In many ways, the recognition
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of the child�s need for the continuity and stability of a resource family is a return to our roots, when the community assisted the birth family in parenting their child as needed. We do well to remind ourselves that when the Pharaoh�s daughter found Moses in the reeds, she did not ask herself, �Now, shall I be his foster mother, or adoptive mother?�
In order to accomplish the ideal of a resource family that is available to a child and birth family for as long as they need, new methods of preparation are required. A pre-service preparation and selection process for both foster and adoptive families should be created. This process should provide:
1. A single assessment process for families regardless of whether they want to be a foster family or an adoptive family;
2. A thorough understanding of the role of the foster/adoptive family;
3. Training on the needs of the child and how to address these needs; and,
4. An understanding of the birth family.
Timeliness
In New York State statute, there are three milestones which are considered maximum allowable timeframes for children in the adoptive process. From the date an agency sets a goal to free a child for adoption to the date the child is actually freed and ready for placement should be no longer than one year. From the date of freeing the child for adoption to the date of placing the child in an adoptive family should be no more than one year. From the date the child is placed in an adoptive home to the date the adoption is finalized should be no more than one year. Unfortunately, in New York State, these maximum timeframes have become the standard. The child who is freed, placed, and finalized with a three-year period is the exception rather than the rule. However, because we are talking about the lives of children, a three-year period from goal-setting to finalization is too long and emotionally costly.
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The strategy for reducing the timeframes for freeing children and finalizing placements will need to be jointly developed with the New York State Department of Social Services and the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA). NYSDSS has initiated a close working relationship with OCA in order to ascertain the reasons that processes to free a child and finalize a placement are so time-consuming. Strategies can then be developed to make the process more workable and more efficient.
There are many facets involved in freeing children and finalizing placements. The local department of social services, attorneys, law guardians, and the court itself all play a part in both processes. Improvements in these areas may be unique to each county. At the state level, the putative father registry (a listing of fathers of children born out-of-wedlock) and the clearance procedure for checking prospective adoptive parents through the child abuse Sate Central Register both provide supportive functions and deserve examination. The infrastructure supporting freeing and finalizing, including legislation and regulation, should also be reviewed.
Actions which reduce the time to place a child into an adoptive home after being freed are more obvious. To the extent that a child is placed for adoption with his foster family, this becomes a moot point. The child is already living with his family, psychological security is maintained, and permanency is assured. Naturally, there will always be children who are not adopted by their foster family. Many families who can provide temporary care for children are not interested in making the commitment of permanently adding a child to their family. For other children who are currently living in a group home or institutional care, there is truly no family available to them. These children need to have a family recruited for them.
One of the most critical problems in recruiting families for adoption is the lack of awareness on the part of the public concerning who are the children available for adoption. To the extent these children have been �advertised,� they have been presented as damaged goods. A reality-based public
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awareness campaign is needed to make it clear who the children are and what they need. Such a campaign should also focus on the joys of parenting them. Efforts should be made to modernize New York�s Waiting Children (The Blue Book), which is the current vehicle for photolisting adoptive children. Just as black and white television which was radical when new is now outmoded, theBlue Book was a highly successful innovation when it was created in 1975, but is now limited in its usefulness. Alternative media should be explored to help families identify children they respond to and may want to reach out to.
In order to facilitate the timely placement of children waiting to be adopted, a number of steps should be taken. These include:
1. Identifying and implementing steps to increase the number of children being adopted by their foster families;
2. Developing a pool of �waiting parents� who are ready to adopt special needs children if they are not adopted by their foster families once they are freed for adoption; and,
3. Closer collaboration between the Department and the Office of Court Administration on improving timeliness in the freeing and finalization processes.
Services to Birth Families
The primary goal of the Department of Social Services is to strengthen and preserve families. When this is not possible, and a child is removed from his family, supports are needed to help parents address a variety of issues. Historically, birth families of children placed for adoption have received little in the way of such services.
Women who have an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy need to be fully knowledgeable concerning the choices available to them. They need to have the opportunity to explore fully the options of raising the child themselves, placing the child for adoption, or having an abortion. In order to make the best decision for herself and her child, the pregnant woman needs to be assured of the
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availability and accessibility of a skilled counselor who understands all the options and their potential long-term implications.
Once a young woman has chosen to place her child for adoption, she needs to be helped grieve the loss she will experience. Not only does she need to come to grips with her loss in order to be a functional, self-sufficient adult, but it is likely that she will become a mother again. Failure to deal with her issues at this point will be a set-up for problems when she becomes a parent in the future.
An increasing number of birth mothers are requesting information about the well-being of their child after placement. While some authors (e.g., Berman & Bufferd, 1986; Groth, et al., 1987; Watson, 1986) have suggested that some degree of openness in adoption can help birth parents with the grieving process, others (e.g, Curtis, 1986) have pointed to arguments that suggest otherwise. Advocates of open adoption have suggested that secrecy inhibits the mourning process for the birth mother. These advocates suggest that the birth mother never stops worrying about her child and that open adoption reassures the birth mother about the well-being of her child. It allows her to be more realistic about relinquishment (Curtis, 1986). Advocates for closed adoption suggest that open adoption fosters unrealistic fantasies of reunion and that closed adoption facilitates the grieving process. Clearly, more work in this area is needed.
For parents whose rights have been terminated through court, services are also needed. This is particularly true for parents who are likely to have more children. In addition to dealing with the loss of their child, these parents must also work to resolve the problems and issues that contributed to the removal of the child from their custody.
As a significant member of the adoption triad, birth parents must be helped to get back �on their feet� and regain their self-esteem. The service system should be prepared to help them move
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toward self sufficiency. In order to address these needs, the following are needed:
1. Counseling for women who have an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy to help them choose among the options of raising their child, adoption or abortion;
2. Counseling for parents whose rights have been terminated through court;
3. Counseling for women who voluntarily relinquish custody of their children; and
4. Research on what happens to these families after they lose or relinquish custody of their children.
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Conclusion
In the past, adoption was viewed as an event�the placement of a child in a home. Adoption, however, is not a one-time event. It is a life condition which begins the moment a child is removed from a birth parent and it last a lifetime. It affects the child, the adoptive parents, and the birth parents. For adoption to remain a viable adoption in New York State, therefore, the state adoption system must be prepared to support parents who adopt and assist parents who voluntarily relinquish, or lose through court order, custody of their children. Most importantly, the system must be capable of giving adopted children the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.
There are 15,000 children who currently have a goal of adoption in New York State. At no point in history have there been so many children who are in need of someone who will provide them with their most basic needs: a family who will raise them to adulthood, respect and support their biological and cultural heritage, and give them both security and love. The opportunity for reform lies not in the future, but in the present�the children call us to action today.
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