Adoption and Fostering

United States of America is a country that provides a foster care system. What is foster care system? According to National Adoption Center, foster care system is ‘a temporary arrangement in which adults provide for the care of a child or children whose birthparent is unable to care for them. In other words, the foster parents who want to take care for another person’s child have to assign several agreements with the government of social services. Those agreements between the biological parents and foster parents called ‘the placement’. After the placement agreement is finished, the child is now belonging to the foster parent although the children may and see their biological parent. Fostering a child is considered as a good way for America to decrease the rate of its homeless people. However, fostering child is not always goes smoothly; there must be some difficulties regarding the parents or in raising the child itself.
An example of foster care system problem came from greenbaypressgazette.com, an online news in December 15, 2014. The news article itself entitled ‘Mentors help foster youth prepare for life as adults’. The article itself talks about the life of 18 years old boy, Felix Louis Rivera Medina, who is now preparing to live for he will soon age out of the foster system. This article describes some problem that Felix had to face now and in the future. In this essay, I will relate his problems to the value of family and education in the United States

Publikace je určena náhradním rodinám, které vychovávají děti s romskými kořeny, zájemcům o náhradní rodinnou péči a odborníkům, kteří s těmito rodinami pracují.
Teoretická část, zpracovaná Doc. PhDr. Jiřím Kovaříkem, PhD. a Mgr. Martinou Vančákovou, je věnována stručné historii Romů a výsledkům výzkumu, který srovnává úspěšnost náhradní rodinné péče u romských a neromských dětí. Další kapitoly se věnují některým praktickým postupům, které pomáhají pěstounům a osvojitelům budovat pozitivní identitu jejich přijatých romských dětí. Přibližují programy Střediska náhradní rodinné péče určené pěstounům a osvojitelům. Obsahují také několik autentických příběhů romských dětí. Publikaci obohacují fotografie Michala Černého.

The article is a manager's guide to radical change programmes and explains why change is often so difficult to manage successfully. Based on practical experience and supported by relevant theory, it provides a definition of types of change projects and a conceptual framework for managing change before discussing in some detail the barriers to change. The article pays particular attention to the politics and emotions surrounding change. It also provides a discussion of the various ways of resourcing change projects.

This article examines the matter of private adoptions of minor children and the issues arising from Greek Law 2447/96 on adoptions. It presents the crucial articles of Law 2447/96 which have been amended and in some cases they work against the interest of the child during the conclusion of private adoptions. Finally, it presents proposals for the improvement of legislation and the conclusion of private adoptions focusing on the child-centered character thereof. This article is based on legal references, research, scientific publications, international conventions and articles in the Greek press.

The digital payments sector of India has matured at a magnifying rate during the last decade fostered by the evolution of paperless payment mechanisms such as UPI, BHIM, E-wallets, mobile banking, etc. The volume and value of Digital payments transactions in India in the last 5 years have comprehensively flourished at a CAGR of 61% and 19% respectively. While heading towards the digital path is not new for the Indian economy, the Covid-19 pandemic, however, has spurred the acceptance and usage of digital technologies. This study makes an effort to interpret the trends in the Indian Digital Payments Ecosystem during the covid era. NEFT, RTGS, UPI, BHIM, IMPS & Card payments have been used as benchmark measures to analyze the adoption and usage of digital payments during the covid era.

Real Life Super Heroes provides brief glimpses into the lives of 200 people around the world who were displaced from their birth families as children, or who have a care experienced family member. All of these people have gone on to live successful lives, contributing to their communities as academics, activists and actors through to scientists, singers and writers.

The purpose of this paper is to create a context for the therapist to use in offering family therapy to adoptees and their families. Adoptess who manifest behavioral and emotional concerns are often seen as experiencing an attachment disorder such as reactive attachment disorder (RAD). It is more accurate to place them in the context of responding to trauma triggered by attachment opportunities. Any counseling or theoretical orientation may be applied as long as a basic understanding of how the separation/adoption process changes the normal development of the child. It is vital that interventions are most effective when they are experiential rather then cognitive alone.  While premature maternal separation does not meet the criteria for PTSD it creates a process that is similar to it. Regarding adoptees as having experienced a traumatic event early in their development will help place their current behaviors in the context of seeing the present through the filter of the past.

This article reports on the findings of a study which tested the feasibility of using respite care in a local authority social services department, firstly to see whether this type of provision might be incorporated into existing, more conventional forms of preventive child care policy and practice, and secondly, how authorities might prepare for changes in practice in anticipation of the Children Act 1989.

The purpose of this article is to provide an insight into the effects the New Zealand adoption systems have had for Māori adoptees as they form their identity. I begin by exploring the criteria or ethnic boundaries that have been established by Māori as guidelines for Māori identity. This is followed with an explanation of the Māori customary practice of whāngai, that is, the care of children by relatives who are not the biological parents. A discussion of the New Zealand legal system of adoption and the affect this institution has had for Māori will be discussed. Using information obtained in researching my Master of Arts thesis,1 including participant interviews, television documentaries and published literature, I will conclude this article by exploring some of the issues and challenges Māori adoptees have incurred in forming their identities.

Foster care has been provided for thousands of vulnerable Australian children from the early nineteenth century. Despite the prevalence of this system of care as the preferred means of providing out-of-home care across the country from the late nineteenth century, very few people who lived in foster care as children have written about their experiences, a total of 23 in all. Although a small sample, these few stories tell a larger one of the complexities of lived experience of foster care: for some it was entirely positive, for others it was wholly negative and for most it was somewhere between those two extremes. What I show in this paper is that what many of the stories have in common, no matter where they sit on that continuum, is the painful acquaintance with social stigma at an early age.

ABSTRACT OF THE DOCTORAL PROJECT
Attachment Focused Care:
A Pre-service Training Program for Adoptive Parents
And Foster Caregivers
by
Kristin Tolbert
Doctor of Psychology
Carlos Albizu University
2010
Irene Bravo, Ph.D., Project Director
Youth who have been placed in the foster care system are disproportionately prone to experiencing attachment related traumas and developing disordered attachment styles both before and after they enter the system (Hughes, 1999). According to Howe and Fearnley (2003), when children in foster care are exposed to multiple risk factors such as neglect and abuse, paired with traumas of attachment, they have a high likelihood of developing behavioral and emotional issues, in addition to social and developmental delays. Foster caregivers and adoptive parents are often faced with feelings of frustration and helplessness when the children that they care for display challenging, and at times, hurtful behaviors. When the foster and adoptive caregivers begin to feel burnt out, or ill prepared to manage these behaviors, parental satisfaction levels drop and failed placements often occur (Howe & Fearnley, 2003; Kerker & Dore, 2006).
Currently, there are not any state mandated pre-service training programs that conceptualize childhood emotional and behavioral problems, as well as parental concerns, through the lens of attachment theory. The state of Florida presently utilizes the Model Approach for Partnerships in Parenting/Group Preparation and Selection Pre-Service Training Model (MAPP/GPS). Research by Lee and Holland (1991) showed that there was “no available systematic presentation of a theoretical foundation for MAPP and no apparent logical or empirical justification for its assumptions, components, or methods” (p. 172). In addition, the MAPP/GPS program provides little emphasis on attachment theory, it does not identify secure and insecure patterns of attachment, it does not identify the diagnostic criteria for attachment disorders, nor does it provide it’s participants with empirically validated ways to improve healthy attachments in foster and adoptive children. With this in mind, the Attachment Focused Care Program was developed in order to improve Florida’s state mandated pre-service training curricula by increasing parental understanding of attachment theory and teaching them techniques used to manage children who have experienced attachment related traumas. This program is intended to increase caregiver’s confidence and satisfaction in their parenting abilities, improve child and caregiver attachment, and decrease failed adoptive and foster placements.
Based on their interest in becoming foster or adoptive parents, individuals would be referred to the Attachment Focused Care program through state and/or county agencies that govern adoption and foster care placements and private adoption agencies. The program consists of 12 consecutive weekly sessions which last 3 hours each. Session topics include: (1) Introduction/Orientation, (2) Foster and Adoptive Families, (3) Child Welfare Systems, (4) Child Development, (5) Attachment Behaviors, (6)Facilitating Healthy Attachments, (7) Facilitating Healthy Attachments, Continued, (8) Connections with Biological Families and Cultural Connections, (9)Grief and Loss, (10) Behavior Management, (11)Guest Speakers, and (12) Completion of Program. Participants will be administered pre-and post program assessment measures as part of both a home study process, and as a way to determine intervention gains.
The Attachment Focused Care program uses multiple modalities to teach attachment education and evidence based parenting techniques that are effective with children with attachment related traumas. The program increases effectiveness by using a large variety of components to educate the prospective participants on the content covered. These components include the use of a classroom setting, guided discussions, a video, role playing, guided imagery, handouts, guest speakers, case studies, and homework assignments.
It is expected that participants who successfully complete the program will show an increase in knowledge of parenting techniques effective with children in the foster care setting. Participants are expected to show an increase in their knowledge of attachment styles, as well as an increase in their feelings of competence regarding their parenting abilities.

The Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury (CGJ) selected KH Consulting Group (KH) to investigate the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and Probation Department (Probation) programs to prepare transition age youth (TAY) for their exit from “the child welfare system.”  KH performed the following tasks:

- Site visits to facilities and discussions with service providers, including probation officers and social workers
- Interviews with key officials at DCFS, Probation, Department of Mental health (DMH), Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), and Judge Nash of the Children’s Court
- A half-day Entrance Conference in a workshop format with the Los Angeles County Deputy CEO and key officials from DCFS, Probation, Department of Public Social Services (DPSS), LACOE, and DMH.  The purpose of the format was to solicit their support of the investigation and their ideas for improvement of the TAY system
- Research of:
o TAY best practices used in other jurisdictions
o Analysis of data provided by DCFS, Probation, DMH, and other services
o A survey of TAY currently in DCFS and Probation
- Extensive discussion of data findings and conclusions with DCFS, Probation, and DMH officials
- An Exit Conference with the 15 officials who attended the Entrance Conference to review the CGJ draft findings, conclusions, and recommendations to ensure factual accuracy of the data they provided, review recommendations, and solicit final suggestions to be considered in the report

The CGJ made a series of recommendations to strengthen the services provided, improve the information systems, and implement a more comprehensive output-oriented evaluation of how TAY children were faring, both in the system and once they had left the system.

The process as opposed to observable behavior caregivers need to address when they parent adopted and foster children. What we see is not what is actually happening as a motivator of problem behaviors. Creating a secure attachment requires an understanding of the child's attempts to attach and to respond appropriately in that moment.

Since the late 1990s, US, UK and Canadian policy have increasingly focused on improving permanency outcomes for looked-after children. Although the ideal permanency outcome of reunification is attained for about half of the children entering out-of-home care, an increasing number of children are adopted each year. The vast majority of adoptions are stable and secure, but concerns about adoption disruption haunt child welfare workers when making this important permanency decision. Despite a variety of definitions employed in the literature, adoption disruption is a general term used to describe the failure or breakdown of an adoptive child's placement. Studies dating back to the 1970s have reported adoption disruption rates and the characteristics associated with those involved in such cases. This paper reviews available research, principally from the United States, and offers possible explanations for the wide range of reported disruption rates in the literature. After reviewing the research, practice implications for improving adoption outcomes and suggestions for future research are presented.

Family is the one which in its every form is the only natural environment for protection, existence and development of a child. Warmth and affection which make the everyday life of a family offer support and a feeling of belonging that are of most importance to a child. Despite these facts and due to many different reasons, many children are being separated from their families. The purpose of this paper is to explain in detail the laws and processes behind the separation of a child from its family, to explain the criteria according to which measures of family legal protection are being enacted and to make the reader understand the subject of foster care and adoption. Also, this paper deals with the subject of the importance of family environment for a child's development,  the processes of determining the suitable foster families and the importance of foster families for a child's development, as well as  the subjects of experiences and difficulties potential adoptive parents and adoptees endure during and after the process of adoption.

Parallèlement à l’adoption dite « plénière », il existe en France une adoption « simple », qui ajoute au lien de filiation de l’adopté avec sa famille d’origine un nouveau lien, supplémentaire. De nos jours, cette adoption consiste le plus souvent, pour un beau-parent sans enfant, à adopter son bel-enfant majeur, auquel il est attaché, pour lui transmettre son patrimoine. Or, cette adoption simple, mal connue des sociologues de la famille, est aujourd’hui plus fréquente que l’adoption plénière. En utilisant les statistiques historiques du ministère de la Justice sur l’adoption simple depuis le XIXe siècle, nous retraçons l’histoire de cette institution depuis son introduction en droit français en 1804. L’objectif est de mieux connaître ce qu’est l’adoption simple, mais aussi de comprendre les raisons de son essor depuis les années 1970 et ce que cela révèle des transformations sociodémographiques et culturelles de la famille sur le long terme.

https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Gods-Family-Movement-Evangelical/dp/1479803057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486167087&sr=8-1&keywords=growing+god%27s+family+perry

For over a decade, prominent leaders and organizations among American Evangelicals have spent a substantial amount of time and money in an effort to address what they believe to be the “Orphan Crisis” of the United States. Yet, despite an expansive commitment of resources, there is no reliable evidence that these efforts have been successful. Adoptions are declining across the board, and both foster parenting and foster-adoptions remain steady. Why have evangelical mobilization efforts been so ineffective?

To answer this question, Samuel L. Perry draws on interviews with over 220 movement leaders and grassroots families, as well as national data on adoption and fostering, to show that the problem goes beyond orphan care. Perry argues that evangelical social engagement is fundamentally self-limiting and difficult to sustain because their subcultural commitments lock them into an approach that does not work on a practical level. 

Growing God’s Family ultimately reveals this peculiar irony within American evangelicalism by exposing how certain aspects of the evangelical subculture may stimulate activism to address social problems, even while these same subcultural characteristics undermine their own strategic effectiveness.  It provides the most recent analysis of dominant elements within the evangelical subculture and how that subculture shapes the engagement strategies of evangelicals as a group.

REVIEWS

"Growing God’s Family is about America as much as it is about evangelicals.  We’re do-gooders. We adopt orphans. We do other good things. And yet, our excessive individualism too often gets in the way. The result: we rush into rash ill-prepared activism.  Growing God’s Family is marvelously well-researched — and deeply disturbing." 
    —Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University

"This fascinating case study deftly captures the authentic spirit of so many American evangelical 'movements' for change, explaining with empathetic and fair but brutally honest criticism why and how religiously motivated people and activism can prove in the end to be ironically self-undermining and ineffective. A valuable contribution to our sociological understanding of American evangelicalism and religious movements and culture." 
    —Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame

Submission to Australia's Enquiry. Surrogacy is cruel to neonates because of removal from gestational mother. Babies suffer when they lose their mother at birth and cannot understand that their mother is "merely a surrogate" for the purposes of a surrogacy contract. Neonates have a moral right to remain with the person with whom they have developed their first ever relationship with a human adult.

This paper will draw on Catholic resources to examine the impact of population and consumption vis-à-vis reproduction in the developed world as it relates to theological/ moral obligations to the earth.  By examining both natural and artificial means of procreation, an assessment of “green” reproduction can be made.

I will explore contraception as an option for limiting natural procreation, and the avoidance of assisted reproductive technologies [ARTs] as a way of preventive artificial reproduction. However, both family size and carbon footprint must be scrutinized for ecologically sound consumer practices in accordance with biblical principles to ensure the global magnitude of the ecological crisis is examined; therefore the role of consumption that stems from procreation will also be discussed.

The paper will conclude by envisioning alternative parenting options as they relate to ecological practices, and I will assert that  on the continuum of ecologically oriented reproductive choices, non-biological parenting and thereby a reduction in procreation and consumerist practices is the most ethical and ecological solution to the environmental crisis that surely escalates with each birth. Adoption, foster parenting, and spiritual parenting will be presented as “green” alternatives to biological children.

Paper posted with permission of Brill.

The paradigm of vicarious liability which places employees on one side and independent contractors on the other, and declares, “nothing further beyond”, is no longer suitable. There are a range of occupational activities between these two extremes of status.  Foster carers exemplify this problem.

Fostering has shifted from a voluntary act, towards a paid profession. Vicarious liability for foster carers, last considered in England in 1985, is ripe for reconsideration. Any decision made under a previous regulatory regime, prior to significant social change within foster care, and prior to significant changes to the law of vicarious liability should be treated with extreme caution. 

Vicarious liability should be present for at least some categories of foster carers, not only to properly reflect their role within care structures, but also to provide them with a level of protection enjoyed by authorities’ care staff.