Adoption dissolutions or disruptions are a tragedy for everyone--the child, the parents, and the family. What can we do to prevent them from happening, how do we know when they are inevitable and what to do if an adoption failure becomes inevitable? We talk with Dr. Richard Barth, Dean and Professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and researcher in the area of adoption and adoption dissolution and disruption. Also joining us is Stephen Hayes, a litigator for more than 35 years with Grady, Hayes & Neary specializing in adoption and foster care. He is a member of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys and has been recognized in Best Lawyers in America and Wisconsin Super Lawyers. Our host is Dawn Davenport, Executive Director of Creating a Family, the national foster care & adoption education and support nonprofit.
Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily
Adoption dissolutions or disruptions are a tragedy for everyone--the child, the parents, and the family. What can we do to prevent them from happening, how do we know when they are inevitable and what to do if an adoption failure becomes inevitable? We talk with Dr. Richard Barth, Dean and Professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and researcher in the area of adoption and adoption dissolution and disruption. Also joining us is Stephen Hayes, a litigator for more than 35 years with Grady, Hayes & Neary specializing in adoption and foster care. He is a member of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys and has been recognized in Best Lawyers in America and Wisconsin Super Lawyers. Our host is Dawn Davenport, Executive Director of Creating a Family, the national foster care & adoption education and support nonprofit.
Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:welcome everyone to creating a family talk about adoption and foster care. Today we're going to be talking about a hard subject, uh, adoption dissolutions specifically how to prevent and when to accept and what to do when they become inevitable. This is a topic that gets a lot of attention in the media, uh, and also gets a lot of attention by adoptive parents. We're going to be talking today with Dr. Richard Barth. He is the dean of the School of social work and a professor at the University of Maryland School of social work. He has conducted research in the area of adoption and adoption, dissolution. We'll also be talking with Steve Hayes. Steve has been a litigator for more than 35 years with Grady haze, Neri in Milwaukee, specializing in adoption and foster care. He is a member of the Academy of adoption and assisted reproduction attorneys and has been recognized in best lawyers in America and Wisconsin. Super Lawyers. Welcome Rick and Steve to creating a family.
Speaker 3:Thanks Don. Who would give me on?
Speaker 2:Alright. Um, as I said, this is a, this is a tough time. This is a tough topic. It's also one that that I think it captures, captures people outside of the adoption world's attention to. So we see more media coverage of it, uh, than in other areas of adoption. Um, Steve, can you start by helping us understand the distinction between adoption to solution and adoption disruption?
Speaker 3:Sure. Was it an adoption dissolution means that there has been a completed adoption and now some sort of legal effort is being made to end the adoption itself and create, um, I'm going to say hopefully a new family for the child, although sometimes it results in institutionalization. Disrupted adoption is a placement that is headed at least in the minds of the, probably the child and the family depending on the age of the child toward an adoption, things do not work out and they end up going off that track and there is no adoption. So that would be an, a disruption of an adoption process.
Speaker 2:And we more often would see disruption seldom happen in international adoption because the adoptions are finalized usually shortly after the parents and the children meet. But we would see a disruption more frequently and foster care adoptions because their child is living with the family usually depending on the state for at least six months before the adoption is finalized. So, um, so that's that, that is the distinction. I, it's so confusing to people that honestly I sometimes just refer to him as failed adoptions. But, um, it's important to, to, to make the distinction. Um, Rick, let's now talk about you have been, have been one of the lead researchers in the area of adoption, dissolution and adoption disruptions. So I would like to talk about what the research shows. One of my frustrations as somebody who is often digging deep into the research, trying to, uh, share with both professionals and parents what the research says. One of my frustrations is that one, there isn't a lot of research and, but to the research that does exist often doesn't distinguish between dissolutions and disruptions. And, and I, I think I understand the reason or maybe I don't understand the reasons why I should ask. Why is that? Why that so much of the research conflate the two to me and to me there are different things.
Speaker 4:Well, the challenges that the research doesn't really keep up with the lives of our families. So most of it is quite short term only lasts for maybe 18 months or three years. And um, and very little of it really follows what happens when kids end up in a displacement where they leave the home and then that may result in a dissolution leader or it may not. Uh, so there are a lot of challenges in the research, but I guess the general answer to that is that dissolutions generally take longer to occur. And so we don't measure them as well because people don't want to wait around for a, a one month old who gets adopted to, um, have a dissolution when they turn 16 and the family decides they have to give up their parental rights because they can't pay for the residential care needs, for example, of the child. And they want the public child welfare agency to take that child back. So we'd probably miss almost all of those because the research we do is very short term disruptions on the other hand happens sooner. Um, they happen usually adoptions tend to get finalized within three to five years after the child comes to live in foster care. So they tend to be more often discussed under the microscope, um, because they're in the agency's purview and then the agency's data.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. That's, that. That was just the sheer of the timing and the, just the sheer number of, they're more, as you would imagine, more disruptions. Um, then there are failed. You raise an interesting, uh, uh, question and that is, um, we see these, uh, are a dis or adoption disillusions or failed adoptions more common with older child adoption or do you see them pretty evenly spread across all types of adoption?
Speaker 4:I don't think we have a really a great sense of that because we, um, tend, again not to know as much about the older child situations, those families may have been disconnected from the agency that placed the child. If it was internationally, they're completely disconnected. And even if they were in a public child welfare agencies or private agencies working with your county or state agency, often by the time a child has been adopted for a long time, we don't know. Um, we don't follow them very well. I suspect that, um, more of them are occurring when a for older kids and more of them are occurring when there's been something that has happened and exchange between the child and the family, that's considered dangerous to the child or to the family. Um, and that results in having to have the child live temporarily elsewhere in a psychiatric facility or juvenile services or residential treatment program. Um, and the, as that kind of doesn't succeed, then they look for other alternatives and one of those might be illegal. Um, dissolution. The one thing I do want to say though is that it's important to remember that, um, most adoptions succeed. So even the most pessimistic views of adoption, um, the yield displaced from the race. That is kids who have to leave either by disruption or this solution and go live someplace else, um, that are anywhere near 50%. There. I'm lower than that. Um, and even for older kids, they're in the 20 or 30% range, um, which is too high for any of us to feel good about. But people should still be optimistic when they enter into an adoption that their adoption will not have the solution of disruption or as I call them, like displacement.
Speaker 2:And from what we say in granted if an extra from the research right now though as you point out, there isn't a lot. Um, it is a significantly more common with older child adoption than with infant adoption. But I, I couldn't, I don't think that there are good statistics on how often it happens. Certainly we know that age is a, uh, it's a, it's core correlates highly with an increase in the rate of displacement. Um, the correlates very highly. Yes. Yeah. Um, and, and why do you specifically using the term displacement?
Speaker 4:So there are a lot of things that happened in adoption. Um, some times you succeed beautifully. Sometimes kids run away and go live with of their prior family. Uh, sometimes, um, a child goes into a residential boarding program. Sometimes they go to residential care sometimes, um, to live with a previous foster family. So there are, there are things that happen where the child is no longer in the home as intended, uh, and as everybody hoped. But that doesn't mean that they failed or that, um, there was some legal action that was taken. Uh, it doesn't mean that they're going around town saying this is a great experience. Everybody should try this because it's painful. Families knocked out, things work out the way that you hope. But on the other hand, life is long. Uh, I know lots of stories of kids who have, um, rejoined their adoptive families in their 20s or become part again and understood what the family was offering them. Um, even though they might have experienced some period of what I would call displacement, even dissolutions, um, there are kids who, um, come back to live with their adoptive families even after parental rights had been terminated. So, uh, that's why I tend to want to use a term that sounds a little less permanent.
Speaker 2:Steve, I know you have, um, had a lot of legal experience with families who are in the process of dissolving their adoption. Just off the top of your head, what are some of the reasons that, uh, the more common reasons that families are throwing in the towel if in fact they are throwing in the towel? Because I think is as a doctor, Barth has pointed out sometimes they're there less throwing in the towel then seeking a better help for their child and they're still involved in the child's life or hope to be.
Speaker 3:Certainly we have a problem because we don't have post adoption resources readily available for people that are having problems. And Wisconsin, we have a problem, I think getting adequate respite care for families that need it. But if you're talking about, let's just anecdotal, not based on research like uh, Dr Barth is presenting parents' expectations of the child and the process are not met. I mean to that end, we have advocated for forms of adoption education be written into the statute or the administrative codes require a, these people listen to others talk about what they're going to be dealing with adoption. Uh, that. So I think parents expectations, uh, generally about adoption are not met. The child may not be a child that behaves the way they expected it. Uh, the child may have significant undisclosed physical or mental health problems at the parents were not prepared to deal with and don't know how to deal with four older children. Oftentimes it's when they've had serious trouble with law school authorities or they're receiving mental health treatment or fiscal health, uh, treatment that, uh, the parents don't believe they can continue thus end up. I and Andy ended up looking for other solutions that will take the burden off them for raising the child. Um, I will say you mentioned placement of older children. I think a cause, uh, has to do with the background of the children that are being placed. And this is again, anecdotal, but, um, we had a very large number of, uh, we'll call them disruptions. All they were also dissolutions will we use Dr Bars, term displacement, which I like as a better term anyhow. Um, we had a real problem with placements from the Soviet Union, a because there was a lot of health background that wasn't disclosed and there are a lot of health problems that the kids got from their biological parents, uh, be the orphanage setting wasn't particularly good. And some of the orphanages in international adoption, there's no, there's no touch, there's no holding, there's no love, there's no talking to babies. The babies are more warehoused than they are cared for. Uh, that's created a problem. And I think that, uh, people that are adopting internationally sometimes don't appreciate the difficulty they're going to have with a child that has had multiple fire prior placements or has had, uh, a background that is very difficult to overcome in terms of the amount of baggage that's being brought in on. Um, I think that those are some of the things that we see anecdotally as being, uh, causes of the problem. I'll mention one other one. Um, what other requirements that I have as a firm before I'll participate, uh, in working on a double dissolution or disruption, I want to make sure that the family has at least tried therapy with the child and we normally involve the therapist in how to deal with the movement of the child. Um, I would say that most of the families we see have been to therapy for some time, but we have some families that have never utilized any form of therapy and they're throwing in the towel and we have some, I have difficulty dealing with those. Uh, we think that therapy, uh, progress can solve some of these problems, uh, and maybe make the family harmonious once again. Uh, but for whatever reason, sometimes families declined to engage in it. And there are other causes too. Sometimes it's not the child and the child's mental health issues or physical health issues. Sometimes it's, it's the parents themselves, just like birth parents. Not Everybody is an instinctive parent. Uh, we don't have parent training to speak of. Uh, and sometimes parenting methods, parenting skills or caused called into question, creates some of the problems we see in the relationships between, um, the potential adapt to or adapt.
Speaker 5:Gee, let me just take a moment to pause here to remind everyone that this show is brought to you by the support of our underwriters. And our underwriter is jockey being family foundation. Uh, they are looking for adoption agencies who want to provide continued support to their families after adoption. It could segue into what was just said. I, uh, Steve Hayes, um, their mission is to provide a post adoption support their families. In one way they do that is through their backpack program. They provide you adopted children with their own backpack, personalized with their initials and filled with for the child a stuffed bear and the warm, cuddly blanket. But for the parents, there is a tote bag, uh, containing, yeah,
Speaker 2:parenting resources, uh, for the child and for before the parents specifically geared towards that child. So if you are listening and you know of an agency that is not a, and there's not a part of this wonderful free resource, have the agency contact jockey being family.com, go to that website, jockey being family.com and click on backpack program and there is a form that the agency could fill out and I strongly encourage you to do that. Dr Barth, uh, Steve mentioned managing expectations. I don't want to come back to that because you and I've talked about this before. Um, I, if it seems so often that, and, and I, I speak as a, as an adoption educator and that's our goal is to prepare and, and, and families and help them have realistic expectations. So I personally feel like it's a failure when, when that doesn't happen, if we have failed families, so how can we help families come up with a realistic expectation of what parenting this child is going to be like? And I, I think that we can safely focus more on, um, families adopting older kids, but perhaps not perhaps, uh, just in general children,
Speaker 4:it's very challenging to set your expectations. At the right level and to try to keep them there as time goes by. I think that most people have this inclination to let their expectations drift back towards what their experience was as a child or what their siblings are. Experiences are, what their nieces and nephews experiences are. And as Steve said, there's a lot of ex traumatic experiences and often, um, under stimulation and other things which changed the way that a child is going to process information, whether that's educational information or information that they're getting in their relationships with family members. One of the biggest risks for adoption disruption, it turns out to be the adoptive parents or dissolution is the adoptive parents, uh, dissatisfaction with their child's educational progress. Basically their frustration. Adoptive parents often are pretty well educated because they have to be to get through the challenges of the adoption process. And they put a lot of, they have a lot at stake and the educational performance of their kids and they hope that they can through their extra enrichment and extra knowledge, um, accelerate their child's learning so that they catch up to, um, their nieces and nephews in their vision about what a third grader should be or what a first grader should be or what a seventh grader should be. And hard to manage that. But, um, I think what, what I see and what I've learned personally is an adoptive parent is that the most important thing really is the relationship to the child. That if a child is, um, feeling relatively secure about their, where they are and the school they go to and some comfort there, that, um, that's going to be more important than, uh, exactly how they perform. Amen. Two missions are, um, wanting this child to go to college, wanting this, worrying about this child's a high school graduation. Um, it turns out actually that what we've always known of as blue collar families, although all these concepts are changing, have better outcomes and adoption than do white collar families. I think that's because they often have a broader set of options for kids that if you don't really want to be a, a great student, um, there are all kinds of other things that make life satisfying and it's really important to manage those educational expectations perhaps as much as anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up because[inaudible] and just to reiterate the point you made, that it's all about the relationship and, and we've got to let our expectations of school go. I will say that that often parents expectations around school is based on fear and, and the fear is this child will never be able to support herself. This child is going to be living in my basement forever. This child will never will never be able to, to function in our society. And that's, that's the underlying fear. You're right. I mean, sometimes it's, what are people going to think, think of me when I have a child that didn't graduate from high school type of thing. But I think a lot of times it's a fear based response. Um, and, uh, and, and what we can tell you is that there's a lot of different ways to make it in the world and it's not necessarily going to be your way, uh, but that it also isn't necessarily going to be a child, uh, living in your basement at the age of 40. Uh, so I do think that that, uh, broadening our idea of what we mean by success is, is vital. But success in the world is vital. Um, we had been talking about the reasons for, um, adoptions, uh, displacing our failing. I just wanted to say that seldom in my experience are their fears are the physical issues the child presents. The reason that parents struggle, almost always it is the emotional reasons. And I think that is surprising to a lot of parents at the very beginning. Um, but, uh, that's that. We certainly see that. And, and the other thing is that I, I want to stress that while we're talking about the reasons for disruption, it's easy to fall into the, into the blame game where we're blaming the child. Uh, because as Steve said, these kids often come with a real deficit. But I do think that parents need to look at themselves and say, what did I bring to this table as well? And expectations and unrealistic expectations is certainly one of them. Um, let's talk some, uh, Dr Barth about the impact of trauma because almost all children, in fact, I would venture to say that all children adopted at an older age have experienced some trauma.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, trauma is problematic because it has an effect on a child's executive functioning. The way that their brain stores information, their working memory, um, their ability to inhibit themselves or their self control and often their attention, their ability to focus. And those three things may not all be affected the same way and it, and the problems may emerge at different points in their life, but they are all at risk when kids have experienced, um, trauma of lots of change being scared, um, harm like through abuse, uh, fear of starvation or not eating. Um, all of those things.
Speaker 2:Well and it just, the act of being removed from, uh, from whatever place they were and put in your home. You know, we don't want to think about it as traumatic, but in fact it is.
Speaker 4:It is indeed. And there's this, you know, a relatively small proportion of those kids who will end up with a phobia. Um, they will actually become fearful of certain objects and they may need, um, some kind of trauma intervention like cognitive behavior, uh, CBT plus or trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy that has, um, a particular focus on, uh, these fears. But most of the time, even kids who have been, you've come out of the child welfare system and come into foster care, don't have traumatic symptoms per se, but they do have some of these, um, executive functioning issues and they may just really be cautious about making relationships about being harmed. Um, very sensitive to stimuli. And sometimes that does dissolve over time. Um, and very often it does, but that's a good place where therapy for kids can also be helpful, especially if they're turning out to be some phobias that are involved.
Speaker 2:We throw around the term reactive attachment disorder way too often in my opinion. Um, but, uh, but I do think attachment is, um, remembering and of course it attachment falls on the spectrum, but I do think attachment is, is an important topic then. It's certainly, it's on the minds of most adoptive families because parenting a child who is not attached, this is hard and it's not in that give and take in that reward that parents get is often absent. Um, so let's talk a little about, uh, attachment issues at how they might impact or what parents can do in advance to prepare for attachment struggles so that they aren't, uh, so thrown off balance and, and, uh, that they're, they're, they're not able to parent this child for the longterm.
Speaker 4:So attachments are basically relationships and, um, we all have our, uh, proclivities are tendencies towards the kinds of relationships we like. Um, and I think one of the first things to work on is to be thinking about what we expect in our relationships, what we're comfortable with, how much variation there is between us and our partners are us in our family members. And that this is not something that's, um, uh, that's predictable and that you really have to kind of understand your own, um, securities, insecurities, about how you relate to people, to prime yourself, to do the same for the child and to look at your relationship with the child with some broader perspectives. So you aren't just thinking that there's one kind of relationship to have with this child. I think the, um, issues of, um, allowing kids to be able to explore, um, to follow their own lead at times, um, not necessarily to be able to follow your lead or interact with you in the ways that you want are also critical. That sort of at the interface between your expectations for how you're gonna interact with this child and how much pleasure or benefit you're going to get. How soon after child comes to Lou with you and the, you know, attachment world. So, um, the expectations for what that relationship are going to be or certainly critical to how you feel about whether or not this relationship was this adoption was a good idea. And whether you remain open to some of the rejection, um, that you're going to get along the pair of, you know, great, possibly towards a better relationship.
Speaker 2:And another thing that, that often, uh, throws families for a loop is the lack of insurance coverage for mental health are the lack of adequate resources and the family's ability to pay for them. Steve, how common is that a n issue in your experience with, uh, adoption disruptions and not just in your state, but from what you see throughout the u s
Speaker 3:well, I think, I don't, I don't see health insurance or lack of it as being a major problem. You, you I think correctly pointed out earlier that physical health of the child wouldn't be a major reason for a cause.
Speaker 2:I was mainly referring to mental health coverage.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Mental health coverage is different with mental health coverage. You've got, uh, some, some policies have very generous mental health coverage. Others have very restrictive coverage or you're given coverage for x number of visits and the child may need well more than that. So from a treatment standpoint, because of the lack of uniformity in coverages, yes, that can be a problem for mental health issues. Uh, and we see that as maybe not a reason to outplace a child, but certainly something that puts stress on the parents in terms of taking care of the issues they need to take care of, of for their child. Uh, I don't, I don't see it as a cause of disruption, for example, but I do see it as a cause of stress to the parents. When you have disparate coverages, your neighbor may have six months of continuous coverage for a mental health issue, including inpatient. And the other one may not have that kind of courage, may have, you know, three visits at a psychologist's level or something like that and they're done. I think that's a problem. It'd be nice to see more uniformity to allow mental health
Speaker 2:expectations of parents could have to be met and you know, where we see it more often we'd be, um, families who are struggling. They believe their child needs to be in residential care there they don't have in there the mental health component of their insurance either won't cover it are, it covers it for such a short time that it is not, is not effective. And they and, and families who, who believe that their child needs this feel like if they terminate their parental rights, I e disrupt the adoption. I'm sorry, dissolve the adoption. They would, uh, more that their child then would be able to get these services. Uh, Dr Barth, do you see that as a, how often is that that caused that fan of why families are seeking to displace their child?
Speaker 4:I think that's a major cause. Um, custody relinquishment in order to get ongoing residential care. Um, some states are really good about that. If a child's been in foster care, they're willing to adjust your adoption subsidy, for example, to a higher level to cover most of the things you need. But residential care then becomes so expensive that I listened. Special provisions for residential care. Um, even with a higher adoption subsidy, it becomes unaffordable. Some states like Texas, um, have passed specific, uh, statutes have put funds behind them just to address this custody. Relinquishment a problem. And Texas is a state that I think of as being in a hurry to add, um, additional services necessarily. They tend to like to do things kind of in a more verbose way, but they started to see this as a major issue for their adoptive families who they've long been committed to. And so, um, have come through with innovative, um, statute reforms, uh, related to this. So I think it's a big piece. And, um, I know we're trying as a country to move away from residential care, um, and that's a good thing, but there are still kids who are running away getting involved with um, oh, uh, sexual, um, trafficking. I'm not through their own fault necessarily, but still need some protection. Um, are perhaps involved with some self harming or are the harming who do need at least temporarily, um, more assistance. And if those temporary problems start to repeat over and over, then families will run out of resources and really have very little choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're certainly feeling that way. Um, another thing that we see is that a contributes to disruption is uh, uh, issues between the new child and children already in the family. And again, a fear based response, uh, of negating the, of fearful that that, uh, the, the new child is, um, and new could be is a relative term because they could have been there for awhile, could harm the children already in the family. That thoughts Dr Barth on what we can do in advance to help families think through these potential issues?
Speaker 4:Well that is a significant challenge and one of the constellations and families that we looked at many years ago, and I think it still holds true is when, um, especially when siblings are moved into a household that already has one or two children, trying to make sure that the quality of the relationship with the kids coming in is strong. Um, even while the parents are a little bit protective of their birth children and may be inclined to treat them differentially. Um, I don't have a great sense about that except I would say, uh, the idea of getting into family therapy, which Steve mentioned is a really critical one. And the other piece, and some of our research is not real definitive, but I think the findings were pointing in that direction is being in parent support groups. So very often parents who have been down this path of lots of good ideas for parents who are starting down the path. And so I, I wouldn't try this alone. Let's put it that I would do this with the help of a family therapist in a preventive way, not after the crisis starts, but knowing that this is challenging enough so that everyone's voice gets heard. One of the things family therapists are good at is making sure that all the kids and family members that their voice gets heard because sometimes the one group or another we'll get drowned out. And the other thing is I do think that adoption parents support groups are, are absolutely invaluable.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree with you more. And, and I will say that, uh, certainly in person, uh, is important. And, uh, one of the things that, uh, we're doing here at creating a family is creating, it's creating curriculum for, uh, support groups because we realized that, uh, uh, one of the re, one of the main reasons that support groups fail don't continue is because of burnout on the facilitators. And so anything that we can do, um, to get good curriculum in their hands, so that takes some of the work off of them is helpful. So I, I just couldn't agree with you more on the importance of support groups and if you can't find one in person online or in online as well as in person and there is many, many online groups, uh, that you can join a including the creating a family has an online group as well.
Speaker 3:John, I follow up on that. Yeah. Of having a biological family and then bringing in adopted children. We have had several cases where I believe that has been a significant factor for the adopted children. Not Blending in well with the family. We've also had many cases. I have many friends where they've had a couple of biological children and they adopt saved from abroad and it's worked out just fine. Like connected with that. Uh, one of the things that we've had an observation that we've had from the cases we've had is that oftentimes parents, good hearted parents or potential parents will take in two kids or three kids at a time. And if those kids are older kids, we have had a fair number of cases where the fact they had multiple kids, it's sort of form a tag team against the parents sometime if they're older has created a problem and resulted in dysfunctionality, let's call it within the family unit. Um, I don't think that social service agencies or others involved in the adoption process provide enough education to prospective adoptive parents on that subject. I mean, I can give you one quick example. We were just finishing with a case where, uh, the people, I'd had a child for the summer out of an orphanage from a European country. It worked out well for two or three weeks. They went back to adopt that child and the judge and the other countries said, if you want this child, you're going to have to take two more that are related. And they did well. It turned out to be a nightmare. And all three of those children who have been out placed, and it has to do with this idea of adoption education and creating proper expectations for the parents. They didn't expect to have to take the additional two kids, but they didn't go over there with a clear game plan in mind. Had they been given advice by somebody ahead of time to say, this is the way this country works, be careful with it. I think they might've avoided that problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And, and because they weren't expecting it, they weren't able to prepare for it and it,
Speaker 3:right. They had to make an instantaneous decision, good hearted people that they were, they, they elected to take all three kids in. So I got a big sand of multiple placements at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Then unfortunately we, there's that, that there's tension there because we certainly within the u s foster care system, there is a big push to keep siblings together. So that very often happens where we will place siblings. Now, not last minute, the way that the scenario you mentioned that's different, but, uh, we're, families are encouraged, uh, to take, uh, if they, to take a sibling group because that's where the need is. So then the, then the challenges for those of us who are trying to educate families is to, uh, prepare the family for the realities of, of adopting more than one at the same time. Because that's a whole, that's a whole different, as my grandmother would say, kettle of fish, Dr Barth at some point is if a family, how does a family know that they've given, given it their, all that they've reached the point where a adoption, dissolution or displacement is in the best interest for everyone? Are should they or does that, that never a point that you should ever throw in the towel?
Speaker 4:Sometimes I think it has to be figured out that your entire family is at risk if you continue to try to keep a child and integrate them into your household. So we know that families divorce, um, sometimes over this period when they're struggling to figure out what to do about a child, we know that sometimes other children in the household do poorly or, or victimized or concerned about being at home because there's a child who's really upset, uh, adopt a child who may be saying or doing threatening things. So all of these are, um, major risks and they have to be taken seriously. I think that families need some cooling off time. Uh, how to get that. It's sometimes hard to say. Sometimes you can get it through a crisis response program if you're lucky. You live in a city or county where before a child is hospitalized or, um, even if they've been arrested or before your family needs some other kind of tents of treatment. There's some in home services that are provided, some family therapy, some respite care, something, um, other than hospitalization or incarceration. And though sometimes, um, you may get counseling from people that just doesn't seem like it's safe now for all of you to be together and you need a break. Uh, I agree that you shouldn't give up before you've really done some serious work looking at your family and what your strengths and how much you can do. Um, I think it's important to call on other resources whenever possible. Other family members, even biological family members, um, who may have come around, may have changed their lifestyle since the time child was adopted to see whether they can be a resource for you so you don't have to go through and just solution, but you may have a displacement and you may end up working together with them to try to find a good alternative for her child. So it's a hard call. Um, but there are a lot of resources around and the children's behavioral health world, um, to help. Um, and then, uh, I think a navigator type therapist who can bring you through the size experience with adoption is a critical piece.
Speaker 2:So I've heard two things. One, get a good into family therapy if you're not. Um, and this is not just send the kid at this point. This is the family, including the parents need to be seeing a therapist to help them navigate this really turbulent waters that they're in. And the other, uh, piece of advice was find a way to have a cooling off time. And you're right, it is challenging. Um, respite care is hard to come by, but, uh, hopefully, um, with the families first stack, there will be more funds available for some of this. Did it give you the respite care are, uh, this cooling off, um, getting family members, uh, whether they be family members and your family, our family members in the child's biological family, uh, assuming that they're, uh, that things have changed and it's the safe thing to do would be, uh, would be helpful just to give you time to make a decision. And honestly, that's sometimes how people use respite care. Um, we know that respite care may not be the most effective for children are most often, most often it's not the most effective at treatment for children, but it does give parents and the family ate that cooling off period. So that's another way of, if you can afford it. Excuse me. Getting, um, getting, uh, a care. All right, Steve, who should the family first contact when they've made up their mind and they say, we can't, we just, this is, it's no longer working for anyone in the family and we believe that the damage is outweighing any good that can possibly happen.
Speaker 3:Okay. Assuming they've gone through therapy, which I would say there's sort of the first line of defense. I think they should contact a lawyer that has some experience with adoption to take a look at legal options that may include outplacement without terminating parental rights. You might use a custodial power of attorney, for example, if you have a relative that might be able to take care of the child for a while. We've had some situations where we've had a relative take over raising a child. It made the child happier and it made the relative happy and the other's family. Yet take a look at guardianship as an option rather than a termination of parental rights. Uh, each state has its own set of rules about how you undo an adoption. If we're talking about a dissolution, there's a lack of uniformity among the states and each state, not the federal government makes these rules. For example, in Wisconsin, in order to undo an adoption, you have to go through the same sort of termination of parental rights procedure that freed the child for adoption in the first place if the child was a domestic or Wisconsin child. Some states have a statute that allows you to get relief from judgement based on fraud within a certain period of time. I think New York and Ohio, Rhode Island are three states that allow that. What type of fraud are we talking about? We would be talking about situations, particularly foster care situations where the background information about the child was not shared with the prospective adoptive parents. Let's hypothetically say that it's age five a little girl was sexually abused and that information was in the file but not passed on to the prospective adoptive parents. Under those facts, depending on the law in your state, you may have a right to go back to court and get a, uh, get relief from the judgment. There are other states that much like divorce allow you to a null an adoption. Um, and there are a handful of cases around the country that deal with adoption of[inaudible]. One of the things that people need to be aware of is that courts, once an adoption occurs, believe that just like a birth child, you've now created a parent child relationship that should not be terminated. So judges, oftentimes they're very reluctant to grant a termination of parental rights unless there is an adoptive resource that's already been identified or an alternate placement for the child. If it isn't going to be an adoption that is suitable for the court. So you, you have to get, uh, a decision normally supported by a therapist to undo an adoption, you have to take a look at the state law to see what methods are available to undo the adoption. In almost every case, unless the child is a candidate for institutional care, you're looking having to find an adoptive resource before the court's going to grant the termination of parental rights or the dissolution of the adoption using an installment method.
Speaker 2:Okay. So each state is going to be different as to what to what you can do. And then, and then so you need to follow the state law. So you said one of the first steps is to contact an attorney that is knowledgeable about adoption law. And let me stress that this is not necessarily in fact often is not the same thing as your cousin's brother who is a family law attorney. So Steve, how would people find an attorney that specializes in adoption law?
Speaker 3:Uh, the easy way would be to go to the Academy of adoption assisted reproduction technology attorneys because you have to meet certain qualifications to be invited to be in the academy. And those qualifications among other things require a lot of experience with a certain number of cases, interstate cases in state cases. Uh, and you know, those people will live at least messy experience requirements to get into the academy. And that should be enough to give'em the ability to answer certain questions like this. However, adoption, disruption and dissolution is not, I'm going to call it a mainstream or frequent activity of adoption lawyers. We happen to get a lot of them. In part because I was several years ago, I wrote an article on it and a pilot magazine. I get people that find me through the Internet and some of them are from other states. I can't help them because you need a lawyer from your own state to work on it if by the way you're using and adoptive resource. Eventually for placement of the child in another state, we often end up with two lawyers from the academy, one from the sending state in one from the receiving state, getting together on the phone to work out the details of how this is going to work. You have to remember when you can't just hand off the child to somebody else. There has to be a vetting process that most courts are going to require. That includes a home study just like you would if you were doing an initial placement. If it's a relative, you may not need the home study, but it isn't necessarily, I'm frustrated with the child. I need to move the child. Now I'm giving the child to somebody in another state. There's a collection of laws. Law is called the interstate compact for placement of children. So of you're moving a child from Wisconsin to Illinois for placement, for the purpose of adoption, you may need to comply with rules if the interstate compact, which each state has adopted before, you can just move that child to another state. Lawyers in the academy would know about that. And there are other lawyers that aren't in the academy that have had a lot of adoption experience I suppose that have chosen not to be in the academy or haven't been invited in yet. It may also be of help. I would say if you go to a juvenile court, uh, administrative clerk or a judge there, they would be good resources to get information about who locally might be qualified to give advice on that subject. But as a starting point, I'd go to the American Academy of adoption attorneys. Uh, that's new, that's the old name for it website and they list attorneys in the academy by State and you can get some information about their credentials
Speaker 2:in contact information as well. Yes. Take Great. All right. Now, you mentioned that that very often you have to have a, a placement for the child and that often you are working with an adoption resource. What do you mean by that Steven, and how do you find and what isn't adoption resource and how do you find it, um, because you, do you need help in finding a family assuming that there isn't a, a relative in your family that is stepping forward?
Speaker 3:Yes, they're very good question. And it's a hard question to give you a concrete answer on. There are not a lot of places that want to get involved in second placements or what some people called rehoming of children. In some cases the agency that gets involved may have to assume guardianship or other form of legal responsibility for the child because the first case is not worked out. They're reluctant to get involved with the child whose initial placement didn't work out, but there are places and they're getting to be a couple of more that we became aware of at the recent conference for our academy members that are now, uh, serving as placement resources. I won his second chance adoptions, which is out of Utah. It's a part of the Wasatch adoption agency and they've done a lot of placements, uh, around the country. They vet well, uh, they have experience and uh, I think they do a pretty good job of getting the adoptive resource in place. We've had, there was an article that Reuters ran a couple of years ago about some bad placement choices in rehoming and I think the articles had some misinformation in them and they had some good information of both, but I think it created an atmosphere among legislators where they felt they had to do something to solve this problem. And, and I think that's the wrong place to go for the solution. In Wisconsin example,[inaudible] they rushed to get a law passed in. The law they passed was you cannot go on the Internet to find an adoptive resource. That's not the issue. How you make your contact is much less important than have you properly vetted them. Have they had a home study done? Is this a good placement? Uh, so what they did is take away one of the ways that people, uh, support groups and otherwise we'll go online to see if they can get somebody that can help them. But the law was well intentioned but didn't solve the problem and attack the one issue. And I think that we tend to be legislative reactive rather than thinking ahead to see how are we going to generally deal with this problem in the future. And that was the outcome, uh, in Wisconsin and a couple of other states that rush to get something passed to make sure this wouldn't happen state.
Speaker 2:So in another words, what we've people need to do is talk with their attorney first and find out what the law is in your state and then work with find out. And it actually, hopefully the attorney might know, excuse me, that what agencies, because often it is adoption agencies. What about turning going to the state, um, the, your county foster care, uh, and, and saying, I'm, I'm, I'm not able to parent this child. What are some of the upsides and downsides to that, Steve?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. It's an appropriate solution to consider. In some cases, I'm not a fan of that solution unless there is no other choice because the out placing family loses control over the child and the county begins making decisions for the child. That may not be good. It may be good decisions but they may not be good and you're a member of the family probably loves this child. It just did not work out for them. They don't like to see uh, situations where they may be getting no information at all if you end up in the state system. Another consequence for the out placing family is that they then may be required to pay child support for the child, for the child's new family. And that's not something they normally consider when they make the outplacement decision in the first place. And it can be a significant decision if it's the only child has been out placed that they've had in Wisconsin are old law. 17% of the families gross income would be used, would be taken for the purpose of providing child support. So it can be a significant economic decision. If the child is placed a residential treatment facility or institutional care, the outpacing family may be required to pay at least a portion of the care for the child as long as the child remains in that setting. These are issues that I think are overlooked when the families are considering the outplacement decision in the first place. But what's your question is very, it's a very good question to ask. What about the alternative state intervention? States do normally have laws that say even if the state people, the intake people for a county decide not to take a child into care, they don't think there's an adequate justification for it. Most states have an alternative where you can bring up petition in children's Court to say, this child is out of control for us. Please take over. You end up with a court hearing on the subject to see if you can persuade the court that indeed it's time for the county to take over or the state to take over. You may win or lose that hearing, but you're, you're correct in pointing out that is an alternative. If you cannot find an adoptive resource and it may be that you simply can't locate the right person or you have a child that because of the child's history is virtually unplaceable because nobody wants to take in a child is attempted to burn down the family or attempted to kill a parent or something like that.
Speaker 2:Good question. So well[inaudible] another thing that parents are fearful of is being found, uh, uh, as negligent and the fear that they have is that if they go to the their county child welfare and say we can, we can no longer parent this child that the county welfare may say within your, you're, the only way you can do it is if we find you negligent and if we find you a negligent or and causing neglect, then we will take all the children in your family. Yeah. How realistic of a fear is that? Is that, is that blown out of proportion or is can a at it, is that a realistic concern?
Speaker 3:I think it's a, in many cases it would be unlikely to happen, but I can understand the family having the fear that it could. Uh, but uh, if they, if the other kids in the family are doing okay, the county normally isn't going to try and take yet another child, uh, after the first one has been placed in a county resource of some kind. So I think I can understand why people would have that fear, but it would be unlikely to happen with frequency. It is possible. But if the other kids are being well cared for, normally that wouldn't happen. I will say one thing, I think the system, it's a hard system to get involved with because there was finger pointing and you talked earlier about fault and finding, uh, here what the, what the outpacing family has to face is criticism for their not being good parents or that this was in some way their fault. They often don't get a lot of sympathy, sympathy from the social services people that they meet. Uh, and in part because we've had this change of philosophy over the last 30 or 40 years where we that do adoptions want adopted children to be treated exactly like birth children are no distinctions but in in real life there are those distinctions at least psychologically among some people and you have now this conflict. When a case worker takes the case, are you going to treat this family as though this is a birth child or an adoptive child? Would they be treated differently? Sometimes that creates a sense of negative feelings on the part of the out placing family and sometimes perhaps fault is there, but my job as a lawyer isn't to make a judgment on fault. My job is to see that the child gets into a permanent and stable placement in the future. If this first one isn't working out, that's why we involve the therapist. I normally have my clients sign a release so I can call a therapist and talk to the therapist. Again, I'm not the one that's supposed to be making a judgment here, but let's say the therapist comes back and says, you know, this kid is doing pretty well. They've had some rough sledding recently because of x and Y. I'd be inclined to raise that with the family even though I'm supposed to be an advocate for their position. Ultimately you've got a child at risk here and the decision to outplace is going to have a traumatic effect on the,
Speaker 2:I'm really glad you raised that point about the traumatic impact on the child because we are coming to the end, but I did want to theirs. There was one last question and I think we should end on, and I'd like to direct this to you, Dr Barth. If you believe, if as a parent than in adoption is going to fail, what steps should you take to make it less damaging to the child? Or is that just a, uh, an unrealistic wish because you don't want the responsibility of adding further damage are, are there things that you could do that might make it easier?
Speaker 4:Well, I think it's critical all the way through to try to make it clear that it's not a child's fault, that things aren't going well in their household, the experiences they've had and the experiences you've had as parents, um, may not have aligned, but they, it's not their fault that they have having difficulties in your household and, um, that there can be much success in life even after difficult challenges where you feel like there's something that's wrong with you or, and you wonder why things keep going badly, um, that time, um, often can address those things in that people can do better and that you're going to do everything you can to stay connected with them in ways that's good for all of you. Um, but also to see them into a more positive time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Hi, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you for that. Somewhat optimistic. I'm not optimistic, but realistic way that we still, even as parents we still have to be. Even though we are at our wit's end, we still as a parent need to consider what we can do to make this the least damaging as they can possibly be. Thank you so much. A doctor, Rick Barth and Steve Hayes for being with us day to talk about this subject, which is, which is, you know, let's be honest, is a hard one, so thank you so much.
Speaker 4:Okay,
Speaker 5:let me remind everybody that the views expressed in this show are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of creating family, our partners, our underwriters. Also keep in mind that the information given in this interview is general eyes to understand how it applies to your specific situation. You need to work with your adoption professionals and it, this show would not happen without the generous support of our partners. Some of our wonderful partners and they believe in our mission of providing unbiased, accurate information are adoptions from shepard care. They are a nonprofit adoption agency founded in 1980 providing domestic infant adoption, international adoption from Colombia and domestic and hake approved international studies. We also have Holt international founded in 1956 they want every child to have a loving and secure home and they have programs that strengthen and preserve families that are at risk of separating.
Speaker 2:And they also lead the global community in finding families for children who need them. Thank you for joining us today and we will see you next week.