Ethics

How biology and technology provide powerful tools for adoption reunion.

With advances in computer technology and DNA science, it seemed likely that a way would be found for the far-flung children of China to find their birth families. That day seemed far off. However, it has arrived 20 years before I expected it.

Ask five people what their definition of open adoption is and you are likely to get five answers. Some may think that allowing an expectant parent to choose the prospective adoptive parents from a profile of non-identifying information is an open adoption. Still others may say that those who met prior to placement and who exchange pictures and letters after the child is placed in the adoptive home are participating in an open adoption. This definition is, in fact, a variation of a semi-open adoption or openness in adoption.

Would teens who move from foster home to foster home be better off in an orphanage?

There's a "new" debate going on about building orphanages for foster kids. There's even a group in Minnesota that's proposing orphanages for younger children. When asked at a public hearing what ages of children they would place in their orphanages, they noted "60% of the children will be 8 or 9 to 15 year olds with the rest being older or younger." So we know that at least one group out there is advocating for children even younger than 8-year-old.

by Joanne Thalken

The Oregonian newspaper recently ran a story entitled “Sending Black Babies North.” Gabrielle Glaser, a journalist who visited BC recently, and who has shown great interest in Canadian adoptions of African-American children, is the author.

What’s the connection between coffee and adoption? Not too obvious, you might think. So did I, until I visited the coffee warehouse of Ethical Bean, a company owned by AFABC members Lloyd Bernhardt and Kim Schachte. Their decision to adopt a child from Guatemala almost five years ago not only resulted in them becoming parents but also transformed them into coffee experts and the owners of the thriving, Burnaby-based company.

In a recent interview with a social worker with the Ministry for Children and Family Development, it was stated that the majority of children in care of the Ministry are there because of parental drug and alcohol use. Hair, urine, and meconium testing is becoming more and more influential in child custody cases and when the Ministry is determining whether children should be returned or removed from the home.

Having directed both foster care and adoption programs that place teenagers into permanent families, and then having founded an agency that places teenagers into permanent families, I often get asked, “What kind of people will offer their home permanently to a teenager?” My answer is always the same, “Any and all kinds of people who, after a good preparation experience, are willing to unconditionally commit themselves to a child no matter what behavior that child might ultimately exhibit.” Teenagers need, first and foremost, at least one adult who will unconditionally commit to and claim th

On November 19, 2004, Lauryn Galindo, a Seattle intercountry adoption facilitator, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the child trafficking of hundreds of Cambodian children.

Benefits

Adoption Research: The Internet offers a world library of resources from studies and reports to articles and personal stories at your fingertips.

Information Sharing: Chat rooms and email listservs allow parents and prospective adopters to get the straight goods from people going through the process, bounce ideas off each other and discuss ideas. It’s cheaper and you can access a much larger pool of people that you can in person.

For a period in this country’s history (1868 to 1925), more than 80,000 children from British orphanages were transported via steamship to Canada. They were settled with rural farming families in Eastern Canada. The younger ones, three to five years, were often adopted and grew up loved and happy. Many of the older children, ranging in ages from four to 17, were treated as chattel. The conditions they endured were harsher than those from which they had been "rescued" in the slums of Britain’s industrialized cities.