Retaining Prospective Adoptive and Foster Parents
Presented by Judith Ashton

NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children, Inc.
17th Annual Statewide Adoption Training Conference
Adoption 2006: There's No Place like Home
May 12-13, 2006 • Albany New York

AdoptUsKids

Barriers to Adoption

1. Public agency customer service issues:

Calls not returned or not timely returned to prospective families
Uninformed or misinformed staff
Rudeness
Pressure to foster rather than adopt

2. Some public agencies are unable to provide timely homestudy services. Increased cross county collaboration is needed. (See A Success Story below.)

3. Lack of awareness/knowledge of interjurisdictional issues (See A Success Story below.)

4. Lack of awareness/knowledge/use of NYS’s Family Album

5. Limited access to Spanish language services

A SUCCESS STORY

We were first in touch with Sue in January after she contacted AUsK via the internet. She lives in a small rural upstate NY county and was becoming very frustrated by the lack of local adoption services. She was interested in adopting an older sibling group from foster care, but her local county didn't have any preadoption training scheduled in the near future, and surrounding counties weren't interested in providing adoption services to out of county residents. She had contacted a private agency some distance from her home but really wasn't interested in private or international adoption. She wanted to make a difference for kids in care.

We urged her to contact surrounding counties again, particularly the county whose border is only a few miles from her home. We called that county and spoke with the homefinder who agreed to enroll Sue and her husband in their upcoming MAPP class and work with her home county to complete the homestudy.

We called Sue back and gave her the homefinder’s direct number and sent her our information packet. We stayed in touch throughout the last few months. During the six-month follow up call, we learned that they were in the process of adopting two siblings, ages 10 and 16, from another county. The children moved in shortly after our call.

Through the cooperation and flexibility of the local districts that overcame geographic and interjurisdictional barriers, these NYS foster children were able to find a permanent family.

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NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children, Inc.
410 East Upland Road • Ithaca, NY 14850
607-272-0034 • FAX 607-272-0035
office@nysccc.org
08/09/2006