A few months ago, the story about the American adoptive mother who put her Russian-born son on an airplane with a note saying she was effectively “sending him back,” made international headlines. The story outraged many, who wondered whether the woman would have made a similar decision with a biological son.
In response to this story and others like it, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute issued a research study titled “Keeping The Promise: The Critical Need for Post-Adoption Services to Enable Children and Families to Succeed.” (The Evan B. Donaldson Institute is the policy- and opinion-making leader in adoption in the United States.)
The study acknowledges the real and undoubtedly heartbreaking challenges faced by some adoptive families, at the same time it underlines the critical need for hope and for help. I, for one, applaud the Institute for focusing its attention on post-placement adoption services.
You can read the entire report here. Below is a short summary.
“The report stresses that the vast majority of adopted children function normally — and their parents are highly satisfied with their families. But it also points out that just over the past 15 years, nearly a million boys and girls were adopted by Americans from foster care in our country and from orphanages abroad, and the majority of U.S. adoptions continue to be of those types (by far, mostly from state child welfare systems).”
“‘What it means is that these children live with the emotional, psychological and developmental consequences of having been abused, neglected or institutionalized before they were adopted,’ said Adoption Institute Executive Director Adam Pertman. ‘The good news is that most of them, and their families, are doing just fine; the bad news is that the ones who need help too often aren’t getting it.'”
http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/research/2010_10_promises.php
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So glad to hear that something to support parents will be in place. Thank you for sharing this. That case with Russian boy still haunts me, and I think about that family often, both the parents and the boy. I can’t fathom what harships both sides have gone through.
I still think about that boy too, Sveta. Like you, I can’t fathom the hardships endured by so many, especially children. How do they go on? This research, let’s hope, is a positive step in getting help for those who need it.