Tag: ASFA

Who Is Really Responsible

Sharing some intelligent and knowledgeable thoughts today (no, not my own but so good, I had to share) –

Responsibility In Adoption

WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR FORCED ADOPTIONS?

A few people make the point that sometimes foster parents are forced by the state to adopt their foster children. Since there was some demand for a topic addressing forced adoptions from foster care, I thought this topic was important. Let’s start with some language.

ARE FOSTER PARENTS FORCED OR ARE THEY COERCED?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, “force” includes situations where a person may be threatened into cooperating with an action they would prefer not to perform. In this way, you can say that adoptive parents are “forced” to adopt from foster care under some circumstances. But I think the word “coerced” is better because it is a more nuanced word that conveys the fact that while there were no good choices, adoptive parents still made a choice.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE FORCED ADOPTIONS?

There’s a who and there’s a what. Let’s start with the “what.”

What we’re talking about is the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), a Clinton-era law intended to encourage state agencies to find and secure permanent homes for children waiting in foster care following the termination of parental rights. This act provides Federal monies for state agencies for each child adopted out of foster care in a given fiscal year. In order to continue to receive this stipend, the state agencies must increase the number of adoptions compared to the previous year. Agencies, therefore, train their caseworkers to push for (or coerce) adoptions so that they continue to receive these federal funds for their services. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) is largely responsible for the number of children in foster care waiting to be adopted as well as the coercion in adoption.

The “who” is the adoptive parent.

I know you don’t want to hear this. It is so much easier to blame someone else for your involvement in a system of oppression. But let me put this simply: You would not have been forced to adopt, if you had not been involved in foster care as a foster parent in the first place.

Leaving aside any feelings many of us have about adoption and foster care in the first place, this is factually true. The caseworker could not have coerced you to adopt, if you had not already been fostering, which most of you signed up for in the first place.

THE REALITY OF FORCED ADOPTIONS

They do happen. Period. But when we put the emphasis on adoptive parents, we shift the tragedy of forced adoptions away from the helpless party: The adoptee. We also shift the emphasis from the party who truly had no choice and was literally forced: The natural family. Because the adoptee didn’t choose to be in foster care — the adoptive (formerly foster) parent did. Because biological parents didn’t choose to engage with the system — the adoptive (formerly foster) parent did.

Before you argue that biological parents chose to engage with the system, sit down and listen. Please.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) demands a supply of children to be adopted out of foster care, and Child Protective Services uses increasingly aggressive techniques to source these children. Many children in the system, even post-Termination of Parental Rights, are in the system because their parents were facing temporary situations and then the system saddled them with requirements they simply could not complete. When parents don’t complete the objectives of their case plan, their rights are terminated. Their children may be adopted “for the sake of permanency.”

ADOPTIVE PARENTS AREN’T VICTIMS

It is harmful to adoptees and their original families when adoptive parents make themselves out to be the victims in adoption. Not only does this potentially (likely) harm the adopted child and/or their first family, but it prevents the adoptive parent from healing the parts of them that are wounded by whatever causes led them to adoption. You have to be responsible for your choices. Period. As a first mother who lost her children to CPS and is now in reunion, I strive to recognize that whatever I may feel, I am not the victim. My children were. For the sake of your child, keep things in perspective. In the long run, it will also help you.

BUT WHAT ABOUT KINSHIP ADOPTION?

Kinship adoption is a true tragedy. The majority of kinship adopters didn’t set out to foster or adopt in the first place and accept responsibility for a relative’s children to keep them out of the system. In many states, they are then threatened with stranger placement, if they don’t adopt their kinship child. Adoption isn’t the right answer, but keeping children with family has to come first whenever possible. No adopter gets a free pass, but if there is an argument that can be made that kinship adopters have almost no choice because they didn’t choose to participate in the system apart from the pressure applied by the need for care inside the family.

YOU CAN DO THE WRONG THING WHILE TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING

It’s easy for those suffering cognitive distortions (often as a result of childhood abuse and trauma) to believe that participating in a broken system makes them a bad person.

Nobody’s saying that. We recognize the choicelessness you felt when confronted with the option to either adopt or allow a child you care deeply for to be removed from your home to be adopted by strangers — and you may never see them again.

But it is important, for the sake of your adopted child — that you not make yourself the victim of some third party — especially when that third party is faceless and nameless (“the system”).

LET’S GET VISIBLE!

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Ethics In Adoption

Adoption is a BIG Business

From an adoption community post –

There is an economy at work in adoption.

Let’s begin with adoption agencies –

An adoption agency connects hopeful adoptive parents with expectant mothers in crisis who may wish to relinquish their child for adoption. In the process of negotiating, the adoption agency receives money from the hopeful adoptive parents (in most cases), and sometimes (rarely) from expectant mothers. The money is used to pay for the associated legal fees, the matching service, and sometimes for care for the expectant mother. This money also pays the salaries of the agency employees. This is true even if the agency is listed as a “not for profit” agency. The employees, social workers, and directors are not working for free.

Hopeful adoptive parents reach out to agencies for help in finding an available child (usually an infant) to adopt. There are 40 hopeful adoptive parents (couples/families) for every infant available for adoption. That is an estimate, some say it may be as high as 1,000 hopeful adoptive parents for every infant who becomes available for adoption.

If you look on websites and in social media, an expectant mother who indicates anywhere that she is considering adoption, will receive hundreds, often thousands, of responses from people who would like to adopt her baby. The demand far exceeds the supply of infants available for adoption. In the leaked Supreme Court draft written by Alito he makes a note of that lack of supply.

So, let’s apply the law of supply and demand –

In order for an agency (which, whether for profit or not for profit, stands to make money from the transaction) to keep itself in business, the agency must provide a certain percentage of infants for the demand. When supply is low and demand is high, coercion enters into these transactions. Agencies must obtain children for their market and are willing to do whatever it takes to supply that market. Social workers and agency contacts do whatever it takes to convince an expectant mother that one of their adoptive couples is better for her child, than she could ever be.

If she receives any money from the agency to cover her expenses but then decides she wants to parent, they will call her a “scammer” or a “fraud.” In many states there is no revocation period during which a woman who has given birth but indicated she is willing to give up her baby can change her mind. Those are considered “adoption-friendly” states Some have short revocation periods. In many cases, social workers pressure expectant mothers to hand their babies over and sign their termination of parental rights, while the new mother is still within the first 48 hours after birth.

Coercive tactics are part and parcel of domestic infant adoption. International infant adoption is even more coercive and heinous because some parents are not even told that their legal rights to their child are being severed.

So, what about the children in foster care ? They’ve already had their parental rights severed. Some hopeful adoptive parents believe they are only motivated to help these unfortunate children. But there’s an economy at work there too. You can be forgiven for not knowing that, thanks to the many promotions of this method of adoption by various states. A federal stipend is paid to foster parents for children of all ages, from under a year old until they age out of the foster care system at 18.

In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) went into effect. Its purpose was to achieve permanency for children who had been in foster care for a long period of time by having them adopted. The intent of the law was good: permanent placements for children who had been abused, neglected, or abandoned. Its implementation, however, has proven faulty. It has amplified the corruption that has always been endemic within the Child Protective Services system.

The ASFA provides federal stipends to state agencies for each adoption they process out of foster care. Because the states receive money for having children adopted out of foster care, they now have a financial incentive to take children from actually SAFE families and place them into foster homes, so that they can be adopted. The more recent Family First Prevention Services Act includes federal funds to pay for services aimed at preventing the use of foster care by providing better support to parents at risk of losing custody of their children.

Regarding the current concept of “Foster to Adopt” –

Foster parents already receive a generous stipend from the state for caring for the state’s ward. Often, a foster parent will even receive an infant fresh from the hospital due to “risk of future harm” from their parents. These infants are placed with foster parents whose aim is to adopt. Both the foster parents (who wanted to adopt an infant) and the state child protection agency (which receives federal monies for every adoption from foster care) stand to gain from the adoption of this infant “out of foster care.”

The economic implications of adoption are the most straightforward and fact-based way to address whether ethical adoption is even possible. To whatever degree this all matters to you personally – consider the social impact of adoption and the reasons why adoption is considered unethical based upon social reasons.

Include in your considerations why children are removed by protective agencies simply due to perceived neglect caused only by poverty. Consider how it is possible that stipend money paid to them somehow makes foster caregivers more fit to parent than the biological parents. Look into the statistics for suicide and mental health issues among adoptees. Contemplate why laws promote adoption rather than legal guardianship.

Adoption is a contract made between two people – in which a third person is subjected to its ramifications – without their consent. Thank you for contemplating the ethical ramifications of adoption and the use by the state of foster care to increase adoptions.