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History of Foster Parent Adoption in the United States

-Foster care is, by law, a program intended to provide a child with a safe, nurturing, therapeutic family environment for a temporary of time.

-During the 1980s greater emphasis was placed on preventing children from becoming involved with the foster care program.  This means that The Adoptions and Welfare Act made sure that as many options as possible were considered in order to keep children out of foster care.  Children would ONLY become part of the foster program when there was no other option by which a child could remain safely with his or her family. 

-What has resulted is a foster program in which most children have been physically or emotionally wounded.  Their families are in a great deal of pain.  This has meant that more foster families have become (through necessity) part of an intense service and treatment team for most children in foster care.  Foster parents have become supplements to the families of children in their care, forming alliances or partnerships with birth parents.  This is a change from the role of substitute parent so commonly seen only a few years ago.  

-The  Adoptions and Safe Families Act puts an emphasis on safety and well-being and has created time frames for achieving permanence for children (as short as possible).  Foster parents may well be asked to consider adoption at the same time they are asked to help with reunification plans, because concurrent planning is one way to achieve permanence in less time. 

-In 1994 the Multiethnic Placement Act and the amendment of 1996 was brought about to prevent discrimination in the placement of children on the basis of race, color, or national origin.  It is illegal to routinely consider race, national origin, or ethnicity in the adoption decision.

-More involvement between foster families and birth families is perhaps one of the reasons why foster parent adoptions have increased.  Foster parents who have contact with the parents of the children in their foster care are more likely to say "yes" in their adoption decision.  Other positive outcomes occur.  First, practice and research tell us that children who have contact with their parents have a better self-concept than those who do not have contact.  Secondly, children who have frequent contacts with their parents are more likely to be reunited with them.  If they cannot return to their birth families, the child will feel much better about the circumstances knowing that contact is still maintained (even if just through letters).

The Changing Emphasis in Adoption

-In 1975, more than two thirds of the states in this country required foster parents to sign a statement that they would not attempt to adopt the children placed in their foster homes.  Although these policies were directed primarily toward infant adoption, foster parent adoptions in general were affected.  Good practice dictated that every caution be taken to help foster parents understand that foster care was temporary and not a "back door" to adoption.  Agencies dealt with the issues of "back door" adoptions in many ways.  One private agency in 1989 had a policy that required children in foster care to move every six months in order to avoid an attachment to foster parents.  This policy certainly discouraged foster parent adoptions at one level.  This policy also harmed already vulnerable children.

-Despite examples like that, other positive changes began to occur.  During the late 1970s and early 1980s agencies began to encourage foster parent adoptions for children who had exceptional and special needs.

-In the late 1980s somewhere between 40% and 75% of all US public agency adoptions were by foster parents.  Today, agencies report that the majority of all public agency adoptions are by foster parents.

-Perhaps most importantly, during the past decade there has been a strong movement in the adoption field to preach the message that every child is adoptable.  Not long ago the older, more seriously wounded child was seen as "unadoptable".  The advocacy of foster parents and staff willing and eager to provide a home intended to last a lifetime, allowed these children to be adopted where they lived and where they were accepted.  Foster parent adoptions assured that wounded children who had often experienced multiple moves were prevented from making yet another possibly devastating move.

What Should Foster Families Think About When They Are Considering Adoption?

-First, there will be many changing roles within the family.

-Second, there will be changes for the child who often has a difficult time seeing that anything is different.

-Third, there will be changes in the team roles played between the family and agency staff.

-Fourth, there will be changes in the partnership roles between the two families of the child, the foster/adoptive family and the birth family. 

Lesson #9:  Despite the changes and challenges that have occurred throughout the history of fostering/adopting, every child (regardless of circumstance) is worth adopting and deserves a chance.  You have to be willing to create history.