Resilience in maltreated children: implications for special needs adoption.

Children in the child welfare system face renewed issues of loss as they enter adoptive placements. Every move is a loss and an exercise for the child in establishing the perception of a "safe" environment. Resilient children who have been abused develop coping skills to adapt to their abusing "unsafe" environments. When these children become part of an adoptive family, these coping skills need to be recognized as providing important cues to the child's world, rather than as challenging behaviors. The author deconstructs the words of resilient children into five themes that can help provide access into the children's world, a fresh viewpoint from which to assess the adopted children's reactive behaviors, and a foundation on which an adoptive relationship can be built.     

Predictors of special needs adoption disruption: An exploratory study

A matched pairs design (N = 54) was utilized to identify predictors of special needs adoption disruption, the breakdown of an adoptive placement prior to legal finalization. Variables predictive of intact rather than disrupted placement included: younger age at time of placement, female gender, foster care adoptive placement as opposed to placement with a new family, and sibling placement as opposed to non-sibling placement. Minority (as opposed to majority) ethnic status as well as lower income and lower education level were modestly associated with increased likelihood of intact placement. Emotional/behavioral but not cognitive handicaps predicted disruption. Social worker assessments of level of parenting skills were highly associated with intact placement. A separate study demonstrated higher risks of disruption for younger boys (less than 9 years of age) and modestly higher risks for older girls (older than 9 years of age). Similarly, this study found increased risks for sibling placements for younger children and modestly higher risks for non-sibling placements among older children.     

Supporting families throughout the international special needs adoption process

Due to changing trends in international adoption, a greater number of placements are now special needs. While most special needs adoptions are successful, they do present a higher risk for placement instability. Thus, adoptive parents and children are faced with an increasing need for support services. This article explores literature related to support throughout the international special needs adoption process including medical, information/education, social support and direct intervention both pre- and post-adoption. While many support strategies, both formal and informal, are utilized by families and adoption professionals, and some are promoted in policy related literature, few have been validated through empirical evidence. Findings reveal a need for further research around effective pre-adoption training programs for parents, preparation tools for children, and larger scale studies to evaluate post-placement services for each sub-group of international special needs adoptees.     

Meeting the needs of the adoption triangle through open adoption: The adoptee

Open adoption offers advantages for adopted persons which are not available in traditional adoption. Having access, to information about their biological heritage allows adopted persons to integrate their adoptive, history with their biological history. This integration enables resolution of normal developmental crisis. Openness also helps facilitate communication between the adoptee and the adoptive parents. Adoptive parents are then able to recognize, and provide support, when their child is grieving the loss of the birthparents.     

College knowledge: a critical component of college and career readiness

Policy has traditionally emphasized the completion of academic requirements as the gateway to postsecondary education. There is, however, growing understanding that youth need to develop a wide range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal resources for career success, civic engagement, and lifelong learning. It also is necessary to address the social, informational, and financial barriers to college that many first-generation and low-income youth come up against. Allowing youth to participate in programs that provide access to college campuses and classes, through dual or concurrent enrollment, early college models, or expanded learning opportunities, is an effective way to help students gain college knowledge and see themselves as college students. This article offers an expanded definition of college and career readiness and profiles three programs drawn from a larger review of twenty-three programs designed to support college and career success for students from underrepresented groups.     

Social support needs of families adopting special needs children

A grounded theory begins to explain parental practices in seeking social support. Interviews with 20 parents who had adopted children with special needs and 5 health care providers indicated that parents lacked awareness of available resources; preferred informal support systems; sought help only when "failing" to solve problems; and perceived that health care providers lacked knowledge of adoption issues, family dynamics, and common health issues. Parents preferred informal to formal supports, and felt upset when formal supports were judged ineffective or non-existent.     

Preventing disruption of special needs adoptions

The incidence of adoption disruptions is much higher in special-needs adoptions than in infant adoptions. This article reports the results of an analysis of differences in functioning between families able to sustain special-needs placements and families in which they disrupted. The finding is that the father plays a pivotal role in maintaining these placements. If he is actively involved in parenting, and able to nurture and support the mother in her role, placements are more likely to be sustained.     

The journey to adopt a child who has special needs: Parents' perspectives

Many of the children eligible for adoption from the public child welfare system are considered to have special needs. Given the importance of securing adoptive families for these children, knowing more about the adoption process as it is experienced by prospective parents who complete (or are in the process of completing) their adoption pursuit and those who discontinue it are critical. Using qualitative inquiry, prospective adoptive parents in nine families were studied in an effort to learn more about their motivations, expectations, preparation, and experiences. Although the adoption outcome (continued versus discontinued) was different, the process, including negative experiences, was quite similar. Programming implications and suggestions for future research are offered.     

Meeting the needs of the adoption triangle through Open Adoption: The adoptive parent

Open adoption enables the adoptive parents to participate more fully in the adoption. It allows them to make decisions regarding the amount of openness they wish to have. By means of seminars, readings, and panels the adoptive parents learn more about adoption and birthparents. By experiencing openness, the adoptive parents come to know the birthparents as real people. The birthparents are no longer perceived as a threat. The adoptive parents gain a feeling of entitlement to parent from the birthparent(s).     

Behavioral problems of special needs adopted children

Parents of 757 special needs adoptees completed the behavior problems section of the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist. Significant behavioral problems were not indicated for those children aged 4–5 at the time of the study. For children aged 6 to 16, behavioral problem scores were elevated on the two major CBC scales, externalizing (aggressive, acting-out behavior) and internalizing (withdrawn, inhibited behavior). The degree of elevation was greater for externalizing. Elevated scores were also observed on the total behavioral problems scale and, in particular, on hyperactivity sub-scales.     

Community well-being as a critical component of urban lake ecosystem health

Urban lakes are often monitored and managed with limited consideration of adjacent communities. Generally, when communities are considered in relation to urban lakes, they are viewed simply as sources of pollutants. Given the inevitable interactions between an urban lake and the surrounding inhabitants, the community must be considered explicitly when assessing the ecosystem health of urban lakes, as the two entities intrinsically comprise interrelated parts of a single ecosystem. In this study, the reciprocal links between a residential community and a series of urban lakes in South East Queensland have been examined to facilitate a dynamically linked, fully integrated ecosystem health assessment of constructed urban lakes. Residents’ attitudes towards, and values derived from, a series of urban lakes were surveyed, as well as residents’ behaviours which may impact upon urban lake health. The results indicate that residents derive both tangible and intangible benefits from the urban lakes, but feel little responsibility for lake health or custodianship over the lakes. Greater recognition within urban lake management frameworks of the links between urban lake systems and their surrounding communities may help to foster and enhance both community well-being, a greater sense of custodianship for such systems and improved management.     

Preparing parents for children with special needs: A three-part approach

This paper describes a community-based educative-small group method for working with prospective foster and adoptive parents. As an educational approach, the program prepares applicants to be substitute parents. The small group process method provides the applicants with an atmosphere conducive to discussing fears and frustrations while gaining peer and professional support. Community-centeredness not only allows the agency to recruit much-needed minority parents, but to make a contribution to the community in the form of prevention of problems through availability and education. Evaluation of the program demonstrates that the combined communitybased, small group approach is an effective and efficient method for “screening-in” foster and adoptive parents for children with special needs.     

Chinese adoption: practices and challenges.

The majority of children in China who are the subject of protective services are either abandoned or disabled. Recent reform efforts in China's child welfare practices have focused on the importance of providing safe, permanent families for children in lieu of long-term institutional care. Although challenges still exist, adoption and foster care are increasingly being seen as viable alternatives for these children.     

Educating children with special needs: An interorganizational perspective on policy implementation

Educating handicapped children is dependent upon the relations among organizational and agency implementors. In this paper, factors influencing successful policy implementation are examined relative to the implementation of Massachusetts Special Education Law, Chapter 766. Case exploration suggests several possible strategic points of intervention for other states faced with implementing a later, but similar law, The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94–142). Seen within the larger context of degree of change required by a policy and consensus on policy goals, recommendations at the guideline development, resource distribution, and oversight stages can affect such implementation problems as organizational capability, dispositional conflicts of key actors, and interorganizational communications. The paper supports early analysis and feasibility estimates of policy implementation to enhance the needed interorganizational coordination for the education of handicapped children in the least restrictive environment.