Changing Perspectives

A woman writes – I am a foster parent/almost an adoptive parent. I am adopting my two foster kids in a few weeks. As I’ve been thinking about what comes next, I am really drawn to turning in my foster license and joining LINK>Safe Families for Children as a host family. I would really like to support natural parents and family preservation by helping families in crisis. However I’m wondering how that will impact my adopted kids? Would doing this potentially be traumatic for them? I don’t want to do anything that introduces more trauma unnecessarily.

Some responses – a lot of them wanted her to “just focus on the kids you’re adopting.” An adoptee asks – “Why do you need to split your attention and not focus fully on the children currently in your care They should be your main and only priority at this point, especially if you’re adopting them. If you want to support family preservation efforts, I’d do so with dollars. Give money to organizations that actively work to keep families out of the system to begin with.”

One foster parent admitted – “I would worry a little that they might resent the fact you didn’t do this for their natural parents. The kids could be hurt that their adoptive mom is helping others to keep their kids. I just think this is going to be another major trauma to her littles in the long run. They can be told all day long that their natural parents were not good for them, but seeing their adoptive parent help others keep their kids is still going to hurt them in the long run; how could it not ?”

Another sees the idea differently – Speaking from experience, I can tell you, there is no one who understands another kid in “care” like another kid in “care”. We have adopted, then fostered, and then did safe families and because this was our joint family mission, it worked great ! Make sure you are always on the same page before saying yes to a placement, take breaks when someone needs it and be flexible. Safe families is short term and a fantastic family mission.

Another with similar experience shares – Safe Families is structured to have many different volunteer opportunities…you don’t have to host…you can be a coach or a family friend…those positions don’t require having other kids in your home…My adoptive daughter thinks I am going to “get rid of her” every time a kiddo leaves our home…so we have decided to only take on parenting teens moving forward and give them the opportunity to age out with our children in their life … changing my role to be more of a model/guide, while still being able to help vulnerable families…I do respite for safe families and maintain contact with children and their parents and continue to support, even after they are fully home…you can still help and also not have your kids go through any additional trauma.

One pediatric psychologist asked – “How old are the kids you’re planning to adopt ?” Then, noted – “I would recommend involving them in the decision and honoring whatever feelings they have about it. Consent is super important and unfortunately foster children’s consent is historically non-existent.”

Swapped at Birth

Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose

It may not appear to be an adoption story but it is. The story of two men living alternate reality lives. Both of the men ended up in foster care as children. Richard Beauvais, 68, believed he was Indigenous. Eddy Ambrose, who shares the same birthday, always understood that he was of Ukrainian descent. I learned about this story this morning in LINK>The Guardian by Leyland Cecco. After a series of DNA tests, the two men learned they had been mistakenly switched at birth.

It is expected that today, the two men will receive an official apology in Manitoba. The painful saga highlights the fragile nature of identity and the complex meaning of family as well as embodying the damaging effects of Canada’s colonial policies.

“To have the core understanding of who you are – and who your parents were and who your siblings were – taken away from you, is a shattering experience,” said Bill Gange, the Winnipeg-based lawyer who represents both men. “But this apology is also for the siblings who didn’t grow up with the brother they should have, for the parents that never knew their own child. I don’t think either man knows what it will fully mean for them down the line, but hopefully it will help them.”

In 1955, the staff in a newly-opened rural hospital gave each of the families the wrong baby.

Eddy Ambrose was born to a Cree mother and French father, would spend his youth in the farming community of Rembrandt, oblivious to his Métis roots. The parents who raised him taught him Ukrainian folk songs. They died when he was young and in the years that followed, he was cared for by other family members until he was placed in foster care with a family he came to love immensely.

Meanwhile, 60 miles away, Richard Beauvais life experience reflected the pernicious nature of Canada’s attempts to break Indigenous families and culture. He grew up on the eastern shore of Lake Manitoba speaking French and Cree. His father, Camille, died when he was three years old. His mother, Laurette, struggled to raise Richard and six other children.

Beauvais recalls foraging in the dump to feed siblings. He was barred from speaking Cree and French while attending a residential day school. When he was around eight or nine, he became one of the thousands of victims of an episode which became known as the “Sixties Scoop”, in which the government forcefully removed thousands of Indigenous children from their families and placed them in the foster system. Officials entered the family’s house, striking Beauvais’s sister when she could not stop crying, and then herded the children into a car.

He was teased as a child for being Indigenous. “I saw what the government did to Indian kids because they thought I was an Indian kid. Not many white people have seen what I’ve seen. It was brutal and it was mean.” But he was eventually adopted into a family that he came to love immensely.

In 2020, Richard took a DNA test – a Christmas gift from his daughter – to learn more about his father’s French heritage. Instead, the test suggested he had Ukrainian and Polish ancestry. “He thought it was a scam, one that didn’t even acknowledge his Indigenous roots,” said Gange. Richard believed he ran the only fully Indigenous fishing crew in the region.

Gange is trying to work out a settlement agreement. He suspects there are more cases that will be revealed as home DNA tests become more and more common. “None of this would have happened and nobody would have known if they hadn’t taken tests. The challenges they faced in the child welfare system, especially Richard, are problematic,” said Gange. “But the redemption of both men, who ended up with beautiful foster families who loved them so much, is also a powerful testament to what family can mean.”

Fully Understanding the Trauma

From someone who experienced foster care in her youth – Does anyone else feel a level of rage hearing people say ‘I wanna adopt older kids out of the system,’ yet they don’t seem to be capable of fully understanding the trauma of it ? It’s feels almost like a way of saying – I’m such a great person, I mean look at what I do.

Like no matter how many times I explain what care is like and how serious something like that is – it’s like they shut down or ignore me in order to hold onto their ideals. I feel like I’ve never had someone say it well who also fully understands how deeply traumatized and vulnerable older kids in care are.

An adoptee notes – Saviors gotta save – it isn’t about you, but about themselves and their desires.

To which, someone who had been in foster care and aged out of the system responds – Yes, I truly think it’s a savior complex. I aged out of a youth shelter that I was so fortunate to have as a place to live. I lived there for about three years, collectively between two stays, and saw many teens get adopted and “returned”. I always was confused why everyone was so eager to be adopted. While I loved the shelter for what it provided for me, I would have been grateful for a place to lay my head outside of the confines of the shelter. I wasn’t allowed to check myself out, so I was never able to get myself financially established before aging out. If I had been in a home, I would have had more potential to take care of myself before being dropped on the street.

Another person without any of that background, admitted – I used to be one of those people (not saying that to people actually but it was originally my plan before I discovered the realities). Is there a good way to adopt or foster? I’d never ever want to come between a child of any age and parental reunification. I just genuinely desire to create a safe space for kids who don’t have anyone to look out for them, and to make them feel like they have a safe place they can always go, no matter what. But I don’t want to create more trauma and the more I learn, the more it seems like, no matter what, within our current system there is no such thing as doing it ethically/genuinely putting the kids first.

An adoptive parent who adopted from foster care notes – I would highly suggest extensive reading/training/therapy/etc. What the original commenter was saying is that people go in expecting to have an incredibly grateful child, that is just so happy to be in a home that they will fawn (fear response) into doing everything the adoptive parent (AP) wants. After all the AP “saved” them. Then, the adoptive parent realize that the children have major trauma and don’t connect the way biological children connect. The vast majority of parenting plans that work with biological children don’t work for children from trauma. Then they give up. In their minds, they often think I did everything I could but they are just so ungrateful.

So going in, eyes wide open, with a full toolbox of skills, and a therapist – you already have good relationship with, where you have already addressed any obvious traumas from your childhood and any problems you have with relationships.

One of the best foster situations I have ever heard of was a adult prep house (often referred to as a LINK>Transitional Living Program). They took in 3-4 teens ages 16-18 at a time. They knew all the local helps available and would work with the teens to prepare for adulthood. They were family in every aspect except financial. So when one of them gets excited about their promotion, that is who they would call to share the news. When one of them graduates from college, they try to attend the event. When one of them got engaged, that is who they would make the announcement to. Some even walked a few of them down the aisle. They had like 30 adult “children” that stayed in contact with them. True, many never reach out after they leave and the foster parent never tries to force a relationship after adulthood. The house was always there, without pressure, so teens could chose to come or stay, dependent upon whatever situation they were facing.

Truth About That Answer

Short on time today but this post by someone else (not me) makes a lot of very good arguments in response to an article in The Atlantic – LINK>Adoption Is Not A Fairy Tale Ending regarding the book Somewhere Sisters published in 2016.

Ever since I entered what can generously be called my “mid-30s,” doctors have asked about my pregnancy plans at every appointment. Because I’m career-minded and generally indecisive, I’ve always had a way of punting on this question, both in the doctor’s office and elsewhere. Well, we can always adopt, I’ll think, or say out loud to my similarly childless and wishy-washy friends. Adoption, after all, doesn’t depend on your oocyte quality. And, as we’ve heard a million times, there are so many babies out there who need a good home.

But that is not actually true. Adopting a baby or toddler is much more difficult than it was a few decades ago. Of the nearly 4 million American children who are born each year, only about 18,000 are voluntarily relinquished for adoption. Though the statistics are unreliable, some estimates suggest that dozens of couples are now waiting to adopt each available baby. Since the mid-1970s—the end of the so-called baby-scoop era, when large numbers of unmarried women placed their children for adoption—the percentage of never-married women who relinquish their infants has declined from nearly 9 percent to less than 1 percent.

In 2010, Bethany Christian Services, the largest Protestant adoption agency in the U.S., placed more than 700 infants in private adoptions. Last year, it placed fewer than 300. International adoptions have not closed the gap. The number of children American parents adopt each year from abroad has declined rapidly too, from 23,000 in 2004 (an all-time high) to about 3,000 in 2019.

Plenty of children who aren’t babies need families, of course. More than 100,000 children are available for adoption from foster care. But adoptive parents tend to prefer children who are what some in the adoption world call “AYAP”—as young as possible. When I recently searched AdoptUSKids, the nationwide, government-funded website for foster-care adoptions, only about 40 kids under age 5, out of the 4,000 registered, appeared in my search. Many of those 40 had extensive medical needs or were part of a sibling group—a sign that the child is in even greater need of a stable family, but also a more challenging experience for their adoptive parents.

At a glance, this shortage of adoptable babies may seem like a problem, and certainly for people who desperately want to adopt a baby, it feels like one. But this trend reflects a number of changing social and geopolitical attitudes that have combined to shrink the number of babies or very young children available for adoption. Over the past few decades, many people—including those with strong commitments to the idea of infant adoption—have reconsidered its value to children. Though in the short term this may be painful for parents who wish to adopt infants, in the long term, it might be better for some children and their birth families. Many babies in the developing world who once would have been brought to America will now be raised in their home country instead. And Americans who were planning to adopt may have to refocus their energies on older, vulnerable foster children—or change their plans entirely. Infant adoption was once seen as a heartwarming win-win for children and their adoptive parents. It’s not that simple.

For much of American history, placing a child for adoption was an obligation, not a choice, for poor, single women. In the decades after World War II, more than 3 million young pregnant women were “funneled into an often-coercive system they could neither understand nor resist,” Gabrielle Glaser wrote in her recent book, American Baby. They lived with strangers as servants or were hidden away in maternity homes until they gave birth, at which time they were pressured into closed adoptions, in which birth mothers and their babies have no contact.

Data on adoption are and have always been fuzzy and incomplete; for decades, no one tracked many of the adoptions that were happening in the U.S., and not all states reported their adoption figures. “There are no valid numbers from the ’40s and ’50s” because “just about all of these transfers existed in a realm of secrecy and shame, all around,” the historian Rickie Solinger told me. Still, adoption researchers generally agree that adoptions of children by people who aren’t their relatives increased gradually from about 34,000 in 1951 to their peak of 89,000 in 1970, before declining to about 69,000 in 2014—a number that includes international adoptions and foster-care adoptions. Given population growth, the decline from 1970 indicates a 50 percent per capita decrease.

What happened? Starting in the ’70s, single white women became much less likely to relinquish their babies at birth: Nearly a fifth of them did so before 1973; by 1988, just 3 percent did. (Single Black women were always very unlikely to place their children for adoption, because many maternity homes excluded Black women.) In 1986, an adoption director at the New York Foundling Hospital told The New York Times that though “there was a time, about 20 years ago, when New York Foundling had many, many white infants,” the number of white infants had “been very scarce for a number of years.”

Still, throughout this era, American families adopted thousands of infants and toddlers from foreign countries. In the ’50s, a mission to rescue Korean War orphans sparked a trend of international adoptions by Americans. Over the years, international adoptions increased, and Americans went on to adopt more than 100,000 kids from South Korea, Romania, and elsewhere from 1953 to 1991. In 1992, China opened its orphanages to Americans and allowed them to take in thousands of girls abandoned because of the country’s one-child policy.

But to many American evangelical Christians, these numbers were still too low to combat what they considered to be a global orphan crisis. During the ’90s, evangelicals in particular kindled a new foreign- and domestic-adoption boom, as the journalist Kathryn Joyce detailed in her 2013 book, The Child Catchers, which was critical of the trend. In the late 1990s, Joyce reported, representatives from Bethany Christian Services and other adoption agencies occasionally pressured single women to relinquish their babies, gave them false impressions about the nature of adoption, and threatened them when they changed their mind. (Bethany cannot verify the negative accounts of its practices that appear in Joyce’s book, Nathan Bult, the group’s senior vice president of public and government affairs, told me. In an interview, Joyce stood by her reporting.) A major 2007 meeting of Christian groups led to a “campaign to enroll more Christians as adoptive and foster parents,” the Los Angeles Times’ Stephanie Simon reported that year. The practice of adoption was seen as parallel to evangelical Christians’ “adoption by God” when they are born again. American Christians went on to adopt tens of thousands of children from other countries. “Early on, there was a strong belief that adoption could often be the best outcome for a child whose mom may have felt unable to parent,” Kris Faasse, who ran several of Bethany’s programs from 2000 to 2019, told me.

Placement Prevention

Stumbled on a US Government website that is a LINK>Review of Family Preservation and Family Reunification Programs. Both the preservation and when necessary, reunification, are close to my own heart.

A crisis intervention theory believes that crises are experienced for a short time (i.e., six weeks) before they disappear or are resolved. In the adoption related activist spaces I find myself frequently in – the saying is not to apply a permanent solution to a temporary situation. When I follow the story of an expectant mother worried about her ability to parent, if she hangs in there with parenting, the temporary situations that caused her such a deep concern do usually smooth out. Certainly, a philosophy of treating families with respect, emphasizing the strengths of family members, and providing both counseling and concrete services can make a genuine difference.

Family Preservation programs share a common philosophy of family centered services including focusing on family strengths, involving families in determining their case plan goals, serving the entire family, and treating family members with respect. Some programs provide services to families whose children have been placed in foster care and therefore have a case plan goal of reunification. Though reunification efforts have received considerably less attention than placement prevention programs – both represent a related effort to reduce the length of stay in foster care and to prevent re-entry into the care system in cases where prevention of placement was not initially possible.

For those interested, this paper describes the “state of the family preservation field” and examines in greater depth the characteristics and operations of programs. The report analyzes 38 placement prevention and 26 reunification programs. Although the majority of families served by a family preservation program in most states were referred by the child welfare agency, few family preservation programs limited their caseloads to child welfare referrals. Referrals from juvenile justice and mental health agencies sometimes accounted for a significant percentage (i.e., more than 25 percent) of the families served.

Of the reunification programs examined, seven programs were an integral part of the placement prevention programs– that is, reunification cases were served by the same staff and received the same types of services as placement prevention cases. Services were mostly provided after the child had been returned home. In these programs that were part of a placement prevention program, the reunification program was based on the same theories of behavior and treatment.

If interested, you can continue reading their report at the link above.

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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Today’s Tricky Situation

Regardless, they are not your mom and dad. When I was growing up, the close friends of my parents were called Aunt Nancy and Uncle Amos but they were NOT related to us. Truth is, because both of my parents were adoptees – none of the grandparents or aunts and uncles were actually related to us. Such relationships are often referred to as fictive kin – a relationship that a child has with “an individual who is not related by birth, adoption, or marriage to a child, but who has an emotionally significant relationship with the child.” Still the situation in today’s story comes up repeatedly and can be difficult to handle delicately.

Here is the story – We’ve had our neighbors’ children placed with us on emergency action this week. We have been heavily involved with them for about two years and the children are often here for dinner/breakfast and life in between.

Out of nowhere today (day 5 with us), they’ve started calling us Mom and Dad. How do we gently push back and encourage them to use our names or something else, without hurting their already confused hearts ?

My 7 year old (who came to us from foster care) brought her friend to me and said so & so “wants to call you mom, you don’t care if she calls you mom, do you?” and my heart sank for her and her actual Mom. I said “Well, there’s lots of names you could call me! You could call me by my first name or add ‘Aunty’ to it. You could even come up with a silly name for me. Totally up to you.” Her reply was “no thanks, Mom.”

First Time in Missouri

I have been following the overall baby box story for some time. Recently, I heard on the news here about the first time a baby has been surrendered at Missouri’s first and only baby box location. The baby was only several hours old, when the baby was put into the box on Feb 8th, at the Mehlville Fire Station.

The baby box was installed at Firehouse 2 in August of 2023. The fire chief says the district plans on installing another one at Firehouse 5. The goal is to have it ready by the end of next year. Fire Chief Brian Hendricks said they test the box every week. The firefighters were shocked when the alarm went off, but everything went smoothly.

It is said that the baby is safe and doing well, after being put under the care of the state for eventual adoption. The baby’s information has been subsequently put into the missing and exploited database, in case the child’s other parent wanted to file for reunification with the child. So far, the child has not been reported missing. The Safe Haven Baby Box allows for the legal safe surrender of a baby with complete anonymity.

If someone chooses to surrender their infant in the baby box, the door locks once the door closes. Alarms alert the location that a baby has been surrendered and personnel will retrieve the infant within five minutes. The infant will immediately be transported to the hospital for medical evaluation and will be with its adoptive family soon after. Families that want to adopt a Safe Haven baby should reach out to their local Department of Family Services to register for foster care.

The organization also has a National Hotline, 1-866-99BABY1. The hotline provides free, confidential counseling with expertise in each state’s Safe Haven Law.

Counseling On Adoption Trauma

Today’s question – Do you feel like you were informed or educated on adoption trauma prior to adoption/guardianship ?

A mom who gave her child up for adoption answers – I was never offered counseling nor thought to seek it. When I did google information on adoption back then, nothing about trauma came up. If I had known then what I know now, I never would have done it. I have regretted it every single day of my life and will until the day I die. In response, someone noted – Those sentiments in a conversation with an adult child. Feelings of having been coerced (universally common in agency adoptions). Regret. Loss. Honestly expressing these may go a long way to help her and the child heal as they come out of the fog. An adoptee who also surrendered a child to adoption adds – It was incredibly healing to hear similar from my mom, and having that conversation with my son brought us even closer. What would have been unbelievably hurtful would have been to hear that my mom was happy she gave me away.

The experience is different when adopting through foster care – an adoptive parent answers – Yes and no. The agency we adopted through, the program we did, was mostly older (in the adoption world) placements through foster care. So yes, there was a lot of information about trauma. I felt very well educated and very well informed. We read a lot of books, had a lot of mental health resources already in place, attended trainings, etc. I am also a psychiatric nurse, so I had exposure to it already. That being said, there was still a lot of focus on the trauma being prior to adoption or early in adoption process. Since we were educated on how important birth family was, to honor that loss and grief, keep connections, and knew not to punish behaviors that were from trauma, utilize/provide resources for the children and ourselves etc, then everything would be rainbows and unicorns eventually. (Reality check – it is NOT that false narrative.)

Another adoptive parent shares – No. The Dept of Social Services (DSS) didn’t give any information, but I had studied adoption trauma in grad school. DSS was actually “shocked” when I said that my foster daughter needed therapy. Thankfully, we were referred to an OUTSTANDING doctor who dealt almost exclusively with adoption trauma, including Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).

One who has guardianship notes – there was nothing. The judge signed the order and I had to figure it out from there. Child Protective Services stopped in one time to make sure we were minimally sufficient and we had one call from the court investigator. There was no support or information given. I actually find it really frustrating because when we finally did get a little support it was like a quarter of the amount foster parents get. And I was trying to keep a family member out of the system. To become a foster parent there were multiple classes. I’m not sure if they were actually as unhelpful as I remember but the whole process was overwhelming (I was 20, my cousin was going into foster care, long term guardianship was denied and we had to get approved, so he didn’t go to strangers). I’ll be honest. I was not trauma informed at all. I didn’t have a great understanding of addiction, mental health and trauma. As we get closer to adopting (a separate kin placement 6 years later) there has been a lot more information but we haven’t been offered counseling specifically. There was a two day adoption class through the state that was actually really informative and had people from all parts of the triad there to speak. We have cared for older children but it was a fight to get services for them and one child that needed medication wasn’t able to get it until reunification.

Black Family Separations

I was thinking about what I should write about today and knowing that February is Black History Month, I thought I would simply acknowledge that although slavery was outlawed long ago (if you don’t include our prison population), it is not true that this country has ceased taking Black children disproportionately from their families. The topic is so vast, I cannot even hope to do justice to the injustice in today’s blog.

Child Protective Services, the official name in many states, is the government agency that responds to reports of child neglect and abuse and is mandated to protect children, but their often reckless approach wreaks havoc on Black families daily. Black parents often reach out to hospitals, physicians, and other agencies for help with their children. Suddenly the tables are turned, the parents are accused of child mistreatment or endangerment and children are taken away.

It is not uncommon for white adoptive parents to adopt a Black child (and this is often the least expensive option available to them). Often these children are relocated to predominantly white neighborhoods. “It’s just completely false to think that White people are going to come in and save Black children that is part of that same ideology that we can go back to slavery as the origins of this idea that White people need to save Black children from their families. It’s been false, not only false but in a racist White supremacist ideology that paints Black parents and families and communities as if they’re defective and harmful,” said Dr. Dorothy Roberts, a University of Pennsylvania professor of law and sociology.

According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, Black people comprise about 13 percent of the total United States population and 25 percent of youth in foster care. One example – in Philadelphia, Black people are 42 percent of the population and 65 percent of the youth in foster care. The Philadelphia Department of Human Services is legendary for its removal of Black children from their homes.

Black families are subject to more significant intrusion and strident judgment at every contact stage, including disproportionate reports to Child Protective Services, subsequent investigations, and child removal.