Post Adoption Services
No Longer An Option
Presented by Ken Watson
NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children, Inc.
13th Annual Statewide Adoption Training Conference
Adoption 2002: Linking Promises to Possibilities
May 10, 2002 • Albany New York
Rationale and Overview of Services:
Post adoption services is really a misnomer. Since adoption is not a singular event but a lifelong situation, "post" adoption services would have to be those following death. The issue we really are addressing is the recognition that because adoption always creates conditions that complicate the lives of those involved, independent of who they are or the other circumstances of their lives, access to a range of subsequent support and preservation services is an essential requirement of successful adoption services. A more descriptive term would be adoption support and preservation services.
Such ongoing services broadly fall into three categories:
• a continuation of services to those involved beyond the consummation of an adoptionservices to the birth parents to help them grieve their loss and accept their role in a new extended family systemservices to the adoptive parents to help them with their new parenting role, with the unique issues that their adopted children may have bought with them (or that; result from the placement); and to understand and accept the role they have in the new extended family system to which they now belong
services to the children, as needed, in response to their past history and experiences, the impact of the adoption, and as members of the new adopted family system
• support groups, or agency initiated services on an organized basis and unrelated to any one specific family's immediate request, or both
• services to any member or family that is a part of an extended adoption kinship network and who are seeking referral or counseling to help cope with issues relate, to the adoption; or seeking information about, or contact with, any others who were part of that adoption.
Responsibility and Service Delivery
If we really believe that adoption is primarily a service for children who need competent, permanent, legal families - then all adoption services, including adoption support and preservation, are a public responsibility. All children are indigent, and in our society the costs of the needed care for the indigent become a public responsibility, borne either by that, taxpayers or by voluntary donors who have no expectation of receiving direct services in return for their money. Practically, that means that the public child welfare system must provide needed adoption support and preservation services either directly of through contracting with competent service vendors.
Adoption Support and Preservation Services Must Be
• Relevant• Comprehensive
• Coordinated
• Advertised (made known)
• Provided with competence
• Adequately financed
• Easily accessible
5/21/02