Articles & Publications
Tapestry Books
The premiere online adoption book store for learning about adoption. Marked by superior customer service and motivated by expertise in the field, Tapestry Books strives to be the preeminent source for books on the subject.http://www.tapestrybooks.com/
The Adoption History Project
Adoption is a significant public and private issue. This site is based on the conviction that history is an indispensable resource for understanding the personal, political, legal, social, scientific, and human dimensions of this particular form of kinship. The Adoption History Project is devoted to making adoption history accessible and interesting to visitors who may not be aware that adoption has a history at all. http://www.uoregon.edu/~adoption/
Child Welfare Information Gateway
Promotes the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families by connecting child welfare, adoption and related professionals as well as concerned citizens to timely, essential information. A service of the Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we provide access to print and electronic publications, websites, and online databases covering a wide range of topics from prevention to permanency, including child welfare, child abuse and neglect, adoption, search and reunion, and much more. http://www.childwelfare.gov/index.cfm
Child Welfare Information Gateway
On Adoption
Resources on all aspects of domestic and intercountry adoption, including adoption from foster care. Includes information for prospective and adoptive parents; information about searching for birth relatives; and resources for professionals on recruiting adoptive families, preparing children and youth, supporting birth parents, and providing postadoption services.
http://www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/index.cfm
Child Welfare Information Gateway
Adoption Assistance by State
Adoption assistance information by State is provided by the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on Adoption and Medical Assistance and the American Public Human Services Association. Select one of two options: A) Select a State to view the answers to 13 questions regarding State policies on adoption assistance and post-adoption services, or B) Select a question to find out how it is addressed across all States.
Selected articles and Publications
Adoption Options At-a-Glance : A Companion Guide for Families
This fact sheet, meant to accompany "Adoption Options: A Fact Sheet for Families," provides basic information about adoption options in a table format. It focuses on the choices between domestic and intercountry adoption, domestic infant or foster care adoption, and licensed private agencies, independent adoption, or facilitated/unlicensed agencies. A description of how the placement process will vary for each type of adoption is provided, including agency oversight, termination of parental rights, child characteristics, cost, and potential wait times.
Preparing Foster/Adoptive Parents
The Basics of Adoption Practice
Adoption is a highly specialized field that focuses on placing children with families and providing services to ensure that these placements are permanent. In recent decades, the emphasis of adoption practice has shifted from helping families find children to finding safe and permanent families for children. Adoption workers are now expected to have extensive knowledge and understanding of the recruitment and assessment of adoptive families, the placement of children with a variety of strengths and needs, and supportive postadoption services to promote attachment and permanency for children. This bulletin provides an overview of the basics of adoption practice and the ...
Helping Your Foster Child Transition to Your Adopted Child: A Factsheet for Families
There are a number of ways to help foster children make the emotional transition from being "a ward of the State or the Court" to being "a son or daughter" of foster/adoptive parents. This fact sheet describes specific things families can say and do to help foster children transition, including: talking with children about the changes, engaging in activities to help children understand their own history and background and the reasons why they cannot live with their birth family, helping children adjust to these losses, and helping children transfer their attachments to the foster/adoptive family. Additionally, families will need to ...
Postadoption Services: A Factsheet for Families
It is common for adoptive families to need support and services after adoption. Postadoption services can help families with a wide range of issues. They are available for everything from learning how to explain adoption to a preschooler, to helping a child who experienced early childhood abuse, to helping with an adopted teen?s search for identity. Experience with adoptive families has shown that all family members can benefit from some type of postadoption support. Families of children who have experienced trauma, neglect, or institutionalization may require more intensive services.
Post-Legal Adoption Services For Children with Special Needs and Their Families : Challenges and Lessons Learned
With the goal of expanding and enhancing services to adoptive families of children with special needs, post-legal adoption services have been established in annual adoption discretionary grant announcements. Under that priority area in 1998, 15 3-year grants were awarded to increase permanency and well-being for children with special needs by preventing adoption disruption, dissolution, or out-of-home placement. This briefing paper synthesizes the final reports of those 15 projects. The projects targeted post-legal adoptive families and their children with special needs, pre-adoptive families, single adoptive parents, transracial adoptive families, kinship families. Core services included parent support and educational groups, children s ...
Selecting and Working With an Adoption Therapist.
Adoption has a lifelong impact on those it touches, and members of adoptive families may want professional help as concerns arise. Timely intervention by a professional skilled in adoption issues often can prevent concerns from becoming more serious problems. Professionals with adoption knowledge and experience are best suited to help families identify connections between problems and adoption and to plan effective treatment strategies. Sometimes a difficulty that a child is experiencing can be directly linked to adoption, but sometimes the connection is not readily apparent. In other situations, issues that seem on the surface to be related to adoption turn ...
Transition and Postplacement Support
Children and youth need support while being placed with potentially permanent families and after placement to solidify and stabilize the new or reconstituted family.
Resources include State and local examples
Helping Your Foster Child Transition to Your Adopted Child: A Factsheet for Families
There are a number of ways to help foster children make the emotional transition from being "a ward of the State or the Court" to being "a son or daughter" of foster/adoptive parents. This fact sheet describes specific things families can say and do to help foster children transition, including: talking with children about the changes, engaging in activities to help children understand their own history and background and the reasons why they cannot live with their birth family, helping children adjust to these losses, and helping children transfer their attachments to the foster/adoptive family. Additionally, families will need to ...
