Thursday's Child Adoption Agency - About Identified Adoptions

WHY THURSDAY’S CHILD WILL NOT BE ABLE TO HELP YOU WITH AN IDENTIFIED ADOPTION

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR OUR CLIENTS AND PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS

Background:
Identified adoptions and the laws that govern them have only been around in Connecticut for approximately ten years. Why, you will ask, should an agency that considers itself progressive and compassionate, allow that to be an obstacle to providing this service?
You may wonder if Thursday’s Child is an agency that is somehow tied to the past and afraid to “try new things. We have some good reasons we would like to share with you.

Identified adoption, a relatively recent phenomenon around the country, was developed at a time when domestic adoptions were at an alarming low. Most U.S. agencies, and particularly in unique states like Connecticut, with tightly regulated adoption rules, found themselves having to make severe cutbacks on personnel, or having to assign staff to other duties outside of adoption work. Most adoption programs found that their organizations were losing money and they could not afford to operate. Meanwhile, birth parents began forming a “movement”, so to speak, taking a more high profile approach in the media by beginning to share past experiences, about placing their children. Often the experiences focused on by the media were negative, as are the predominant stories one reads about the adoption experience in general. (The negative picture grabs the public interest more readily, unfortunately.) Birth parent also began to assert their “rights” legally by challenging adoption precedents and termination of parental rights proceedings around the country.

In states where lawyers had not been needed to complete adoptions (such as in Connecticut) many attorneys felt that they wanted to find a way to get back into the arena. Adoption seemed like the right opportunity. It sometimes requires more legal input and contracts, to attempt to protect the rights of all parties in a highly sensitive and complex area of the law that involves people’s lives, emotions and the futures of families and children.

Finally, adoptive parents desperately hoped that the onset of identified adoptions might serve to eliminate the lengthy waits associated with the adoption of healthy white infants
They allowed themselves to buy into the myth that somehow they would be in more control of an identified adoption process than of a traditional agency adoption.

Client-Centered Approach:

As you may know by now, Thursday is known for its personalized, caring, family-like atmosphere. Our long -term relationships with clients and our client-centered approach are a source of pride to our board and staff. When our agency works with clients, we do everything possible to provide complete, ethical and compassionate services. Our ultimate concern must be the best interests of the children we are helping to place for adoption. However, as an agency founded by adoptive parents, as well as by professionals, we decided that we could not provide top quality services and succeed at what we set out to do, without caring deeply about the needs of all of our clients. When we work with a local birth parent, we extend the same attention, time and caring to that birth parent, who is a primary client, at least until the child is born and placed for adoption, and often for a long time after that.

Board of Directors Decision:

After we examined the issues involved in developing an identified adoption program our board of directors decided that offering such a program was not in the best interests of all of our clients and potential clients. We felt that the entire adoption community needed to look at the results of this type of adoptive placement over a long period of years, rather than just a few. Most importantly, we felt that we needed a much more lengthy history to determine how identified adoptions would affect the lives of the children placed using this process. We felt very strongly, and still do, that identified adoption actually serves the needs of a variety of adults involved in adoption, both personally and professionally, and perhaps, does not consider comprehensively enough the needs of the children who are the “product” and the “commodity” being marketed and sought.

Pitfalls Which Concern Us:

As you probably know from all of our preparation material and from talking with us over a period of time, we believe in being completely honest with clients at every phase of their adoption journey. This involves giving them an accurate picture of the snags and obstacles that might arise in the future. We constantly assert that an adoption process is rarely “perfect” and without snags and that we do not have control over many parts of the process any more than the clients do. We tell you that an ethical agency cannot offer guarantees in any type of adoption, but for the most part, difficulties that arise can be overcome with our help, patience, faith and a little luck.

When identified adoption works, it can work very well and parents can obtain a healthy infant in a relatively short time. Birth parents can maintain more control by “choosing and interviewing” prospective adoptive families and sometimes can assert their “right” to remain in the lives of their children by having ongoing contact.

Then there is the other side to the story, in addition to our concerns about the possible effects on the children mentioned above. We have seen and heard cases of prospective parents being grilled by birth mothers and asked by expecting moms and
by so-called respectable agencies, to bear the financial and emotional costs of fulfilling the whims of the birth parents. Agencies seem to cater more and more to the requests of the birth families, whether or not their focus appears to be on the needs of the children waiting to be born. Satisfying the whims of the birth family increases the agency’s chances to earn the total expected fee for the placement.

Birth parents are often led to believe that their feeling of control over the process will eliminate most of the grieving they would otherwise have felt. Some agencies use this as an excuse to minimize contact with the birth mother during and after the adoptive placement.

Prospective parents are often led to the end of their journey after great involvement with the birth mother, only to find that the birth mother has changed her mind. This can occur with a traditional agency placement, but with much less emotional and financial investment on the part of prospective parents. Although costs and expenditures are regulated in Connecticut, adoptive families are required to cover a good portion of the services provided to them and to the birth family, whether or not they actually receive the child. There are some insurance companies that offer policies to cover some of these possible costs, but they are not yet widely available and are surely not complete protection. There are some cases where prospective parents “go through” four or five birth mothers before they are actually chosen.

Implied Contracts:

Thursday’s Child is yet unclear as to what is implied in an identified agreement with adoptive families and birth parents. We feel that both parties are our important clients. What if we determine in working with one or the other, that the proposed match is not a good one for the child, or that some other waiting parents we have available would be more suitable for the baby and/or for the birth parent’s needs? What if our agency should determine in counseling the birth mother, that she does have the capability of raising her child very well, if hooked up to various support systems? What if there are other relatives in the picture who are willing to take responsibility and who appear to have the potential to be excellent parents to the child? Whose needs do we try to meet?

Conclusions:

As you now see, identified adoption is complicated. It may or may not be for you. We have given you the reasons why, at this point in time, our agency and board do not wish to become involved in offering this service.

What We Do Offer:

Aside from our unique and personalized approach which is valued by most of the clients we serve, including local birth parents with whom we have worked, we offer a variety of international placement possibilities. We are always exploring and developing more options for our families. We offer the expertise that is based on nearly twenty years of adoption work experience at this agency and for some of our staff and board, experience that is even greater than that. We offer the perspective gained by having raised adopted children and inter-cultural adoptive families for a long time, in addition to our professional experience. We can and do work with some local birth parents when requested and can effect traditional local adoptive placements with a variety of levels of openness and creativity, depending on the needs of the birth families, adoptive families and children. We can and do allow birth parents a large say in "choosing” the adoptive families, but we do this in a way that protects the adoptive families as much as humanly possible. We can also cooperate with reputable out of state agencies for healthy and harder to place children, and with our State agency here.

What This Means for the Prospective Parent:

It means that you will soon need to make a decision about what is best for you. We always encourage our clients and would-be clients to be good consumers and to make decisions that are good for them and not necessarily for us.

It may be that you are already in the midst of the adoption process with Thursday’s Child, or have completed your homestudy. We may already have spent considerable time on your case, including the time involved in maintaining our contacts with and structure of our foreign, or out of state agency relationships. In this instance, you will have to fulfill your agreements with Thursday’s Child and will have to pay us for the services already performed, including all, or a portion of the program services part of the fee for maintaining our program and foreign contacts. We can and will release the homestudy and our recommendations to another licensed agency. We cannot, however, simply give you our homestudy to use as you choose. In order to protect our license and reputation, we must ensure that clients do not use our homestudy to undertake an adoption that does not comply with strict Connecticut laws and rules.

It may mean that another agency will accept our homestudy and charge you a smaller fee.
On the other hand, many agencies have a policy of only using their own homestudies and you may need to undergo the entire process again, hopefully with a slightly reduced fee for an update. That is entirely up to the proposed new agency and we have no say in this matter.

Things You Need to Remember If You Are Considering Identified Adoption:

All adoptive parents AND identified birth parents must go through a licensed agency in Connecticut, or prove that the out of state birth parents have complied with Connecticut laws and have received services in the state of residence. The prospective adoptive parents will have to pay for the out of state counseling services and the cost of having two agencies, or an agency here and qualified professional there, provide the total range of services needed.

If the birth family is in Connecticut, counseling services will also need to be provided. Many responsible agencies want to do this themselves to ensure that the birth family has been properly prepared and is fully informed of their legal rights.

If the birth father is known, he will have to be a participant in the process as much as possible and will need to have his legal rights terminated in court, just as the birth mother will need to have done. He may need to have counseling or other agency services as well. If truly unknown, a reputable agency will have to be convinced of this and a legal process will still have to undertaken to terminate the unknown or alleged father’s rights.
There is always a court process in Connecticut and not just a voluntary relinquishment on paper as in some other states. (This is a good thing, but can make things more complex and/or expensive for parties involved.)

In this day and age, legal rights to children are being established more and more by other parties to an identified adoption. Maternal or paternal grandparents may well become involved once they learn of the plan of either or both birth parents.

As an adoptive family, you may be enthusiastic about honoring a birth family’s wishes to be involved with the child or children in the future, but later on, may find this doesn’t work and may have difficulty disengaging from the relationship.

As a birth family, you need to know that regardless of promises made now, once the child legally belongs to the adoptive family, they are not mandated to honor any promises made to you earlier. You may challenge this, but your appeal may not stand up in a court of law.

Finally, identified adoption does not escape the normal adoption process in Connecticut.
The licensed agency will still need to take legal responsibility for the child and will become the Statutory Parent for an average period of six to twelve or more months after placement in the adoptive home. This legal responsibility entails other rights and responsibilities on the part of the agency. Many prospective parents and birth parents in Connecticut mistakenly believe that the agency does not have “control” over the adoption once the child is placed.

This is not typical in international adoptions, which often provide final adoption decrees, in spite of the need for a simple post-placement process during which reports are sent back to the foreign country. In countries that require finalization of the adoption here, the parents are often made guardians and share legal responsibility with the agency during the post-placement supervision period, though parents are still financially responsible.

Many adopting parents today choose international adoptions because, while complex, there is usually little or no contact with the birth family, except for the emotional connection.

Many birth parents choose traditional agency adoptions so that they can still have choices about prospective adoptive parents, but can be somewhat protected and insulated from repeated contact with the adoptive parents. They can also be protected from the feelings of guilt that usually come when they have gotten to know the prospective family, but end up deciding to raise their own child, rather than to go ahead with an adoption plan.

Please remember that an identified adoption as it occurs here in Connecticut, is not the same as an open adoption. Many confuse the two terms. Thursday’s Child is willing and happy to consider a variety of levels of openness in completing a local adoptive placement that is not an identified adoption. The choice of degree of openness will depend on the needs and wishes of all parties involved in effecting the placement.

We Wish You Luck:

We care about all of our clients and want you to make the right decision for you. We will do what we can to assist, but it is your choice. We hope that you will still inform us of the result of your decision and the outcome of your important process, if you choose to go ahead with an identified adoption through another agency, but now you fully understand our position and concerns. In the future, if we receive information which convinces us that things have changed, our board and staff will certainly consider exploring the option of becoming involved in identified adoptions, but we cannot do so at this time.

Thursday's Child, Inc
227 Tunxis Avenue Bloomfield, CT 06002
(860) 242 -5941
Fax (860) 243-9898