On May 19^th, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative John Lewis (D-GA-5) introduced The Every Child Deserves a Family Act (S1382/HR2449), which prohibits adoption or foster care placement service entities that receive federal assistance from practicing discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. Discrimination includes denial of parenting or placement opportunities and the requirement of supplemental or alternate procedures to obtain approval.

On June 11^th, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a series of religious objection bills that allow child placing agencies to refuse to provide services under circumstances that conflict with their religious beliefs. DAI is proud to partner with the Human Rights Campaign, North American Council on Adoptable Children, the Child Welfare League of America and Voice for Adoption in opposing this archaic and discriminatory measure.

On June 26, the United States Supreme Court issued their opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges declaring that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. The court’s decision is symbolic of the commitment to strengthen families and better the lives of countless children, those who are already being raised by same sex parents, as well as the numerous children waiting in foster care awaiting adoption.

In Motives and Decisions for and Against Having Children Among Nonheterosexuals and the Impact of Experiences of Discrimination, Internalized Stigma, and Social Acceptance, Journal of Sex Research, (52, 2), 174-185, Kleinert, Martin and Stobel analyzed decisions surrounding whether or not to become parents among persons who are not heterosexual. The researchers analyzed responses from a sample of 1,283 nonheterosexual persons living in Germany who participated in an online survey. Most did not currently parent children. The researchers determined that age and desire for emotional stability were the most influential factors in parenting decisions. Negative experiences, for example experienced discrimination based on sexual orientation, were not a factor within this sample surrounding parenting decisions.

In Reminders of Heteronormativity: Gay Adoptive Fathers Navigating Uninvited Social Interactions, Family Relations, (64, 2) 263-277, Vinjamuri interviewed gay adoptive fathers from twenty different families in an attempt to analyze the experiences of this population. The fathers in this study reported satisfaction with their parenting experience, however instances of uninvited social interactions were prevalent in the father’s description of their experiences. These reminders of “heteronormativity” included the fathers experiencing enquiry into their parenting and concerns surrounding their children’s wellbeing among other areas. The researcher offers analysis to generate greater understanding among educators and practitioners about the emotional burdens gay fathers may experience as they navigate social encounters within a construct of “heteronormativity”.

For 20 years, The Donaldson Adoption Institute has been a leader in research on adoption and foster care adoption. We are proud to introduce an important addition to our groundbreaking work, The Modern Adoptive Families Study.

With the growing diversity in adoptive family life, questions have emerged among adoption professionals about the unique experiences and needs of different types of families and the best ways of supporting them, both during the placement process and in the post-adoption years. This has been particularly true for adoptive families headed by sexual minority individuals and couples. Although adoption by lesbians and gay men has grown over the past few decades, and, in fact, at a rate that is proportionately higher than for heterosexual individuals, there is still limited information on the unique experiences and needs of these families compared to those headed by heterosexual parents.

To address this issue, in partnership with DAI Dr. David Brodzinsky developed and implemented the Modern Adoptive Families Study, a large scale national survey focusing on the experiences, perceptions, and needs of different types of adoptive families. Although the study focuses primarily on questions related to adoption by lesbians and gay men compared to heterosexual parents, it is also structured to address questions related to other adoption diversity issues. This project is a continuation of DAI’s commitment to explore and expand our knowledge about the modern adoptive family to better serve the needs of parents and children.

To learn more, we invite you to visit the DAI website on Monday, August 10. This is just the first paper that will emerge out of this invaluable dataset, and you may look forward to reading more about them in future issues of this Newsletter.

The Human Rights Campaign provides a listing of adoption agencies throughout the country that have achieved the All Children, All Families Benchmark of LGBT Cultural Competency. The All Children/All Families program is a model training program for agencies to work to achieve ten key benchmark in areas such as client nondiscrimination, employment nondiscrimination, and staff training among others. Upon achieving the benchmark, the Human Rights Campaign designates the agencies as leaders in supporting LGBT youth and families. Visit the Human Rights Campaign website for more information on the state listings.

LGBT community members who are thinking about becoming foster parents or adopting have many questions. The Department of Health and Human Service’s Child Information Gateway is a good place to go for answers. FAQ’s address some of the concerns that LGBT prospective adoptive parents may encounter when deciding to adopt a child or in navigating the adoption process.

As everyone in the adoption and foster care communities knows, family law is different in each states and this is too often the source of confusion and disappointment. The Family Equality Council has developed a unique tool that enables anyone to know at a glance Equality Maps provide quick and easy summaries of laws that affect LGBT Americans on a state-by-state and issue-by-issue basis. The maps present information on laws in areas from parenting rights and relationship recognition.

On Friday, June 26^th, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more liberal justices. The decision, the culmination of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy said gay and lesbian couples had a fundamental right to marry. The Donaldson Adoption Institute, alongside other leading child welfare organizations, issued a blog post commending the Supreme Court for issuing a ruling that demonstrates a commitment to families.

Given the ever growing need for qualified foster homes, all states should be creating pathways to increase their pool of qualified parents, not limit them. Personal beliefs should never impede best practices in child welfare. Foster and adoptive parent applicants must be judged based on their qualifications, not their sexual orientation or gender identity. The fact that these bills have been dubbed by some as ‘conscience protection’ laws is then a significant misnomer. If we truly wish to act in good conscience towards our nation’s children, we will not create barriers to the permanency and stability they need and deserve. As leading child welfare organizations, we urge lawmakers in every state to prioritize the best interest of children, not the personal beliefs of some, when considering legislation that impacts the lives of society’s most vulnerable members.

The Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges sweeps away state laws that ban same-sex marriage. Since gay and lesbian couples can now marry in Louisiana — something that wasn’t legal here before June 26 — they now comply with that requirement. Chris Otter, of Forum for Equality Louisiana, expects adoptions by same-sex couples to happen here without any additional changes to the law.

For Lee’s clients, that means the pragmatic choice they made — having the parent with health insurance become the official adoptive parent — won’t bring a lifetime of worrying about the other parent’s ability to seek medical treatment, get school records and perform the other myriad responsibilities of raising a child. Once married, they’ll be able to pursue a stepchild adoption, something Lee says is a relatively simple process, giving them the legal rights and responsibilities of parenthood that heterosexual spouses take for granted.

In New York, the state legislature is considering two bills related to tax deductions for foster care adoption. New York A6575 provides for a tax deduction for expenses incurred in the adoption of a child from foster care and S2688 would require the Office of Children and Family Services to complete an impact of a tax deduction for expenses attributed to the adoption of a child in foster care.

In Exploring the path from foster care to stable and lasting adoption: Perceptions of foster care alumni, Children and Youth Services Review (55), 111-120, Mariscal et. al. conducted qualitative research directed at increasing understanding surrounding the experiences of youth who had been in foster care and their perceptions of enablers and barriers to successful adoption. A small sample of sixteen foster care alumni were interviewed. A variety of themes emerged, including “adoptive parent preparation, service quality, and system response and understanding of trauma” among other areas. Practice recommendations are offered.

In The Dialogic Construction of “Adoption” in Online Foster Adoption Narratives, Journal of Family Communication, (15, 3), Baxter et. al. analyzed 100 online narratives of adoption from foster care in an effort to identify any themes in communications surrounding how adoptive parents constructed the meaning of “adoption”. The researchers uncovered two primary dialogues; one centered on adoption as a way to parenting after biological efforts failed and the second focused on providing care to children to help in there overcoming early life challenges.

Did you know that the North American Council on Adoptable Children provides information on their website detailing eligibility, benefit, funding, and other characteristics of your state’s adoption subsidy program? Included is information surrounding Adoption Subsidy contact persons as well as NACAC volunteers who may be able to offer guidance surrounding navigating this process. Visit the NACAC website for more information on State Adoption Subsidy Programs.

Within days of becoming licensed foster parents, newlyweds John Wright and Wilson Bateman got a telephone call from a caseworker. A boy and his two sisters needed a foster family. Would they like to meet them? The next thing they knew, they were getting acquainted at an ice cream shop. “They stole our hearts when we met them,” Wright said. Shortly after that, the children, ages 3-12, starting living with them full time. That was five months ago. Before the legalization of same-sex marriage, the foster care placement wouldn’t have been an option for the couple or the children. Under Utah law, people in relationships that were not “legally valid” were prohibited from fostering, adopting or providing kinship care to children in state custody.

New York City’s foster-care system allows children to languish for years in often dangerous conditions amid a long-standing pattern of government inaction, a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges. The city’s public advocate, Letitia James, and private attorneys representing children in foster care filed the class-action complaint against the city and the state. The lawsuit alleges widespread deficiencies and mismanagement at the Administration for Children’s Services, the city agency with oversight of the foster-care system.

Nineteen-year-old Justice Henry says hope is what gets him out of bed every morning. “You always have to have hope,” Henry of the Bronx, New York, tells PEOPLE. “Even when it’s hard to see it, you need to believe in it.” Henry is just one of 1,300 kids waiting to be adopted in New York City. Additionally, there are more than 700 kids on the verge of aging out of the foster care system.

Advocates in New York are battling an amended bill that could hinder efforts to advance adopted persons access to their original birth certificate (OBC). As originally written, A2901 would permit adopted people over the age of 18 access to their original birth certificates and medical histories. In addition, it would create a contact preference form to be filed by birth parents upon their request. The amended bill has a variety of provisions that could be costly and cumbersome to adopted persons, the most concerning of which continues to require adopted persons to petition the courts for access to their actual birth certificate, a process that would not guarantee access. DAI withdrew support for the bill upon learning of the amendment and hopes to participate in ongoing educational efforts regarding access to original birth certificates.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is considering an OBC access bill which would allow adopted persons, 18 years of age and over, to request a copy of their original birth certificate. Amendments recently filed to this bill would allow a six month time frame where a birth parent would be able to redact their name from the original birth certificate prior to its release. There is a mechanism for birth parents to reverse their request for name redaction, and it also allows adopted persons subject to receiving a birth certificate that is redacted to request the State Department of Health contact the birth parent to see if their position has changed. Certain circumstances, such as death of birth parent, mandate that the redaction be removed and the adopted person be provided his/her OBC without redaction. Some advocates in Pennsylvania withdrew support for the bill when the redaction amendment was filed.

On July 1, approximately 24,000 adults adopted in Connecticut gained the opportunity to access their original birth certificates. The new law, PA 14-133, allows people 18 years of age or older who were born and adopted in Connecticut and whose adoptions were finalized on or after October 1, 1983 to receive their original birth certificates as well as medical history and contact preference forms if either has been filed. As the leading advocacy group for OBC access in Connecticut, Access Connecticut has worked tirelessly to advance this legislation and plans to continue this work to restore OBC access for all people adopted in Connecticut. DAI applauds their ongoing efforts on this critical issue.

In ‘What is the impact of birth family contact on children in adoption and long-term foster care?’ A systematic review, Child & Family Social Work (May, 2015), Boyle analyzes themes in contact arrangements between children who have been adopted or are in long term foster care and their families of origin. The study is based out of the United Kingdom. The researcher reports mixed results from the study, with the prior relationship between the child and family serving as a moderating factor. Positive outcomes were demonstrated with high levels of collaboration between adoptive/foster and biological parents, which is consistent with the existing research base in this area. Recommendations are offered surrounding assessing and planning contact.

Adoption Mosaic offers online educational courses in a variety of areas specific to the adoption experience. Topics include ethics in adoption, communication about adoption, race, and identity among other important areas. Learn more about these courses through the Adoption Mosaic online learning community.

Advocates argue that state laws which prohibit or discourage same-sex couples from providing those homes diminish child welfare. As the Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit based in New York that researches adoption policy, noted in its amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Obergefell, “Many of these children have not already been adopted because they have serious medical, emotional, or psychological needs.” April Dinwoodie, chief executive of the institute, says it will be necessary in some cases to shift the perceptions, behavior, and training of adoption professionals in regards to adoptions by gay and lesbian individuals. “Applying what we know from research and experience to say that children don’t suffer when they’re in non-traditional families needs to be a practical next step,” Dinwoodie contends.

On a rainy spring evening last year, Margaret Erle Katz noticed a voice mail from an unfamiliar area code and dismissed it as a message from a telemarketer. A day later, though, she listened. And listened, and listened. The faint voice on the other end of the line belonged to a man for whom Ms. Katz had been searching most of her life. The caller, David Rosenberg, was the son she had reluctantly relinquished for adoption in Manhattan when she was a girl of 17. For decades, Ms. Katz, now 71, repeatedly tried to contact her son through the Manhattan agency that began arranging the adoption in 1962. None of the messages were ever delivered. And Mr. Rosenberg, whose birth certificate showed only the names of his adoptive parents, with the original records sealed, didn’t know where to start. DAI issued a blog post on July 4^th surrounding the topic area of freedom and independence as it relates to access to original birth certificates and family information for adopted persons.

DAI chief executive, April Dinwoodie, offered thoughts about freedom and identity in recognition of the Fourth of July:

“As a child, the 4th of July was all about food, fun and family. Freedom and independence was all about the spirit in the air, something that I felt but could not really articulate. Looking back at activities like riding my bike down our big hill with no hands, body surfing in the waves at our town beach and swinging on our homemade swing, I clearly see they represent freedom and independence from the realities of being a grown-up. Like most young people, I learned the basics of the holiday in school: In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed, marking the colonists’ independence from Great Britain and the birth of the United States of America as a free and independent nation. It all seemed pretty simple and straightforward.”

Unregulated custody transfers (also known as “rehoming”) has been a topic of concern nationwide following a Reuters investigation of the phenomenon. DAI and several other national child welfare organization issued recommendations to strengthen protections for adopted children. These recommendations acknowledge the intense need for more and effective pre- and post-adoption services.

Maine recently enacted a law, similar to a bill introduced in New York, relating exclusively to the prohibition of unregulated custody transfers. Legislators in other states, including those in Massachusetts and South Carolina, have introduced bills that aim to address unregulated custody transfers more holistically. The bills in Massachusetts and South Carolina add requirements for informing adoptive parents of existing support services in addition to criminalizing certain types of custody transfers. Although these bills would only make modest changes to pre- and post-adoptive services, they reaffirm the need to provide support to families.

In The Postadoption Needs of Adoptive Parents of Children With Disabilities, Journal of Family Social Work (18, 3), 164-182, Hill and Moore use a national survey of adoptive parents to engage in a secondary analysis of challenges and unmet needs of parents who adopt children with disabilities. The researchers additionally interviewed and utilized a focus group of adoptive parents in one state in order to better explore this issue. Families include parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as parents of children with mental health needs. The study demonstrates that this population of adoptive parents does experience greater challenges as well as difficulty accessing and receive services. The research revealed that these challenges are particularly present for adoptive parents of children with emotional difficulties. Recommendations are offered for policy and practice.

In ‘We were not planning on this, but …’: Adoptive parents’ reactions and adaptations to unmet expectations, Child and Family Social Work, (March, 2015), Moyer and Goldberg explored how adoptive parents responded to unanticipated characteristics in their children. 45 couples were interviewed for this study; 30 of the couples had adopted from the child welfare system and 15 had adopted an infant domestically. The researchers interviewed the couples surrounding their “unfulfilled expectations” about child characteristics of age, gender, race and special needs. These disappointed expectations were particularly poignant for parents who experienced a lack of support combined with a feeling as though they had little influence to shape the child’s characteristics. The researchers identified “cognitive flexibility” and “adequate support” as variables that influence a positive transition to adoptive parenthood. The researchers discuss implications for pre- and post- adoption support and education.

The C.A.S.E. Webinar Series ‘Strengthening Your Family’ will continue with an August 20^th, 2015 session on Emotional Regulation and Relaxation Techniques for Parent and Child. This session is the second part of a June webinar on this topic area. During this session, therapist/trainer Penny Zimmerman will present new information and more in-depth exploration of massage, relaxation, sensory, and mindfulness techniques parents can easily put to use at home. Register online through C.A.S.E. to reserve your spot!

On Thursday, September 25^th, 2015 Adoption Learning Partners will offer a live webinar “Tired of Time Outs Take 2’ which will focus on promoting connection and trust while addressing troubling behaviors. The webinar will be conducted by Dafna Lender, LCSW, Clinical Director of The Theraplay Institute. Register online through Adoption Learning Partners to reserve your spot!

While increased rights for same-sex couples may insinuate an easier in the adoption process, this is not necessarily the case. Cherie McCarthy, Director of Adoption Connection Cincinnati, said she has been persistent in asking for proceeding steps from the state. “Same sex adoptions are a work in progress,” she said. “States still have to catch up with The Supreme Court ruling’s ramifications. We’re inquiring, I’m sure other agencies are inquiring as well.” McCarthy said that the wait is not because of any need for laws to change further, but rather for the state to catch up and update procedure.

That’s largely why HRC is backing Utah’s Inclusive Families event, set for Oct. 23-24 at the University of Utah’s College of Social Work. “The conference recognizes there are diverse families that don’t fit into the WCF model,” Cobb said, “and that’s important. “That diversity includes all types of “nontraditional” families, including LGBT, those with mixed racial or religious identities, adoptive, differently abled, multigenerational families, as well as street families formed by those in Utah’s homeless community, conference organizer Marian Edmonds-Allen said. “It’s an honor to have HRC’s support,” Edmonds-Allen said. “The struggle for LGBT rights has moved from only individual protections to include the new reality: entire families supporting their LGBT child, same-sex couples caring for children, children caring for their elderly LGBT parent or grandparent, and more. Families matter — even, and perhaps especially, to huge organizations worldwide.”

When Manatee County parents returned 14 adopted children to the state in a recent 22-month period, it sent shock waves through the local social service community. In an effort to prevent more returned children, Manatee County government has approved a $376,758 contract for a new adoption preservation program to be run by Family Partnership Center, 602 Third St. E., Bradenton, executive director Katrina Bellemare announced Monday. “It’s tragic and should never happen,” Bellemare said. “This program is so needed.” These new support services for adopted families, called the Chosen Family Program, will be the first of their kind in several years in Manatee County, Bellemare said.