Failed Adoptions in Foster Care - Weekend Wisdom

Question: I have a question that may be well suited for a weekend wisdom episode. I'm aware of the reasons that a domestic infant adoption may fail, but I've also read about foster children having failed adoption(s) and then aging out of the system. What are some of the main reasons that a foster child experiences a failed adoption? How does that look different than (or the same as) a failed domestic infant adoption? 

Resources:

• Failed Adoptions:
  • Help, I Don’t Think I Can Continue With This Adoption!
  • Adoption Disruptions/Dissolutions – How to Prevent and When to Accept
  • Evaluating Risk Factors in Foster Care Adoption
• Failed Adoption Matches:
  • Predicting and Coping with Failed Adoption Matches
  • How Common are Failed Adoption Matches?

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

- Hello, and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. I'm Tracy Whitney, your host for this short
podcast that is both practical and implementable. We create short tips and practical
advice based on the questions that you send us. So if you wanna send a question to
info @creatingoffamily .org, we'll comb through our archives, listen to recent
conversations that we've had with guest experts, and craft an answer that will
hopefully strengthen your family. Again, if you have a question that you think would
fit this format, email it to info @creatingafamily .org. Today's question comes from a
listener named Paige. She says, "I'm aware of the reasons that a domestic infant
adoption may fail, but I've also read about foster children having failed adoptions
and then aging out of the system. What are some of the main reasons that a foster
child experiences a failed adoption, and how does that look different than or the
same as a failed infant adoption? Thank you for the work on this podcast. It's been
extremely helpful for me in our journey of adoption. Well, Paige, thank you for
writing to us and thank you for your kind words about our work. We love supporting
families like yours. Before we dive into the factors that may lead to failed foster
care adoptions, I wanna make sure I'm making a distinction that might be pertinent
in this particular question. Failed adoptions, that is the legal action of a
dissolving and adoptive relationship are different than the failed adoption matches
that are more common in domestic infant adoption. So a failed adoption match is when
an expectant mother or expectant mother and father change their mind about placing a
child for adoption even before the baby's born or before the revocation period is
over. This could happen because of a variety of reasons and we covered that pretty
succinctly in a weekend wisdom that we recorded back in February called "How common
are failed adoption matches. It was February of 2024. So if you wanna go back and
look at that, you could get some information about failed adoption matches. If you're
looking for other information about failed adoption matches, you can check out the
resource notes in today's episode. However, I wanna distinguish that from failed
foster adoptions and kids aging out of the system without permanency. It's helpful to
remember that the research shows us that the reasons a foster care adoption fails
are not all that different from other adoption types and why they fail. So we'll
dive into that in a second, but the good news that you must hear at this point is
that research shows us most adoptions do not fail. Failed adoptions,
again, are the legal process of dissolving the adoptive relationship, and they happen
for a wide variety of reasons across all types of adoption. It's much less common
in domestic infant adoption than in foster care adoption or international adoption.
And the important distinction to that is that the children available for adoption,
either in foster care or international adoption, have usually experienced neglect,
abuse, prenatal substance exposure and other life trauma that impacts their developing
brain and thus their behaviors, which we'll hear later as a clue to risk factors
for failed adoptions. So the research shows us that from the child's side of
adoption, there are two main factors that contribute to a failed adoption. And again,
failed adoption, meaning a dissolved adoption through the legal process of separating
that relationship. So the first factor is the child's age at the time of placement
prior to the adoption. So the older the child is at placement in the home that
will become its permanent placement, the more likely they are to experience
instability. The highest risk categories then are for the tweens and teens who get
placed. The second factor is the child's behaviors in that adoptive placement.
As those children have been growing up without permanency thus far, their behaviors
are more ingrained, their coping mechanisms are more habitual, and therefore harder to
relearn new healthier coping mechanisms. The two most common behaviors that lead to a
failed adoption include impacts from sexual abuse, sexualized behaviors and then the
aggressive or violent behaviors. So research shows us that these failures from the
child's side of things are age at placement and behavior during the placement. Now
let's turn to the parent side of things. Research shows us that the parent's side
of things is much less subjective to their age or their career or their education
or their income status, any of those other demographics. Instead, there's a few key
factors that contribute to adoption failure from the parent's side of things. The
first is something that we talk a lot about here at Creating a Family and that's
unrealistic or mismatched expectations. So that could be from parents that have come
into this adoption match with a lot of previous experience and they're unwilling or
unable to shift that experience to meet the needs of the child that's in front of
them. It could be that their expectations are so idealized and even if they've been
educated, they maybe tend to think that's not gonna happen to me. Adjusting to the
reality of the child again that you have right in front of do is really hard to
do if you can't let go of those idealized expectations. And then, of course, safety
issues are not included in that expectation. We should all be able to maintain an
expectation of a safe, stable placement for the children where people who live in
the home already or the people that are coming into the home can stay physically
safe. A second factor for parents would be an unwillingness or inability to be
nimble, responsive, flexible in parenting style or to keep learning.
Both of those things, that nimble responsiveness and the commitment to keep learning
can really improve adoption stability and improve the chances of success.
So when we're not willing to be flexible, or we're not willing to be nimble, that's
a factor that can impact and lead to an adoption failure. Another impact,
I mean, I'm sorry, another factor would be the misunderstanding of a child's
behaviors and of the impacts that trauma may have had on that child's brain,
on that child's behavior, and then on that child's ability or flexibility to learn.
So when you don't understand the full breadth of trauma in general and then the
trauma that that child experienced, you won't necessarily understand why they behave
the way they do. And that can lead to a feeling as if you can't continue with
this adoption. And finally, lack of support. Again, this is a big one for creating
a family. It's why we exist. We want parents to be supported and strengthened and
educated, but when adoptive families do not surround themselves with support like
therapy, family therapy, family counseling, individual therapy for the parents,
individual therapy for the children, but also support groups and safe means of
contacting or staying open with the child's birth family if that's available.
It also includes some of the challenges and lack of support that parents might feel
from the system that they're involved with, whether it's international adoption or
foster care adoption. If they don't feel like they're getting support from the
professionals in that area, they often will indicate that that is a reason that they
felt like their adoption would have failed. There you have it. There's Four things
from the parent's side, lack of support, misunderstanding of a child's behavior,
unwillingness or inability to be nimble, and mismatched or unrealistic expectations.
The good news is that all four or five of those factors are things that we
adoptive parents can do something about. We have the ability to educate ourselves. We
have the ability to surround ourselves with support. We have the ability to choose
flexibility, and nimbleness to meet the needs of the child that is right in front
of us. And with that good news, I wanted to let you know that if you're interested
in learning more about how to prevent an adoption from failing in your own life or
sharing information with others about how to prevent an adoption failure in their
lives, you can check out our most recent podcast called Help. I don't think I can
continue with this adoption. We recorded it and released it in March of 2025. It's
a great overview of the things that lead to adoption failures and then the things
that we can do as a community and as parents and caregivers to prevent that from
happening. We'd love it if you could go to the platform where you listen to this
episode of Weekend Wisdom and leave us a rating or a review. Your response like
that is always really helpful for us to get this content and other content like it
into the hands of other families who could use the strength and the support and if
you are looking for additional resources about adoption failures,
you can check the show notes. We've got some resources listed there for you. Thanks
so much. Have a great day. (upbeat music)