Ethics and Accountability Conference 2007 Photos

Here, finally, are some photos from the Evan B. Donaldson and Ethica Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference 2007. Most of these are from the Meet the Bloggers Session and the final roundtable session (the empty chairs indicate that not everyone stayed for the final session).

If anyone who attended the conference has any photos they'd like to share, I'd be happy to add them to this slideshow if you send them to me.

Thanks!

Desiree

Workshop 1.4, Part II: Ensuring Ongoing Relationships--Practice That Opens the Door to Connections--Questions & Discussions

Ethics and Accountability Conference
Sponsored by Ethica and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
October 15-16, 2007

Bullet points for discussion during Workshop 1.4:

1. What key factors should assessments address regarding ongoing connections?
   
2. What are characteristics of successful open adoptions? What factors undermine the success of open adoptions?
   
3. How can families of origin be best educated on their importance to the children and the roles they can continue to play in their children’s lives?
   

Panelists:

Marilyn Panichi is the Executive Director of Adoptions Unlimited, Inc. She has more than 35 years of adoption and child welfare experience in administration, supervision and casework. Prior to establishing Adoptions Unlimited, Ms. Panichi was the Executive Director of the Adoption Information Center of Illinois under the auspices of the Child Care Association of Illinois. She began her career with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services as a Child Welfare Worker and Adoption Coordinator. Ms. Panichi earned her Master of Social Work and Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Illinois. She is a member of the National Association of Social Workers and the Academy of Certified Social Workers. Ms Panichi is co-founder of the Adoption Exchange Association where she currently serves as board member and treasurer.

Susan Ogden is the Director of Domestic Adoption at Adoptions Together. She has worked in education and nonprofit program management for 25 years. When she adopted her daughter Sasha in 1992, Ms. Ogden became an advocate for better understanding of open adoption. Her daughter enjoys an open relationship with her birth mother, birth sister and birth father. Their experience was featured in a New York Times article (October, 1998: Secrecy and Stigma no longer clouding adoption.) Ms. Ogden has published in Adoptive Families magazine and the Washington Post. Celebrate Adoption, Inc., an organization of triad members co-founded by Ms. Ogden, published her An Educator’s Guide to Adoption, a booklet that adoptive parents may give to their children’s teachers. The Guide, now in its fifth printing, was featured USA Today and the subject of a segment of the Rosie O’Donnell show in November, 2000. Ms. Ogden worked closely with clients of Adoptions Together in open relationships in making a video about open adoption (Adoption …Real Stories) that is used in outreach to broaden the understanding and acceptance of adoption as an option in high schools, clinics, hospitals, churches and other community organizations that work with youth and women in crisis pregnancies.

Patricia Dudley serves as Director of the Long Island Region for You Gotta Believe! The Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement. In this position, she has successfully supervised and completed one federal grant and is currently supervising a second federal grant “The Long Island Opening Adoption’s Door To Teens Project”. Over the past five years, under Ms. Dudley’s leadership, the Long Island Region of You Gotta Believe has successfully placed over 80 of Long Island’s hardest to place teenagers into permanent adoptive families. Under her supervision, staff educates potential prospective parents from the community about the importance of continuing to maintain teens’ past relationships with former foster families, birth families, and neighborhood connections. Ms. Dudley has over 20 years experience in the field of child welfare. She is also an experienced adoptive parent having adopted two older children of a different race from the New York foster care system.

Susan Soon-Keum Cox is Vice President of Policy and External Affairs for Holt International Children’s Services in Eugene, OR. She has worked with local, national and international media for more than 25 years. In 1988, Ms. Cox was appointed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Korea to be responsible for media regarding adoption. She has managed media for a number of high profile situations, including the Dying Room stories from China in 1993. Ms. Cox was a member of the White House Vital Voices delegation to Montevideo as a media trainer for women in developing democracies. She also has been a guest media trainer for Women’s Campaign International’s for the Fels School of Government at the University of PA. Ms. Cox has appeared on numerous national television programs and featured in news articles. She has appeared on the NBC “Today Show,” “CNN News, CNBC News, and National Public Radio and Television, and has been featured in articles in the Washington Post, New York Times, Business Week, and Family Circle.

Workshop 1.4: Questions and Discussion:

Marilyn Panichi: In order to have some organization for our discussions, I thought we could first talk about the assessment of adoptive parents first. [Bullet point 1: What key factors should assessments address regarding ongoing connections?]. As each of the three panelists spoke, I jotted down what I thought were the important points each was making.

In terms of infant placement...

• Susan Ogden talked about embracing the birth family and having compassion for them
  
• And that the agency then supports that relationship [between birthfamily, and adoptive family and child]

In terms of teenage placement...

• Pat Dudley talked about involving birthfamily members and teens in the training of adoptive families.

In terms of international adoption...

• Susan Soon-Keum Cox really talked about being prepared and what we can do to enhance that. Adoptive families need to be prepared for open adoption, even if it doesn't start out that way at the initial placement

Question 1: from an unidentified member of the audience: "When I saw the word "assessment" in the discussion questions, I was actually thinking about the assessment that the adoptive parent needs to make in regard to the birthfamily--how to structure ongoing relationships with the birthparents when you are considering what the birthparents bring to the situation. Afterall, when it comes to assessing, you have to assess, not only adoptive parents, but also what the birthparents bring to considering openness."

Susan Ogden:

• Do you mean whether birthparents want openness or not--or whether they are capable of it?
  
  • Parents tell us often initially, that they don't want openness--but we always leave that door open for them.
    
  • Some parents are struggling with mental illness. Some are struggling with substance abuse. Many are struggling with lots of different challenges.
    
  • If they want an open adoption and they are struggling with these things, then the agency is very much involved in keeping that relationship going and in facilitating that relationship.
    
  • We're MORE involved when--when people are more challenged.

• In our 18 year history, we've had a lot of success in these relationships even when there are significant challenges.
  
  • For example, we have a mom who has fetal alcohol syndrome. She has placed two children through our agency.
    
  • Every year she has a picnic with her two children and their families.
    
  • And she takes a bus to the agency every couple of months and writes a letter to her children.
    
  • And the [adoptive] families are very compassionate towards her and send photos.
  • So, from an objective standpoint, yes, she "looks" a little scary--because she is mentally compromised.
    
  • But there, what the families are really embracing is that their children are really becoming more compassionate towards people with differences. And so they're seeing their children's spiritual capacity enlarged by that relationship.
    
  • And a couple of years ago the families told us that they can handle the meeting on their own. That we didn't have to come.
    
  • So, we typically do set it up now because she (the birthmother) doesn't have a phone, so that everyone knows where and when it's going to be, but they--the families--are managing this.
    
  • Their maturity and their compassion is really managing this.

Patricia Dudley:

• We work with older children. Most of the children who come to us have come to us because of deep loss--the termination of parental rights.
  
• In working with the birthfamilies of these children, a lot of these families didn't understand that termination of parental rights meant, termination of parental rights only.
  
  • They thought this meant that they had to stop loving, they had to stop caring, they had to stop being in contact with their children.
    
  • That is typically something that a social worker at a country agency has told them.
  
  
• Anecdotally, we placed a sibling group of four teenagers back with a birthfather who had done a surrender only because the county had threatened to bring charges against him.
  
  • The children had been with him and his wife--they were young, they were from a different country, they had different ideas of corporal punishment, his wife was a substance abuser. There were four children including a set of twins.
    
  • Dad had left. Mom's boyfriend had abused the girls. They went into care.
    
  • Dad had gone went and gotten his children back, but being a single dad and being very young, he used corporal punishment on them. He left marks on one of them. And the county walked in and took them and threatened to bring charges against him. He signed his rights away.
    
  • Within three months dad's brother and brother's wife were killed in a car accident, and so this dad ended up raising his brother's children. He went to parenting classes to learn what he needed to do and he raised his brother's children.
    
  • Again, another eight years later, his own kids are around sixteen and seventeen and had been in care all those years. His own children had been split up and were in two different residential treatment centers. The girls had been sexually abused; the boys had been sexually abused.
    
  • The oldest of his children found him through the internet.
    
  • The father was, by then, a productive member of society; he owned his own business, he had raised a family of children.
    
  • And he thought his own "babies" had been adopted and had been living happy, healthy lives. But they weren't
    
  • And we were able to go into court and get that surrender overturned.
  
  
• Anecdotally again, we just recently--for the first time in the history of New York--were able to place a 12 year old girl back with her birthfather who was able to adopt her as his own child.
  
  • At least in the history of our agency, we have never been able to have a single man adopt a single girl, but actually we did this in having a birthdad adopt his own child.
    
  • And this story happened because the child went into care. The father knew nothing about the child.
    
  • All the child knew about her father was that her mother had said a man named "John Doe" was her dad. And so the child kept talking about "my dad 'John'."
    
  • She was adopted [by strangers] at eight, but the adoption failed and she was returned back to the system. The child then went before a judge for whom our agency had actually done one of our training sessions, and this judge ordered the caseworker to actually find out who this "John" guy was.
    
  • The previous caseworkers claimed that they could never find "dad" because they had no last name.
    
  • So now, the new caseworker said to the child, do you know what this John guy's last name is? And the child was able to say right away..."yes, John Doe was my father."
    
  • They went through the phone book and found a John Doe who admitted to having relations with the mother; did a DNA test, found out he was the dad, and placed her in the home, and she was actually just adopted two weeks ago by her own dad.
  
  
• So sometimes birthparents don't even know that they have rights. They don't know that they CAN be in contact.
  
• They literally live in this assumption that they lost everything.
  
• You know we do have parents who were substance abusers when they were teenagers or young adults. But now they are in their thirties or forties, having productive lives, having their own families.....and their kids are still in foster care.
  
• We have failed them. The system has failed those kids.
  
• We are now able to reconnect them. They are able to have brothers and sisters and parents again. And to be able to be back in contact with these brothers and sisters and parents. And sometimes we are even able to place them back in their families.

Question 2: from an unidentified director of New York agency placing infants for domestic adoption: "As Pat was talking I realized that, in a way, you are at an advantage because you are building on existing relationships--you are reviving them or strengthening them--there is at least, a relationship there. Our big problem really is engaging birthparents to be involved in an open adoption. I wish that we had to do an assessment on birthparents to see which ones are capable! We just--we don't need to do that because our major issue is encouraging them, involving them, and helping them understand the value to their children of staying involved. And I just wondered if anybody has real practical tips--are there any things that you do or say or build into your practice to encourage birthparents? One thing that we try to do is to set up a post placement visit within three months--my feeling is that if we can do it early, then at least we can build on that. If you wait more than three months, it becomes scarier and scarier for these folks to reconnect. But I just wonder if you have any practical ideas..."

Susan Ogden:

• We see a real movement in birthparents wanting more open adoptions.
  
  • My hunch really is that many of them are connecting on the internet and learning there what is available.
    
  • That is now a new support community for parents that are thinking about adoption.
    
  • And so they're seeing more of what is available in terms of open adoption.
    
  • I would say that 9 out of 10 birthmothers coming to our agency are asking for some kind of openness.
    
  • So we don't have to encourage them so much because they are already asking for a level of openness.
  
  
• The vast majority of birthparents/adoptive parents are meeting shortly after placement.
  
• Most of the [birth]mothers that we get are calling us from the hospital--they've already given birth--and they are saying that they want to make an adoption plan and that they want to see an agency.
  
  • So at that very moment we say...we have lots of families that we can show you--what are you looking for, what are you thinking about, what are you wanting in terms of an open relationship?
    
  • Those are the [adoptive] families then, that we are bringing to the hospital in order to show them [the birthmothers], to think about.
    
  • Several weeks later as we continue to work with them [the birthmothers] we ask them to continue to think about what level of openness they want--that's where we begin--What level of openness do you want?

Unidentified director who had asked Question 2:

We do too. Maybe in New York City we work with such a diverse population of birth parents--a lot of birthparents are newly arrived immigrants to New York City--that this is different. A lot of our birthparents don't have a good support system, don't have access to the internet, don't have the kind of knowledge about adoption that some of our birthparents that have been raised here perhaps do.

All of our adoptive parents are prepped on open adoption. You know, we almost beat them up with it! By the time they have a baby, they very much want this.

Our problem is on the other side.

Our adoptive parents are eager. They understand the value, and then they really aren't able to have an open adoption because our birthparents really--for their own particular reasons--aren't able to enter into that kind of relationship.

Susan Soon-Keum Cox:

• I think this is something that can happen internationally too.
  
  • One solution is to provide training to the social workers who have traditionally been so protective of birthmothers--and rightfully so--but who have not encouraged them to think about having a longterm, or any kind of a relationship.
    
  • In most programs that I'm familiar with they are now encouraging birthmothers to at least anonymously write a letter. I think that begins to help them think about, at least dimly, a relationship with their child.
    
  • But then social workers can begin to give examples of adoptees who have been able to reconnect with birthfamily and talk about it in a way that isn't so fearful.
  
  
• I predict that in the next decade or so, as the secrecy in adoption in other parts of the world, diminishes in the same way that it has been slow to happen in the US--but it is happening--that there will be more birthfamilies coming forward, seeking information, and wanting to know about their children.
  
  • Therefore, it is SO incredibly important that information be preserved. Both in the sending country, but also in the records of the US agency.
    
  • Because that's the only way that you can really have any hope of bringing folks together.
    
  • And I have to say that the internet has been a huge resource for this as well.

Question 3: from Ellen Singer, a therapist and educator with The Center for Adoption Support and Education in Maryland and Virginia: "I want to say first that these are really good problems--in terms of my practice. I say good problems, because I still see birthparents that don't get preparation and don't know that openness is an option for them. It is always heartbreaking for me.

What is also heartbreaking is when I see adoptive parents that have not gotten preparation and who are "freaked out" and so upset when birthparents contact them--maybe because it was a private adoption or through an agency--and want contact, but the adoptive parents are so unprepared for that because they thought they weren't ever going to have to deal with that.

But my question has to do with what I see in my practice--and that is, that while preparation for the adoptive parents and birthparents is crucial, it is also crucial for the extended family members. I have situations where it is the grandparents of the birthparent who are going to be remaining in contact. And they have had no preparation from the agencies or from other people so that when we talk about factors that undermine the success, that lack of education, that lack of preparation, around boundaries, around relationships--on both sides--is problematic.

I just had one situation where the family was out of contact for several years because there was so much conflict that had ensued. Fortunately the adoptive parents had contacted us and we were able to mediate and facilitate those relationships and get things back on track.

So I just want to say that I'm assuming that you see this as well. There is so much lack of education, so much lack of support. In the extended family members of adoptive family members and friends and in the community, openness is still so foreign to them, that they get the message of--"What are you doing?! This is crazy! Why would you do THAT?!"

I guess I have a lot to say, but if I have to put it in the form of a question, I guess I'd say, what practices do you have to help adoptive families in open adoptions and birthparents in open adoptions, not feel so alone in the context of their families and communities?"

Marilyn Panichi

• One of the things that we have done in our Federal grant, is that we have developed a videotape that is available to anybody. It is a 15 minute video of three adoptive families that have open adoptions. Their children are teens and they talk about why it's really important.
  
  • One mom talks about a point that one of you here made, and that is, that the children can hear directly from their family, what the truth is so that they don't ever have to think that she [the adoptive mom] may have misrepresented issues.
    
  • In this case, the birthmom has ongoing contact with the adoptive daughter--she came to the daughter's high school graduation just recently.
    
  • Another family has ongoing contact with the grandmother. They see her all the time and the video shows that relationship.
    
  • And the third family, which was actually a foster family adoption, had taken the young man to visit his mom in prison for six years. She's now out of prison and she comes to the family home for all holidays. And they all talk about the fact that they have just expanded their family. They are now all one much bigger family.
    
  • So it really shows life--people who are living this.
    
  • And there is also one family of children who exited the foster care system and they have no contact with their own siblings.
  
  
• It's a Family Connections project. We use it in training court personnel, social workers, adoptive families, the youth themselves.
  
• It's a very powerful tape.
  
  
• And you...have a film about open adoption yourself?

Ellen Singer, a therapist and educator with The Center for Adoption Support and Education in Maryland and Virginia:

Yes, we do. We have a film in which we have two birthmothers talk about their open adoptions and their relationships.

Susan Ogden:

• But you know, Ellen, I think that one of the challenges is that many times the birthgrandparents aren't involved at all.
  
  • Sometimes the biological parents keep it [their adoption plan] from their family.
    
  • They don't want their family to know.
    
  • They don't want their family to weigh in on it.
    
  • Should [the birthparents' extended family] call us and demand to know, confidentiality demands that we can't even say that this person was even a client.
    
  • So, if they're involved from the beginning, yes.
    
  • Anecdotally, recently a birthgrandmother came to a placement and was a part of the placement.
    
    • Her daughter-- the birthmother--and the birthfather, did not want to be a part of the placement.
      
    • They were both teens and I think they were just feeling very raw from the experience, but the birth grandmother asked to be a part of placement, and the adoptive family was delighted.
      
    • And so, all of those updates will be shared with her [the birth grandmother] and she will be in on the visits. Even though she is not in the post adoption agreement, it has already been established that she will be a part of the visits.
    • It's really case-by-case in terms of what people are willing and want to do.
  
  
• I know that when I took my daughter to Florida a few years ago in order for her to see her birthmother--my daughter was 10. Her birthgrandparents did not want to see her. They had seen her earlier, at a couple of different junctures, and they just did not want to participate.
  
• My interpretation was that it was just too painful for them. They had lost so many years with her that seeing her for just a weekend was not going to be helpful. That's my interpretation. Maybe they were just feeling too sad about not watching her grow up.

Patricia Dudley:

• I think one of the most horrific cases that I had to work on happened when I was working with another agency. We were working with children from New York City. I had a young man who was being raised by his grandmother and she refused to adopt her grandson.
  
  • She had had her grandson since infancy and she refused to adopt him.
    
  • She could in no way fathom why she should have to adopt her grandson.
    
  • He was referred to us from a NYCity caseworker and they wanted us to find an adoptive family for him.
    
  • At that point I had just become a grandmother and I knew that I was going to be raising my daughters' children. I could see it from both sides. On the one hand I couldn't understand why I as a grandmother I would have had to adopt my own grandchildren if my daughter's children had been ordered out of her home--and the other part of it--how I would have felt if my grandchildren had been pulled from me.
    
  • The only thing I could do for this young man was to definitely find a family that would accept grandmother's involvement. And I did.
    
  • But what I couldn't understand was why this caseworker somehow and someway couldn't facilitate that this child could change his code [coat?? This word is not clear from the tape???]. He was only 9, but he was with grandma.
    
  • And it was hard--it was one of the hardest things I've had to do.
    
  • Knowing that I was going to be raising my grandchildren, how was I taking a grandchild from a woman who was an older African American woman who did not and could not understand why she had to legally adopt her grandson.
    
  • And she cried and wailed when they pulled him.
    
  • And he cried and wailed when they pulled him. It was horrible.
    
  • The only thing I could do was make sure that grandma stayed grandma.

Question 4: from an unidentified member of the audience: "My question is about international adoption, but the question would also apply to domestic adoption. When do you begin to present the idea of openness to the adoptee and how do you manage expectations?"

Susan Soon-Keum Cox:

• Well, if they're already adopted and it's obviously probably a closed adoption, one of the things that we encourage is that adoptive families continue with writing letters, sending little school pictures, keeping in touch, and sending these things to the agency overseas.
  
  • This is so that if a birthmother ever comes forward, there is the possibility [for the birthmom] to know that we [the adoptive family] would like to have contact--there's the information about her child.
    
  • I think another thing that it does for the adoptee is that it demonstrates the tangible connections that the parents have.
    
  • Anecdotally, when I went back to Korea for the first time and I saw my files, even though I had seen my records before in Oregon, it's very different from seeing them overseas in your birthcountry.
    
    • And to have them opened up and to see that, over the years, my mother had been sending letters and little pictures--I had no idea she had been doing that.
    • That was incredibly important to me that [my adoptive mother] had taken the time to do that.
  
  
• I certainly think that it's important--as early as children can understand--to talk about birthfamily. There are some wonderful resources in terms of books for children from the time they are very small up through the developmental process.
  
• I think they should always know that it [birth parent contact] is a possibility. How do you prepare them for it? I don't specifically know that you can do that...without knowing that it's happening right now or could happen.

Question 5: from an unidentified member of the audience: "My question is about children who are a little bit older and have been placed through the foster care system, where their parents might have some scary behavior during contact. I've recently had a couple of cases like that with my families where they've had phone calls where the parents were inappropriate and a little scary with the kids. Maybe things will be better later as they get used to things, but I wonder if there's a resource that I could use to put some "bumpers" on it to protect the child during telephone contact."

Susan Ogden:

• As children have been getting older in our agency--at any point we can go back to mediation and try to put some structures on it.
  
• Anecdotally, with one 15 year old adoptee, her birthfather visited her recently and she had a fantasy that her birthfather was going to be younger, hipper, and cooler than her adoptive parents.
  
  • And it turned out that he wasn't-at least in her assessment at 15 (LOL--hardly any adult is young or hip or cool!).
    
  • And he kept saying to her things like...you know, when you get older, I'd really like for you to come and live with me.
    
  • He thought he was being very expansive in reaching out, but she found she was shrinking back.
    
  • She was really having a lot of guilt about it and having difficulty processing it.
    
  • It took a lot of therapy with her afterwards. She really needed help to her give up the fantasy.
    
    • We can live on fantasies for months and they are delightful and delicious and giving them up is really difficult.
      
    • It is important to get the adoptee to talk and to help her--to lend support and help her process. That is the role of a mediator.

Patricia Dudley:

• Working with the older teens--most of our teens--know what their families are. They know what their families can do. And they do look to us for protection and for supervision.
  
  • So we can definitely say--being in open communication with that teen--how did you feel about that, what would you like us to do, etc.
  
  
• Technically we're into approval and we want an open relationship, but if that relationship is going to hurt or damage the teenager or the relationship with the adoptive family, then there are times when things need to be taken back.
  
• Speaking with the therapist, getting the therapist's input.
  
• Putting restraints in place. Maybe they can only meet where there's another adult who can say, for example--"that's inappropriate" or "it's time to cut this conversation--and you can call back later after we've had a conversation."
  
• Again, our teens are still children. They need protection.
  
• And you know, we do sometimes have to be the adults in that area.
  
  • We may need to say, "you know this is not working right now."
    
  • We need more counseling maybe. We need more therapy maybe. On the parent's part. On the teen's part.
    
  • We have to facilitate.
    
  • Sometimes, we can't let this go on any longer. There are times when we just have to be the adult and say, "This just isn't going to work right now."

Susan Soon-Keum Cox:

• In international adoption, in a reunion, it's important to make sure that you have someone that can help with this process.
  
  • Anecdotally, for example, my conversations with my birth family have all been through the filter of someone else because we don't speak the same language. And it's complicated.
    
  • I would love to be able to have a real conversation where it's just us in the room. But since my Korean is not good and their English is not good, I don't know that that will really happen.
    
  • It's been so critical to have someone who I trust who can really give the information,to interpret my thoughts to them, and theirs to me.
    
  • And if you can have constancy, if it can be the same person over time, that's really helpful.

Question 6: from Darlene Denton: If we are talking about open adoptions, is this legally binding? Are you doing this before the birthparents sign their termination of parental rights?

Susan Ogden:

• In Maryland, the post adoption agreement which is legally binding, is attached to the consent.
  
  • It's filed in court.
    
  • But it might be several months later after parental rights are terminated that a birthparent might ask for contact--and that could still be contracted. There's lots of different options.
    
  • If they go into it not wanting contact, we can still leave that door open in case they change their minds.

Darlene Denton:

Are there other states that have these provisions?

Susan Ogden:

Yes, I believe that there are other states that have this. Yes.

Unidentified member of the audience:

I know that Annette Appell from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas is speaking at the conference as well. This is an area of expertise of hers. I know that there are a number of states--they differ--but a number of states that have enforceable contracts--nobody's going to come and get the kid. But the court will intervene. Yes, there are several states, although I don't know what they are. I think it's growing, yes.[ Fleasbiting's notes from Annette Appell's session about legally enforceable post adoption contracts]

Susan Ogden:

• In my own work I have found that there is still a reluctance particularly in foster care to consider openness.
  
  
• I think the message that we've gotten from everyone on the panel is that we need to start with the assumption that openness is a good thing, and only exclude when its in the best interests of the child--rather than the opposite assumption, which has always guided us--which is that it's not a good thing except in these exceptional cases--these exceptions. We need to reverse that paradigm I think.
  
  
• One of the things that we didn't touch on, that I think is a little scary, is what happens in private adoptions when there's nobody to mediate, when there's nobody to explain, when there's nobody to pick up the pieces later, when there's nobody...when there's just nobody.
  
  • So that is just one of the frightening things that came into my mind as we were talking about how to manage these relationships and do what's best for the kids. For private adoption, for these kids, there just is no such option.
  
  
  
• Finally, I wanted to ask this question, although there's no time left to discuss it. I'll ask it anyway just so we can think about it.... :
  
  What is responsibility do the agencies have in an international adoption placement, to help sending countries understand the importance of--not openness necessarily or in terms of relationship--but in terms of gathering those stories and those things that Susan Soon-Keum Cox talked about. In terms of keeping that information. In terms of storing or archiving letters that come from whatever country is the receiving country so that archive is maintained?

The preceding are detailed notes. They do not constitute the exact words of the speakers, but a--hopefully accurate--summary of the ideas of these presentations and questions. If any of the panelists or attendees take issue with any of these summaries, please let me know so that I can correct them.

Desiree

Workshop 1.4, Part I: Ensuring Ongoing Relationships--Practice That Opens the Door to Connections

Ethics and Accountability Conference
Sponsored by Ethica and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
October 15-16, 2007

Bullet points for discussion during Workshop 1.4:

1. What key factors should assessments address regarding ongoing connections?
   
2. What are characteristics of successful open adoptions? What factors undermine the success of open adoptions?
   
3. How can families of origin be best educated on their importance to the children and the roles they can continue to play in their children’s lives?
   

Panelists:

Marilyn Panichi is the Executive Director of Adoptions Unlimited, Inc. She has more than 35 years of adoption and child welfare experience in administration, supervision and casework. Prior to establishing Adoptions Unlimited, Ms. Panichi was the Executive Director of the Adoption Information Center of Illinois under the auspices of the Child Care Association of Illinois. She began her career with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services as a Child Welfare Worker and Adoption Coordinator. Ms. Panichi earned her Master of Social Work and Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Illinois. She is a member of the National Association of Social Workers and the Academy of Certified Social Workers. Ms Panichi is co-founder of the Adoption Exchange Association where she currently serves as board member and treasurer.

Susan Ogden is the Director of Domestic Adoption at Adoptions Together. She has worked in education and nonprofit program management for 25 years. When she adopted her daughter Sasha in 1992, Ms. Ogden became an advocate for better understanding of open adoption. Her daughter enjoys an open relationship with her birth mother, birth sister and birth father. Their experience was featured in a New York Times article (October, 1998: Secrecy and Stigma no longer clouding adoption.) Ms. Ogden has published in Adoptive Families magazine and the Washington Post. Celebrate Adoption, Inc., an organization of triad members co-founded by Ms. Ogden, published her An Educator’s Guide to Adoption, a booklet that adoptive parents may give to their children’s teachers. The Guide, now in its fifth printing, was featured USA Today and the subject of a segment of the Rosie O’Donnell show in November, 2000. Ms. Ogden worked closely with clients of Adoptions Together in open relationships in making a video about open adoption (Adoption …Real Stories) that is used in outreach to broaden the understanding and acceptance of adoption as an option in high schools, clinics, hospitals, churches and other community organizations that work with youth and women in crisis pregnancies.

Patricia Dudley serves as Director of the Long Island Region for You Gotta Believe! The Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement. In this position, she has successfully supervised and completed one federal grant and is currently supervising a second federal grant “The Long Island Opening Adoption’s Door To Teens Project”. Over the past five years, under Ms. Dudley’s leadership, the Long Island Region of You Gotta Believe has successfully placed over 80 of Long Island’s hardest to place teenagers into permanent adoptive families. Under her supervision, staff educates potential prospective parents from the community about the importance of continuing to maintain teens’ past relationships with former foster families, birth families, and neighborhood connections. Ms. Dudley has over 20 years experience in the field of child welfare. She is also an experienced adoptive parent having adopted two older children of a different race from the New York foster care system.

Susan Soon-Keum Cox is Vice President of Policy and External Affairs for Holt International Children’s Services in Eugene, OR. She has worked with local, national and international media for more than 25 years. In 1988, Ms. Cox was appointed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Korea to be responsible for media regarding adoption. She has managed media for a number of high profile situations, including the Dying Room stories from China in 1993. Ms. Cox was a member of the White House Vital Voices delegation to Montevideo as a media trainer for women in developing democracies. She also has been a guest media trainer for Women’s Campaign International’s for the Fels School of Government at the University of PA. Ms. Cox has appeared on numerous national television programs and featured in news articles. She has appeared on the NBC “Today Show,” “CNN News, CNBC News, and National Public Radio and Television, and has been featured in articles in the Washington Post, New York Times, Business Week, and Family Circle.

Workshop 1.4:

Marilyn Panichi: Each of our panelists will first address each of the three bullet points for discussion for this session.

Susan Ogden: I will be speaking about infant adoptions as Director of Domestic Adoptions at Adoptions Together, but I am also an AP in an open adoption

• Bullet point 1: What key factors should assessments address regarding ongoing connections?
  
  • We have assessment and educational materials for PAP’s
    • Most prospective adoptive parents, many of whom are moving from infertility into adoption, come to us with the idea of parenting exclusivity
      
    • One of the first things we do is help PAP's understand the idea of sharing within adoption--helping them move from the idea of parenting exclusivity to open adoption
      
    • The idea of sharing an adoptive child with another person is very frightening and very alien
      
    • That’s certainly how I felt as an AP—very frightened and alienated with the idea of sharing MY child
      
      • We didn’t have a post contact (open adoption) agreement, but we had had a lot of contact before my daughter was born.
        
      • When my child was 2 yo., we decided to take my daughter to see her birth family in Florida. I remember beforehand thinking that maybe blood is thicker than water and that my daughter would see her birthfamily and completely reject me.
        
      • But what anyone who has had a two year old since birth knows, is that a two year old is very attached. My daughter was very attached to me.
        
      • Our open adoption really did confirm the power of that everyday nurturing.
        
      • By the end of the visit I was very conscious of the fact that she wasn’t reaching out very much to her birthmother;
        
      • Things are, of course, different now that my daughter is 15, and of course, she reaches out much more to her birthfamily
    • During the assessment process we ask the adoptive family: Do you think you could represent your child’s birthfamily in a positive light even if some of the information is problematic and challenging?
      
    • Assessment period is designed to be educational and to help the adoptive family grow towards accepting the birthfamily—that flexibility of embracing them, respecting them…
      
    • We are supporting families in their growth towards the embracing of the birthfamily
      
    • After [PAP's pass through the assessment period and are]accepted into the adoption program, we help them continue to grow towards this acceptance
      
    • Many families come to us thinking they could not have an open adoption but by the time they adopt, they are extremely interested and open to having an open adoption; as they fall in love with the child, they want to do the best thing for the child—their compassion and openness towards keeping the child in contact with the birthfamily grows
  
  
• Bullet point 2: What are characteristics of successful open adoptions? What factors undermine the success of open adoptions?
  
  • What we noticed right away is that we need adoptive parents who are mature, secure people who can respect boundaries. But, of course, there is a wide continuum within normal adult development…
    
  • One of the first and most important things that adoptive families need to understand is that their position in regard to the child’s love is not going to be enhanced diminishing the birthfamily. It DOES take a mature person—serious adult maturation—to understand that and realize how important that is.
    
    • It is similar to the dynamics in a divorce situation.
      
    • If you are bad-mouthing the birthfamily, you are diminishing your child. You are NOT elevating yourself.
      
    • If you are bad-mouthing the birthfamily, you are diminishing your child and the important connections he has to all those who love him.
      
    • This is a difficult concept for people unless they really are moving along in the process of adult maturation
      
    • But is something that we’re really conscious of in our agency and that we work very hard to help people understand
    
    
  • Sometimes PAP’s say: Well we don’t want to have an open adoption unless we can be sure that the birthfamily will never disappoint our child—that they’ll always keep those appointments, that they’ll send those gifts regularly, that everything will always be good.
    
    • And so I ask the PAP’s—“So how many of you have never been disappointed by a relative?” They need to think this through.
      
    • We can’t control what happens to our children
      
    • With my daughter’s birthfamily, sometimes they send things, sometimes they don’t
      
    • My job as a parent is not to harangue them to send something every year. My job as a parent is just to help my daughter talk about her disappointment.
      
    • Life is difficult. My job as a parent is to make sure that my daughter has the resources to manage the inevitable disappointments in life. My job is not to teach her that she can control how people behave, or that she control how people treat her, or that she can control what the quality of those relationships are all the time.
      
    • Maturation is an important quality in terms of people’s compassion for each other.
    
    
  • In Maryland, open adoption agreements are enforceable, so when parents sign an open adoption agreement they agree to send updates, and increasingly, often agree—increasingly-- to have at least one visit a year. This is something that in Maryland we can ensure birthparents that is enforceable.
    
    • Adoptive parents and birthparents are willingly signing agreements that they will meet each other.
      
    • We always ask--we recommend that these meetings are initially facilitated by the agency. The staff is there at the meeting between birthparent and adoptive parent—whether it be at a park or a restaurant or wherever. We do this because we want everyone to feel comfortable in these initial meetings.
      
      • Sometimes parents/families go off on their own and they do it exactly like they want to do it and it works out and it’s fine.
        
      • The question is whether there is an undermining that can sometimes occur.
        
      • When people go off on their own, and are really making it up as they go, on their own, they can sometimes really run into trouble...and then they call the agency and say: ...gee...this or that is happening.
        
      • I can think of one anecdotal case in which a birthmother had cell phone contact with the adoptive father and the adoptive father came to feel really guilty about having adopted the child. He felt sorry for the birthmother because her situation was compromised. Because of that guilt, remorse, and all those upset feelings, the birthmother got into asking that they bring the baby over really, whenever she felt like it. For example, she would call up and say..."It’s Christmas and so-and-so’s never seen the baby—could you bring the baby?" And the adoptive parents were complying with those requests because they felt like they had to--but they weren’t comfortable with it. So the AP’s asked us as the agency to get re-involved. So, at that point, we sat down with everyone and did a mediated session and came up with an agreement that really felt right for everybody. It was a little more structured and involved a little more agency facilitation.
  
  
• Bullet point 3: How can families of origin be best educated on their importance to the children and the roles they can continue to play in their children’s lives?
  
  • One of the biggest challenges in working with prospective birthparents is that there is no role for them in our society.
    
    • The only images expectant parents know of birthparents are the horrendous images of birthparents on Lifetime television programs
      
      • That’s the only image for birthparents that most of us know
        
      • That’s the only role for themselves that they see
    • Our job is therefore to empower them. This involves, if they decide to go forward with adoption:
      
      • To help them select the parents that they want to raise their child
        
      • To help them select the degree of openness that they want in their adoption
      
      
    • And in doing these things, we offer them a tremendous amount of compassion, acknowledgement, and respect.
      
    • Because they are in such a difficult place in American society and in their relationships in general
      
    • Our job is to offer them compassion, acknowledgement, and respect
      
    • Many say that they do not want to see their children, but we increasingly try to leave that door open for them should they change their minds.
      
      • They can call the agency and arrange to meet their child and their child’s family, really at any point.
      
      
    • At this point there are more AP’s who want that open relationship than there are birthparents who want an open relationship
      
      • 9 out of 10 of our AP’s are prepared for an open adoption—to begin with or at any time in the future
        
      • Many actually long for that, especially as their child grows
        
      • AP’s want their child to have that connection and have that information
        
      • They especially want a photo of the biological parent, and sometimes that is a very difficult thing for us to get for them and their child
      
      
    • There is still so much shame associated with having given a child up for adoption that many birthparents just don’t want to give out information; they don’t want to share that part of themselves
      
    • They don’t want to be public about it

Patricia Dudley Our work in “You Gotta Believe” is a little different than work with infants. The children with whom we work are mostly teens.

• Bullet point 1: What key factors should assessments address regarding ongoing connections?
  
  • We are educating families who have stepped forward to provide care for these children
    
    • These teens know their birthparents and birthfamilies. They have connections with grandma, or aunts, or even former foster parents.
      
      • They have ongoing connections to families that have either been taking care of them or else have been visiting them. Sometimes these are even families to whom they have ‘AWOLed’ or run away to.
    • We have many adoptive families who are willing that the children have contact with birthfamilies or relatives; but we also have families who want no part of a teenager who has a connection with someone else from their past life
      
      • It takes a lot of educating and a lot of talking to bring these adoptive families up to speed
    
    
  • We have a lot of panels in our classes
    
    • We have panels that include adoptive families who talk about the experiences with their teenagers and those teenagers' birthfamilies and other people in their community.
      
    • We bring the teens in and we let the teens talk about how important it is to them to maintain these connections to people from their past—with their birthfamilies, with their foster families, with their friends, even with their friend’s parents.
      
    • We also try to educate important persons in the teens' pasts. We have gone to the counties and actually asked to be able to bring birthfamilies into our classes
      
      • Not only to educate these birthfamily members as to how important these connections are to kids
        
      • But also to ask them to be resources for these kids
        
      • I have placed kids back in their birthfamilies with grandparents who had originally been told, when the child was taken into care at 6 or 7, that they couldn’t care for the child because the mother would be around the grandparents; grandma had subsequently been a resource in the child’s life for 10 years, during which time she had not seen/heard from her daughter for five of those years. We were subsequently able to place the child with his grandmother.
        
      • I was able to place teens back with a cousin who under the county had gotten guardianship of three children; one was in a residential treatment center and when the child got out, I advocated for adoption of the children by the cousin; the cousin needed more resources than guardianship could provide; she needed the added support that comes with adoption—mediators, someone who would come in to help, Medicaid that would come with adoption—which was more than with guardianship.
        
      • I’m an adoptive mom. My daughter came to me when she was 9. I had two children, 9 and 7, when my daughter came to us. When my children were younger, every year we would go to the Bronx zoo, but we stopped going when we adopted my daughter because I had this fear that we would meet up with someone from her past life at the zoo. I had that fear too. It was a serious consideration. My daughter had a sister who did not go into care but who was raised with their grandmother. My daughter named every stuffed animal, every doll was named after her sister. She wanted to know where her sister was. Because of particular circumstances, I didn’t know whether birthmom was going to be around by the time my daughter was 18 so that she could contact her birthmother. When my daughter was 14, she started to ask where her sister was and why we couldn’t find her sister and at the same time, birthmom letter saying that she wanted contact with daughter. They put us in contact. One of the worst things that I did was agree to contact with supervision. I talked to birthmom and I agreed that she could write letters to my daughter and send them to my office. I would screen them and if they were appropriate, I would give them to my daughter. She would write letters back, if I thought they were appropriate, I would pass them on. However, after awhile the letters stopped coming to my office. My daughter was smart and had the letters sent to her friend’s house. My daughter was very angry that I did not trust her—that I wouldn’t make a bond with her strong enough to trust her to decide where her loyalties lay. My daughter did establish full contact with her birthmom after she was 18. In fact, when her birthmother died, she died in my daughter’s arms.
        
        • My daughter later made the comment that her sister was NOT better off for having stayed with the birthfamily—her grandmother was an alcoholic—and having been passed from family member to family member.
          
        • My daughter observed all the things that her sister never had, the fact that she never finished high school, and the fact that there was no ongoing family to be a family to her sister when her sister had children of her own later.
          
        • I asked my daughter if she had at least gotten a chance to ask her birthmother all the questions that she had wanted to ask her before she died. The answer was no—she was too sick. I was taking care of her and I didn’t want to hurt her by asking too many questions.
  
  
• Bullet point 2: What are characteristics of successful open adoptions? What factors undermine the success of open adoptions?
  
  • A successful open adoption is when your child knows where their loyalties are. When they can meet with their birthfamilies and get all their questions answered and literally not have to fantasize about what life would have been like had they been with their birthfamily. For worse or better, they need to know.
    
  • I think a successful adoption for me is when I can place a child or a teenager back with a family member or someone that they knew back in the community. I’ve even placed teens with their cafeteria worker—if they were the only ones that the kids knew consistently for three or four years. I placed one child with the cook from a residential treatment center. The teen was aging out of care at 18 and all the teen wanted was to have a family and to go to college. The worker took her home. I think that’s where my successful placements are—placing the teens in their community, with people they know, with people they feel understand them, and where they feel safe.
  
  
• Bullet point 3: How can families of origin be best educated on their importance to the children and the roles they can continue to play in their children’s lives?
  
  • The answer is bringing them in, talking to them, letting them know what their roles are, letting them know that just being there—being able to answer questions—and sometimes it just having them know that sometimes all they need to do is simply have one visit with the teen in order to help the teen move forward into a placement.
    
    • Anecdotally, we had a teen coming out of a residential treatment center who was 16 and who was entering our adoption program hoping to be adopted. The teen was in contact with her sister. That sister was in contact with the biological mom. The sister told biological mom that the teen was hoping to be adopted. The mom said, if she gets adopted, I will kill myself. Mom’s reaction got back to the 16 year old and she tried to drop out of the adoption program. We attempted to reach the mother, but couldn’t. A god-sister, however, showed up interested in being an influence in the girl’s life. Eventually this person wrote a letter saying to the girl—you need to move on and get a family of your own. That was all it took—someone from her community, her previous life, saying it was time to move on. The girl moved forward in the adoption program again. Eventually we were finally able to contact the mother whom it turned out, was very scared. She was afraid she’d permanently lose her daughter. She thought as long as the child stayed in foster care, she’d come back to her eventually. But the mother realized what was best for the child. She was able to help her daughter move through the adoption process and into her adoptive family.
    
    
  • Adoption is a celebration for the adoptive families. But not the teen. For the teen it is the end of a hope that things would finally come together with their birthfamily.
    
    • Adoption is a difficult time, not a celebration for teenagers. It is a loss. It is the end of their past lives.
      
    • For a teenager, we try to show them that it doesn’t have to be an end, but that they can blend their families together—their lives together—so that they can be a whole, happy, productive person with the support of all their families.

Susan Soon-Keum Cox: My perspective is from that of international adoption.

• Bullet point 1: What key factors should assessments address regarding ongoing connections?
  
  • I am an international adoptee who was adopted in 1956
    • There have been about 200,000 adopted internationally to the US and I was about number 167. So I really was very much at the beginning of that process. Sometimes I think I am the oldest living international adoptee on the planet!
  • I can tell you that adoption is generational. I am so aware of that because I had the pleasure of becoming a grandmother this past year.
    
    • When you adopt a child, either domestically or internationally, it isn’t just that child that you are bringing into your family. You are integrating them and the generations that follow into your family. You are altering the family tree for generations to come.
      
    • For those who adopt internationally and interracially, it isn’t just that you are adding a child of another race to your family—that you happen to have a child of another race in your family. You ARE an interracial family.
  • In 1956, when I came to my parents, the idea that I would ever know my Korean family was not a thought in anybody’s mind
    
  • The idea at that time, in 1956, was to “Americanize” children as quickly as possible. The worry was how will children “fit in.” In the concern to do this, we certainly did become acclimated to whatever community and neighborhood we were in—recognizing, of course, that a lot of children were also adopted to Europe as well.
    
    • The sadness of this approach is that the child lost connection to the birth culture and heritage.
  • So we really have learned some things along the way. In three generations of adoption, we are making much better progress in recognizing that the ideas of race, culture, and ethnicity are not just “nice” ideas, but are central, and are, in fact, essential to a successful international adoption
    
    • However, there are STILL families that look at international adoption as the way to avoid all this—to avoid openness—as a way to ever having to address the issue of birthfamilies. But the fact is, none of us international adoptees were the result of an immaculate conception. We came to our adoptive families through a *birthfamily.* And our connection to those birthfamilies are for ALWAYS.
      
    • Any adoptive parent that has the fantasy that adopting from another country will somehow eliminate the possibility of birthfamily, first of all is terribly misguided. You can’t pretend that you child simply came from whatever airline. They really started in another place. And that history, that beginning, is so essential to who they will become. So adoptive families should embrace the child’s birthfamily and heritage in the same way as if the child had come from a domestic adoption
  • So if you are working IA families, certainly help them to understand that first of all, every child has a birthfamily. And that is a good thing. And this fact is something that they need to incorporate into the way that they think about their adoption
    
  • One of the things that I think is so critical in preparing adoptive parents for adoption is this—we always talk about adoptive children, we talk about babies, about children…. but the fact of the matter is that we adoptees grow up. Some of us even are getting old… So those practices that we have at the very beginning must be able to translate to the long term.
    
    • Whatever you do at placement obviously needs to be effective for right then, at placement. But those things also have to be effective and practical for when that child grows up, for when that child, that person, becomes a parent, for when that person becomes a grandparent. Those decisions need to be crafted not just for the moment, but also for the future.
    
    
  • One thing about IA and transracial adoption is that the adoptee will always grow up—in his/her childhood—with the question of who he/she looks like. Who is his/her real mom and dad? Who does she look like?
    
  • There is some open adoption with international adoption, but not much. That is a trend that is just starting to emerge. So there is very little.
    
  • But what there is in IA is the “re-opening” of adoption. Adoptees who never expected to be able to reconnect with their birthfamilies are finding their birthfamilies. Family members are re-finding each other.
    • And I think it’s the natural human response to want to know: Where did I come from? Who do I look like...
      
    • Certainly that was my experience growing up
    
    
  • When you talk about what are some of things that can happen in the beginning, in the assessment—it is true you can’t transfer domestic open adoption—or the domestic open adoption process here in the US—internationally. The process is too different—it is separated by geography, by language, by culture.
    
    • When you talk about adoption from the birthfamily’s situation—the triad here in the US—you are all, most of the time, going to be speaking the same language. You may have very strong differences in terms of social and economic status, geography in terms of say Pennsylvania versus Oregon, and all of those things…. But you will at least know the same words that you are speaking.
      
    • With international adoption, language is a huge barrier. And it isn’t just the spoken word, but it is also what each party knows about and considers to be—adoption.
      
    • So, for those of you who work in international adoption, when you are preparing for adoption—it is true that the sensitivity required for a birthfamily in India is totally different from the sensitivity required for a birthfamily from Washington, DC.—in terms even of their ability to understand the concept of adoption.
      
      • At the same time there are things that you can do to make that much more real for the adoptee in the future.
        
      • For example, you may not be able to put in identifying information. They may not even give you identifying information. Many times, even now, the information that birthmothers present about themselves is not accurate. It’s not their real name. It’s not their real situation. And that is because they need to be able to move back into their lives. But what you can do is to ensure that what is written in the margins—is there. It’s really important. You may not be able to have a picture, but if you take a picture of the mother, even if it is unidentified, that is such a treasure for the adoptee to have.
        
      • To be able to say to the adoptee—to be able to write a word picture—because you may not be able to take a photo of the birthmother—she may not be comfortable with that. But if you describe her. Describe what it was like the day that she came in and talked to you. As you worked with her and helped her make an adoption plan for her child, what was her voice like? What did she like to do? What was she wearing? What were her thoughts? Paint a word picture.
        
      • For many of us adoptees, that is the ONLY picture of our birthmother that we will ever have.
        
      • Please take the time to do that. It is not too much trouble. It is really important.
    
    
  • In the 1950’s and 1960’s while I was growing up, there were really no opportunities for my adoptive parents to know about Korean culture and heritage in the way we know now. There were not parent groups, there were not books, there were not resources. But today we are much better able to help families to parent their children transracially.
    
    • People ask me now if there were opportunities growing up in little Brownsville, Oregon, to get to spend time with other Koreans—or even other Asians? The answer is no. But my parents were wise enough to know that Korea was important—the way that they talked about it.
      
    • Even though I didn’t grow up eating Kimchi or knowing about fan dancing or many things that represent the richness of my birthculture, what I did know was that my parents believed that Korea was a most amazing place—because that’s where I was from and I was their daughter.
      
    • It’s that to-my-bones-feeling-about-a-place that adoptive parents truly need to embrace
  
  
• Bullet point 2: What are characteristics of successful open adoptions? What factors undermine the success of open adoptions?
  
  • When you talk about the success of open adoption, I think you must have realistic expectations. That’s not easy.
    
  • For many of us adoptees, many of us have these fantasies about who our birthfamilies are.
    
  • When you are adopted you have all these questions, for which there are no answers.
    
    • My fantasy was, of course, that my mother was a princess. I learned at some point that I had been born in Inchon. And I frankly got tired of people asking who my real parents were—who was my real mom, who was my real father--and so at some point I started telling people that my birthfather was Douglas MacArthur. He was at Inchon at about the right time!
      
    • When I celebrated my 40th birthday, I decided to take back my Korean name. And I embarked on a search for my birthfamily—never, never expecting in my wildest imaginings that I would be successful. For some reason, I was particularly fixated on who my birthmother was. I had a deep longing to know who was this woman had carried me and given birth to me. And I was about 5 years old when I was adopted, so I somehow I should have had some memories of my mother. But somehow they were all gone. I had no memories of—what did she look like—and somehow that was so important to me.
      
    • What I didn’t think about was siblings. So, to my surprise, I was found, or should I say, we found each other. My birthmother had actually died. In fact, she had died the year that I went to Korea for the first time. So, for whatever reason, we were never going to see each other again on this planet.
      
    • But I found out that I was my mother’s secret.
    
    
  • And this is one of the things about adoption that is so important to understand. Secrets are so painful and so difficult. And they should be unnecessary.
    
    • And so my mother died saying to my youngest brother—you have a sister and she went to America. And this wasn’t in the context of anything he knew. And so, when I found them, I was a big surprise, as you can imagine.
    
    
  • For some reason I had never really considered that I might have siblings, but after all these years of wondering who do I look like, to finally come face to face with people who look like me…what a surreal experience that was.
    
    • And yet we don’t share language, we don’t share religion, we don’t share history.
      
    • In my adoptive family I am the oldest of five siblings. I have more in connection with them in terms of history than in terms of biology. The feelings that I have for my two Korean brothers are so different from the feelings I have for the siblings with whom I grew up with.
      
    • I have always believed that adoption was a difficult choice for my mother. I guess I wanted to believe that. Whether I had memory of that, I don’t know. But finding my Korean siblings confirmed this for me. My brothers think I’m terrific, but it’s because I left. Had I stayed in Korea, I would have been the illegitimate, half-Korean sister that they would have been deeply ashamed of. I don’t blame them or question that. It simply is the way it is.
  
  
• Bullet point 3: How can families of origin be best educated on their importance to the children and the roles they can continue to play in their children’s lives?
  
  • There is much about adoption that is simply bittersweet.
    
    • The fact that a birthfamily must look at adoption for their child to have a family.
      
    • The fact that for an adoptive family, the only way to have a child, is to give up the dream of having a child born to them.
      
    • And for the adoptee, particularly for the international adoptees, it’s the disconnection from the culture and heritage that they were born to.
    
    
  • But the sweet is...
    
    • For a birthmother, like my birthmother—who tried to keep me—she kept me with her for five years, she dyed my hair black, she did a lot to try to keep me with her—for her, the sweetness of adoption is that I could have a family that would love and cherish me every day in a way that she simply could not.
      
    • For adoptive parents, the sweetness is the opportunity to love and cherish a child not born to them, and that sometimes, doesn’t even look like them.
      
    • And for the adoptee, the sweetness is, of course, the opportunity to have a family.
    
    
  • The choice is not distinct. It is not that you give up one for the other. I believe that you should and you can have both. They’re very different things.
    
  • One of the things that undermine the success of an open adoption is that it is fearful. How will you feel about the family that gave birth to you compared to the family that you lived with everyday?
    
    • As a parent, I can certainly understand the worry that that presents. It is similar to when you go through a divorce and the former spouse remarries. What is the loyalty of the children towards you? How do you really know that your place within their life is really secure?
      
    • But children are much wiser than grown-ups many times. Grown-ups need to trust the children. They should know that children are able to make those distinctions. And it isn’t necessarily so difficult for children to chose. You simply are who you are and if parents can have the courage to understand and accept that—it’s really very important.
    
    
  • As we move forward with international adoption particularly, we had better be prepared for open adoption. We’d better be prepared for ongoing relationships between birth and adoptive families. And that really, is a good thing. It is not something to be fearful of. It’s a challenge, yes. It’s difficult, yes. But is it worth it? For the best interests of children, I think, yes, it is worth it.

The preceding are detailed notes. They do not constitute the exact words of the speakers, but a--hopefully accurate--summary of the ideas of these presentations and questions. If any of the panelists or attendees take issue with any of these summaries, please let me know so that I can correct them.

Please see "Workshop 1.4, Part II: Ensuring Ongoing Relationships--Practice That Opens the Door to Connections--Questions & Discussion" for notes from the remainder of Workshop 1.4

Desiree

Several Recent US DOS Announcements Concerning Guatemala & also US Hague Implementation

The US Department of State recently released three intercountry news announcements of interest to US adoptive families and adoption providers.

First:

Guatemala Update

November 8, 2007

The Department of State has received inquiries about the status of anticipated adoption reforms in Guatemala, and the outlook for adoption cases which are currently pending. Whether the Guatemalan government elects to implement the Hague Convention on December 31st or later in the spring of 2008, pending cases would not be affected if, as expected, the final legislation includes a transition provision that allows pending cases to be processed to conclusion under current law. We continue to advise American Citizens not to initiate new adoptions until the Government of Guatemala has completed its implementation of the Hague Convention.

Adoption reform legislation remains under discussion in Guatemala’s Congress. We continue to advocate for a law that complies with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and that includes transition provisions for cases already filed under the current system of law.

Passage of a new adoption law is only the first step. The next, urgent priority will be for Guatemalan officials to establish a Hague compliant system. Designing and implementing the necessary structural reforms will take time.

The Guatemalan Government has said it will assume its obligations as a Hague Convention member on December 31, 2007, a decision we support, because Guatemala’s children -- indeed all parties to an international adoption -- deserve the protections afforded by the Convention as soon as possible. When the Hague Convention goes into force for the U.S. in the spring of 2008, both the U.S. and Guatemala must have Hague-compliant adoption procedures in order for new adoption cases to be filed. Thus in the interest of long-term adoptions from Guatemala, responsible, prompt reform of the current law and procedures is critically important. The U.S. is committed to provide assistance and support to the Guatemalan authorities for this task.

Guatemala Update, US Department of State, 8 November 2007

Next:

Notice: Department of State Plans to Deposit the Instrument of Ratification in December 2007

The United States and the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention

We are pleased to announce that the United States has nearly completed all the domestic requirements necessary for the deposit of its instrument of ratification for the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (The Hague Adoption Convention) in December 2007.

As the US Central Authority under the convention and the lead Federal agency for its implementation, the Department of State eagerly anticipates the moment when we can join the more than 70 other countries who believe in strong international norms for protecting the best interests of children, as well as the interests of birth parents and adoptive parents in the intercountry adoption process.

According to the terms of the Convention, it will go into force on the first day of the month following the expiration of three months after the deposit of the instrument of ratification.

The Convention strengthen protections for adopted children, birth parents and adoptive parents involved in intercountry adoptions. Its key principles include:

1) Ensuring that intercountry adoptions take place in the best interests of children; and
2) Preventing the abduction, exploitation, sale, or trafficking of children; and
3) Facilitating communication between Central Authorities in countries of origin and destination countries

The Hague process in the United States will require that adoption service providers show that they meet Hague standards in an accreditation process. Adoption service providers who do not meet the standards will not be permitted to provide adoption services in Hague member countries. Our Hague regulations also require transparent fees, home studies that are approved by an accredited adoption service provider and mandatory training for prospective adoptive parents.

The United States signed the treaty in 1994.

In 2000, Congress passed the Intercountry Adoption Act (IAA), the implementing legislation for the Convention. The Senate gave its advice and consent for ratification of the Convention on the condition that the United States was prepared to meet its obligations under the Convention as provided in IAA.

We are proud to say that we are very close to completion of those preparations.

For more information please see our website at travel.state.gov
Or contact the US Central Authority at AdoptionUSCA@state.gov.

Notice: Department of State Plans to Deposit the Instrument of Ratification in December 2007, US Department of State, November 2007

And finally:

U.S. on Track to Join the Hague Adoption Convention in December
November 19, 2007

A message from the U.S. Department of State

The U.S. Department of State, Office of Children’s Issues, is pleased to announce that the President signed the U.S. instrument of ratification of the Hague Adoption Convention on November 16. The legal requirements for ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) have been completed, and we plan to join with our deposit the instrument of ratification on December 12, 2007! The Department will announce the official date the Convention will go into force for the United States—projected to be April 1, 2008—in the Federal Register. The Hague Adoption Convention protects children and their families against the risks of unregulated adoptions abroad and ensures that intercountry adoptions are made in the best interests of children. The Convention also serves to prevent the abduction of, sale of, or traffic in children.

Once the treaty is in force, the new processing requirements for Hague adoption cases will take effect for adoptions between the United States and more than 70 Convention members. The new process protects the rights of children, birth parents, and adoptive parents while promoting transparency, accountability, and ethical practices among adoption service providers.

U.S. on Track to Join the Hague Adoption Convention in December, US Department of State, 19 November 2007

Desiree

Workshop 1.3, Part I: Ensuring Ethical Relinquishing Practices

Ethics and Accountability Conference
Sponsored by Ethica and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
October 15-16, 2007

Bullet points for discussion during this workshop:

1. What elements should be included in true options counseling?
   
2. What should the rights of relinquishing mothers and fathers be?
   
3. What is an appropriate time period during which relinquishing parents should be able to reverse their decisions to place their children for adoption?
   
4. How can informed consent to adoption be assured?
   
5. What services can be put into place to protect the rights of relinquishing parents?

Panelists:

Melissa Griebel is the Vice President of Ethica, Inc. The mother of two boys, both adopted through domestic, transracial adoptions, she enjoys open adoptions with both sons’ birth families. Melissa, who has served on the Foster Care Review Board for Pima County, Arizona and who moderates two forums addressing domestic adoption issues, has a strong interest in the ethics of domestic adoption, and a special interest in the issues that affect transracial adoptees and their families.

Frederick F. Greenman Jr. is the legal advisor and former Director to the American Adoption Congress and the Treasurer and a director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. Senior counsel to amici curiae in the historic case, Doe v. Sundquist, upholding the 1995 Tennessee Adoption Act, he also assisted counsel in the Does v. Oregon, upholding the ballot initiative and statute which granted adoptees from Oregon access to their original birth certificates. His interest in the subject stems from having surrendered a daughter for adoption at her birth and with whom he reunited 15 years ago.

Jini L. Roby, JD, MSW, MS an attorney and social worker, is an associate professor of social work at Brigham Young University, where she researches and teaches global issues of children at risk, including those who are adopted. She is a former adoption social worker, president of the Utah Adoption Council, founder and director of an agency to prevent and treat child abuse, and a guardian ad litem attorney for children in the public child welfare system. She has assisted several governments of sending countries to establish laws, regulations, and services to birth families contemplating adoption.

Susan Livingston Smith , Program & Project Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, is a leading scholar in the field of post-adoption services. A licensed clinical social worker and Emerita Professor of Social Work at Illinois State University, she has published books and numerous articles in scholarly journals.

Fred Greenman: Speaking on Question 1: What elements should be included in true options counseling?

• I am a birthfather
  
• For the best information on this panel's topic. I recommend reading the article Adoption Consents: Legal Incentives for Best Practices by Elizabeth J. Samuels, Adoption Quarterly, Volume 10, Number 1, 7 March 2007
  
  [Fleasbiting note--Adoption Quarterly charges $35 for a copy of the article. Another article on the same subject by the same author is available for free download at: "Time to Decide? The Laws Governing Mothers' Consents to the Adoption of Their Newborn Infants," by Elizabeth J. Samuels of the University of Baltimore School of Law Fleasbiting will also eventually be publishing notes from Conference Workshop 2.3 where Elizabeth Samuels was one of the panelists.]
  
  
• A few remarks on the subject that Elizabeth Samuels covered so well:
  
  • Those who counsel birthparents should understand and make sure their clients understand:
    
    • The emotional consequences of relinquishing a child can be huge. As a birthfather I had 30 years of insomnia as the result of relinquishing my daughter (and that is mild compared to what other birthparents have suffered)
      
    • Expectant parents considering a surrender become almost "infantile"--that is, they become submissive, out of control of their emotions, and un-adult like in the way that they make decisions.
      
      • I certainly was.
        
      • At the time I surrendered my daughter, I had served three and a half years in the military on active duty; I had gone to officers' candidate school: I was a first lieutenant; I was a second year law student. I was certainly an adult and had seen and done many things as an adult. Presumably I knew quite a bit.
        
      • And yet I behaved like an infant; I was submissive and not in control of my emotions. And that is typical
    • Anecdotally, Samuel's article tells about a Kansas legal case in which a woman behaved in a similarly "infantile" fashion
      
      • It was the Friday before Christmas, she had just given birth, and the hospital was closing; the social worker and everyone else was pressuring her for a quick decision to surrender and so she gave in.
        
      • She was in her late 20's, a college graduate, a licensed professional--and yet she gave into the pressure of the situation; she didn't have the strength to insist that she be allowed to wait and make the momentous decision in her own time frame
        
      • The next morning, having changed her mind and decided to keep her baby, she called the adoptive family--because she couldn't reach the agency--and the adoptive mother told her something on the order of...Sorry--we've bonded with the baby and we're keeping it--Merry Christmas!
        
      • The birthmother fought the case through the Kansas courts and ultimately it went to US Supreme Court which eventually denied cert.--that is, the US Supreme Court declined to hear case. That meant that the lower state opinion was left to stand
        
      • The lower Kansas state opinion had affirmed the adoption and had refused to allow the birthmother to reclaim her child
• People in this situation are extremely vulnerable--no matter what their education, no matter what their background

Susan Livingston Smith: Question 2: What should the rights of relinquishing mothers and fathers be?

• Safeguarding the Rights and Well-being of Birthparents in the Adoption Process."is a report I authored that was published by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute in November 2006. It delineated critical standards in regard to expectant parents who are considering placing their children for adoption
  
• Expectant parents need to be fully informed of all their options and rights. They need to be aware of the resources available to them. They should be helped to formulate alternate plans--plans for parenting their child. They should be helped to understand their legal rights. Etc.
  
• Absolutely most importantly of all, expectant parents need to be helped to understand the implications of all the above. This is sometimes harder than it seems.
  
  • People in this situation are in shock; even the obvious long term implications of these decisions aren't necessarily clear to them. Even things that seem fairly straightforward need to be explained
    
  • This is especially true when adoption is not something in the expectant parent's previous experience.
    
  • Anecdotally, the importance and long term implications for something like, say, choosing an adoptive family isn't necessarily clear to an expectant parent in this situation.
    
    • A young college student became pregnant and, being in a state of denial throughout her whole pregnancy, told absolutely no one until she delivered.
      
    • In the hospital recovery room she called a social worker in order to give her baby up for adoption. While the mother was still under the influence of drugs from birth, the SW came to the hospital and told the young woman that she could choose the adoptive family or the family could be chosen for her. The young mother said, "Well, you choose them."
      
    • In shock and under the influence of drugs, hearing something for the first time, how could she understand the implications make an informed choice? It is hard to understand the implications of anything the first time you hear about it. It takes time to process information/think through all the implications of info you are given. It is hard to process information in this kind of crisis situation.
      
    • In this anecdotal story, for example, the idea of picking a family for your child is potentially very significant. This young woman needed to know that picking a family for her child could have been incredibly empowering to both the adoptee and the adoptive family--to know that the birthmother specifically chose them for each other is empowering to both.
  • Explaining, understanding, and processing the significance, implications, and life-long consequences of these decisions is a process that can't be done quickly or in an encyclopedic way. It takes time. It's hard in the situation
  
  
• Parents should make decisions free from coercion or pressure
  • Again, it is not enough to know facts, but parents must accurately understand the implications of these facts.
    
  • It is a truism that laws shape practice--but sometimes when people are uninformed of the law and its implications, that shaping is to the detriment. This is true of birthparent rights--if the implications of the laws are not understood.
    
    • If a law says that surrender CAN be taken on the fourth day after childbirth, it means that surrender can't be taken before the fourth day. But it does NOT mean that a parent must sign on the fourth day--or make a final decision on the fourth day, as if it were some kind of final once-and-for-all-you-have-to-make-a-decision-today deadline.
      
    • Oftentimes when a parent is told that there are four days til signing, they think that they HAVE to sign a relinquishment on the fourth day. And no one tells them any differently. They don't understand that they don't have to sign then--that they could take more time, decide when they're ready, and then sign/not sign on their own time schedule.
  
  
• Parents should have the right to receive non-directive counseling and independent legal representation.
  
  • It is a right, but not one that is provided for or a condition of a valid relinquishment--that is, almost nowhere is it a real REQUIREMENT.
  • Therefore, very few birthparents get both non-directive counseling and independent representation. Yet in terms of ethical practice, all should be getting both.
    
    • Most states say that you have to inform the expectant parent as to their right to counseling or legal representation--but the law doesn't provide these services or the fees for them or require that those taking the relinquishment provide them
      
    • Louisiana is one of very few states that require both.
      
    • Some states may require one of the two.
  
  
• Birthparents should have the right to change their mind at any time before consent is legally binding
  
  • Many times expectant parents have a sense of obligation; They'd like to change their minds, but they feel they've maybe gone too far to change their mind
    
  • The fact that the expectant parent can change her mind and has every right to do so, should be reiterated to everyone at every step of the adoption process
    
    • In situations where expectant parents meet PAP's, it needs to be reiterated to both parties that adoption is the plan right now, but that the expectant parents have every right to change their minds and might very well do so.
      
    • The counselor needs to constantly verbalize to the expectant parent that changing your mind is their prerogative
  
  
• Post adoption contact agreements need to be enforced. Every state needs to have a process for enforcing post adoption contact agreements.
  
  • Vast majority of birthparents from whom I received emails after publishing this report said something like... I made this adoption decision based on the fact that I was told I could see my child and be a part of his/her life forever. But now the adoptive family says no, I can't see the child.
    
  • Making an agreement in order to get a relinquishment and then going back on that agreement after the relinquishment is given is completely unethical. We shouldn't be using contact provisions to get relinquishments and there ought to be a way to enforce contact agreements

Jini L Roby

• In the international adoption context, the meaning of options counseling is very different
  
• Any adoption agency "worth its salt" will build that into its international program options counseling--exploring options for the parents other than relinquishment and for the child, other than IA
  
  • In cultures outside the Western world, kinship care options is the most important--absolutely essential--option that has to be explored. It is a given.
  • Agencies must absolutely be culturally competent in the sending country in which they are working
    
  • Providing the option for first parents to parent their child themselves (a part of options counseling) means that the agency must help the parent find the necessary resources to make this a viable option.
    
    • It is true that there are varying degrees of resources available overseas in the "sending countries."
      
    • However, I believe--and I have seen--that finding these resources is a matter of will. Most countries do have some resources and if an agency has the will to find these resources and connect the parents with them--the resources to be able to parent their own child--can be done in most cases.
      
    • People say, oh, without IA these children will absolutely die. I've seen that with the will and the resources that that doesn't happen. It is a scare tactic. But there has to be a strong will (from the agency) to make it happen.
      
    • Birthparents can be connected to resources--they are entitled to be connected with resources.
    
    
  • As for independent legal representation, is easier said than done in many countries. Independent legal representation for the birthparent rarely happens in an IA context.
    
    • First, in many countries there isn't the tradition of legal representation for everyone.
      
    • Secondly, it doesn't happen because of the power differentials/disparity involved between first parents and adoption agencies.
      
    • And the agencies, feeling that their resources are already stretched, feel that they can't afford to provide independent legal counsel for the relinquishing parent.
    
    
  • Another important legal aspect is making sure that birthparents in these countries understand what it means to relinquish a child.
    
  • The cultural understanding is often very different as to what adoption/relinquishment means
    
    • Many cultures perceive that adoption is an incomprehensible lie--A lie created to say that the real parents are not parents. And they believe the truth is that behind the lie, the real parent remains the real parent.
      
    • In more cultures than not, the idea of the termination of parental rights is a totally foreign idea that has never been heard or practiced. Explaining what this means is therefore very important. Even with explanations, it is difficult for people to grasp in many cultural contexts. How can it be that you can say a parent is no longer a parent? How can such a thing be? And how can a non-parent be the parent now? This is a hard thing for us to understand as Westerners--how hard this idea is to grasp. Until I saw it myself, I didn't understand how hard it is for other cultures to grasp our idea of adoption.
    
    
  • Unethical practices I've seen in other countries:
    
    • Dynamics where those who are counseling/recruiting birthparents in other countries actually try to pit the birthparents against each other instead of ensuring that both make the decision as a parent team--and I've seen this used--are very, very unethical.
      
    • Carrots dangled in front of parents to induce relinquishments of children are unethical. I've seen this take many forms. We will send you gifts; we will continue to help your family; we'll send you to college; we'll send you on trips to Disneyworld; we'll keep in touch with you; we'll provide openness.
      
      • Especially awful are the false inducements--false carrots dangled to obtain relinquishment. Most of these promises are never followed through on.
        
      • Expectant parents have the right not to be defrauded. In many sending countries because of economic disparity, the US and West is thought of as being paved with gold, so they have skewed ideas of us and life here.
        
      • Similarly, the idea that anything could be hard there in the West, for their children, is also hard to comprehend. It is an idea as far-fetched as the idea of the fiction of judges creating new parents.
    
    
  • Birthparents should have the right to recognized as parents for a lifetime. Not just to be viewed as the biologic or genetic tools for getting the child onto the earth for the adoptive parents.
    
  • Finally counselors must be sensitive and recognize the pain and loss that relinquishing parents deal with. I know that as a biological mom, even imagining being separated from my child like these women are causes extreme emotional distress. We have to afford relinquishing moms the same emotional humanity.
    
  • Finally we should work to help birthparents live in world without shame; Where they can be accepted as having made the best decision at the time on behalf of their children

Fred Greenman

• On contact enforcement....
  
  • Very few states provide for enforcement of contact agreements. Where provision isn't made, contact agreements are usually not enforceable. They ought to be, but they aren't.
    
    • If not enforceable in a particular state, that should be made brutally clear to the relinquishing parents.
  • Care should be taken to make sure contact agreements are done according to applicable laws. For example, many times the law says that agreements must be incorporated into adoption decrees. Anecdotally, where an agreement was not properly filed in court, birthparents are now in court fighting to have it enforced.
    
    • Especially important to get things right because the legal clout and money is often with AP's. It's hard/expensive for birthparents to get justice.
• If birthparent rights were enforced by courts, much bad adoption practice would be eliminated.
  
  • For example, if courts enforced the rights of birthparents to rescind relinquishments during a reasonable period of time after surrender, better practice--thorough non-coercive counseling and independent legal representation--would become standard practice as an insurance to avoid later birthparent change of mind.
    
  • Because birthparent rights aren't taken seriously by courts, bad adoption practice is allowed to flourish.

Melissa Griebel Let's go to bullet point 3: What is an appropriate time period during which relinquishing parents should be able to reverse their decisions to place their children for adoption?

Susan Livingston Smith:

• This is a controversial question. There are strong opinions both ways. If you work with adoptive parents, you tend to see it strongly one way. If you work with birthparents, then you tend to see the other side of the issue and feel strongly the other way.
  
• One reality that shapes thinking is the availability of infant care while birthparents are struggling with this decision. This care is simply not always available everywhere in this country.
  
• The waiting period between birth and the time of relinquishment:
  
  • The European Convention on the Adoption of Childrensigned by 18 European countries says that relinquishment for adoption can't happen prior to 6 weeks after the birth of a child.
    
  • Trying to be realistic, the Evan B. Donaldson Institute recommended that there ought to be a period of at least 7-10 days before a mother or father could sign a relinquishment document for a child. For 2-3 weeks following this signing of the relinquishment document there ought to be a revocation period in which a parent can change their mind without having to prove anything before a court as to why its in the best interest of the child.
    
  • There are now only 6 states that require at least 3 days to pass after birth before a child can be relinquished.
    
  • There are several states that allow relinquishment before the birth of a child, although there is a provision within these states that allow the decision to be rescinded.
    
  • The longest period of time in the US between the time of birth and the time of allowable relinquishment is Louisiana which requires a minimum of 5 days.
    
  • I asked an Obstetrics professor how long it took a woman's hormones to reach a normal level again after birth. He answered that he'd never read anything from a research point of view, but that he'd say it would take at least two weeks for the hormones released during the birth process to dissipate. The hormone flux is huge. It must take several days for a woman to be able to think more clearly without these hormones at play. Should a woman be allowed to relinquish during this time of flux? Is it fair to her and her child?
  
  
• In terms of revocation periods...
  
  • There are 17 states that have a revocation period from 3 to 30 days--most on the shorter side. Very little power or lobby. In NC, the revocation period was recently shortened from 30 days to 7 days. It is a battle to get the laws to give adequate time.
    
  • Elizabeth Samuels wrote a wonderful article about the revocation period.

Melissa Griebel Do you know how many states allow fathers to sign before the birth or how much time they are given?

Susan Livingston Smith

• Even ensuring that the birthparents understand that there is a revocation period, what that means, and how to revoke their consent is a problem currently.
  
• I was involved in a case where a birthfather was able to get his child back because they (the agency) had not explained the revocation period to the father. The agency had placed the child before the revocation period was over and the father changed his mind within the period but the agency said--sorry, but we already placed the child. It took a judicial ruling to get the child back. But to understand how difficult even that case was and how hard it is for the average birthparent to undo a relinquishment, you should understand that this father and his family spent $200,000 in legal fees fighting to get the child back--and he had changed his mind within the legal revocation time. It is difficult to get a child back--the legal process is hard and costly. Not all birthparents can manage to do it; and not all have the resources to do so--in fact, very few do.

Melissa Griebel Let's go on to the next bullet point: How can informed consent to adoption be assured?

Susan Livingston Smith

• I have spent time looking at ethical codes for social workers and thought about how it applies to obtaining consent from birthparents.
  
• As for what consent means and how it is worked out practically...
  
  • Even in terms of medical consent, I for one have even stopped reading medical consent forms because they scare me to death. Things that can go wrong are spelled out.
    
  • But in adoption, we don't include in our thinking about informed consent/counseling/forms, the implications and long term consequences of the relinquishment decisions.
    
    • For example, the fact that relinquishing parents will experience long term grief.
      
    • Yet, similar situations require counseling and forms that spell out the implications and long term consequences.
      
      • What do we put surrogate parents through--the processes we require? We require counseling, etc. We ask, are you sure this is something you can do?
  • With expectant parents and adoption, by contrast, it is usually once over and lightly. Often not out of maliciousness--we perhaps think the expectant parents know what they are doing?
    
  • But we instead need to make sure that before someone signs a document, that they've had adequate time, they've had adequate information, they've had independent legal counsel, that they know whether the post adoption contact agreement is enforceable, that they know whether there are other people in their extended family that would like to raise this child (kinship adoption), that birthfathers have been asked if they want to raise the child
    
    • BTW, birthfathers should be offered every service that expectant mothers get-- expectant fathers should know that they have the right to all the same services as the expectant mothers
      
    • We give short shrift to the father. We often see him as an obstacle to get around. This is unethical.
• In short, there should be a lot of quality counseling, services and decision making that goes into a informed consent decision.

Melissa Griebel

• I've seen adoption websites that actually state that they find that fathers don't care as much about their children as mothers do.
  
• There was a case about 7 years ago in Reader's Digest, etc. about a expectant father named Spenser. The agency sent him the relinquishment paperwork to sign and he refused and said he wanted the child. He was not allowed to have the child. He fought 3 years to get guardianship and to get his child back, but he never succeeded. The adopting parents were also never allowed to fully adopt the child, but received permanent guardianship. He never got the opportunity to have his child though he never wanted to sign the papers and he didn't. And no one knew quite what to do.

Susan Livingston Smith

• In the case I talked about earlier, the birthmother who had already surrendered gave the paperwork to the birthfather--a college graduate in an exclusive relationship with the birthmother.
  
  • There were specific instructions with the paperwork saying that the paperwork had to be witnessed and notarized, etc.--in order for the relinquishment to be valid. And the birthfather didn't do any of that--he simply signed it.
    
  • And yet the court looked at none of that as a reason for the papers being invalid--they simply looked at intent--did he intend to relinquish his child?
    
  • And his changing his mind came clearly within the revocation period, when he also should have been able to change his mind anyway.
    
  • A licensed SW took short cuts and didn't do things properly.
    
  • Much that is not in the best interest of expectant parents passes as meeting the letter of the law when it really doesn't.
    
  • There's a lot that happens that is just plain sloppy. And that hurts real people.

Jini Roby

• I'd just like to remind us that under the provisions of the constitution, parents have the right to parent their biological children but there is no right to adoption that is protected by the constitution or by any state for that matter.
  
  • That should give us some perspective about what informed consent means.
    
  • It means giving away a right that you have--that is constitutionally protected--and so how rigorous should the process be when a person is giving away that kind of a right?
    
  • We often talk about informed consent, but we rarely talk about voluntary consent.
    
    • Consent should be both informed and voluntary.
      
    • Informed--meaning that you know what the legal ramifications are of giving that consent--and voluntary--meaning that you have OTHER options but that you choose this option.
      
    • Here again, in the international context, I see that consent is often not voluntary. In the international context it is often informed. But sometimes it is not even that.
      
      • Working in sending countries I have seen that people who come from the US and Europe are perceived as very intimidating.
        
      • It is easy to feel intimidated and grant their wishes.
        
      • These people also see that you are powerful and that your arms ache for a child...and so there is emotional intimidation as well.

Fred Greenman

• Informed consent...
  
  • I don't think you can have informed consent with the very vulnerable people we're talking about without independent counseling and independent legal counsel.
  • This independent legal counsel is required in some places, but even where it is, the attorney is usually selected and paid for by the adoption agency or the AP's.
    • And remember that this adoption agency is a business that continues--they are involved in a series of adoptions.
      
    • There are problems having to do with repeated hiring.
      
    • The party who does the hiring quickly learns which legal counsel will "be troublemakers" and which will "help speed the process along as expected."
      
    • It is the attorneys who are helpful to moving the process along who will be hired. And everybody knows that--the people giving the advice and counseling do too.
      
    • The only way to get proper informed consent for those who can't afford their own counsel in these cases will be if you have independent counsel, publicly funded--maybe something like legal aid or the public defender's office.

Melissa GriebelThis may work into the last question which we have to cover: What services can be put into place to protect the rights of relinquishing parents?

Fred Greenman

• Well the independent legal fees coverage would certainly be my first suggestion, but also the one that Susan Livingston Smith suggested, which was that, along with a reasonable rescission or revocation period, there have to be places in which to place a child during the revocation period.
  
  • You cannot expect to place a child with the AP's during this period of time and then expect to yank him back.
    
  • The nice thing about a capitalistic system like ours is that if the law is changed and something like this is mandated and money is provided, then the need will be filled. Foster parents will be found.
    
  • Children were routinely placed in foster care in previous generations, for at least to six months, to be evaluated, and this could easily be reinstated.

Smith

• As a social worker who believes in infant attachment, I wouldn't advocate placing a child in foster care for six months.
  
• Research on infant development shows that it takes 6-8 months before an infant is attached to a primary caregiver.
  
• However, a month of quality temporary care is not going to harm an infant. And I agree that having that required time before relinquish is allowed is something that needs to happen. But not for six months...
  
• Another thing that interferes with the practice of informed consent is that many expectant parents do not contact an agency until very close to their due date.
  
  • When I was doing research for this paper, one agency told me that 42% of their expectant parents who relinquished didn't contact them until the last 10 days before birth or else after birth.
    
  • This quality work of informed consent takes time.
    
  • Often there is the perceived need to rush when you have a client who has already given birth or is about to give birth.
    
  • This reality constraint causes professionals to try to shorten the process--to get it done quickly. It would be better to slow it down.
    
  • It would be better to not place the child until you're sure that the parent isn't going to revoke their consent--that they've had time to make a good decision.
  • Our tendency to speed things up causes a lot of the problems that we then have to go back later and fix.

Jini Roby

• We often think in terms of "birthparent rights" versus "best interest of children"--I think we have to stop thinking in terms of mutually exclusive categories like that.
  
• We have to take a review or an overview of what adoption is meant to do.
  
  • Adoption is meant to create adequate SUBSTITUTES for children who are not ABLE to stay with their families of origin.
    
  • It behooves us to think as to how we can best protect the child's interest by protecting and preserving their families of origin.
  
  
• When we talk about birthparent rights, we should not think of these as opposed to the rights of children to grow up in a loving family with happiness and understanding.
  
  • Yet I see that dichotomy all too often out in the adoption practice world. I don't know how many times I have heard agencies out there say something like this, "Oh, I can't believe that a birthmother did it to us again! In other words, she changed her mind!"
  
  
• We have to be reminded again and again as to what the purpose of adoption is.
• The constitutionally protected right to parent one's child and the right to self-determination and most of all the belief that children really are best cared for in their families of origin if in fact those families can be supported to do so--if the ability and capacity is there.
  
• A final word about dual representation....by one single adoption agency. I am increasingly having trouble with this concept. In the legal world, one law firm is NOT allowed to represent opposing parties.
  
  • We don't want to think of adoption as an adversarial situation--the parties in adoption as being opposing parties, but you know what? They are. It is one of those hard truths that we have to face.
    
  • The fact is that only one set of parents--or opposing set of parents--will have the right to raise the child.
    
  • Our legal system grants exclusive or almost exclusive rights to one set of parents. Let's face this fact. It is an adversarial situation.
    
  • And so what are we doing, doing options counseling for expectant parents AND doing adoptions out of the SAME agency--I think it's unethical. And I think that we think very much towards doing what Fred suggested--having separate entities do options counseling for birthparents and doing adoption services to place children.

Melissa Griebel

• I want to put in my own comment on a topic that hasn't come up yet, and that is the payment of birthparent expenses.
  
  • The payment of birthparent expenses is very problematic in the realm of coercion, emotional coercion, feeling of obligation, financial coercion.
    
  • There should a separation of where the money comes from and the prospective adoptive parents. There is a lot of controversy on exactly how something like this is set up, but I think it's really important.
    
  • From an ethical viewpoint, however, it's essential to take care of the needs of an expectant parent separate from the adoptive parents and the infrastructure for the adoptive parents.

Please see Workshop 1.3, Part II: Ensuring Ethical Relinquishing Practices--Question and Discussion for notes from the remainder of Workshop 1.3