This book is an account of the authora s experiences as a Foster carer, and in particular as a Foster carer of teenage children, over a period of more than twenty years. It is intended to dispel the notion set out over the years in the many recruitment advertisements that Fostering is a life of enduring happiness and contentment for both carers and children. It is never that glamorous. It can, however, over time, be a rewarding and fulfilling experience for both. The author and his wife have been Foster carers since 1997 and are still Foster carers to this day.

International media regularly features horrific stories about Chinese orphanages, especially when debating international adoption and human rights. Much of the popular information is dated and ill-informed about the experiences of most orphans in China today, Chinese government policy, and improvements evident in parts of China. Informal kinship care is the most common support for the orphaned children. The state supports orphans and abandoned children whose parents and relatives cannot be found or contacted. The book explores concrete examples about the changing experiences and future directions of Chinese child welfare policy. It is about the support to disadvantaged children, including abandoned children in the care of the state, most of whom have disabilities; HIV affected children; and orphans in kinship care. It identifies how many orphans are in China, how they are supported, the extent to which their rights are met, and what efforts are made to improve their rights and welfare provision. When our research about Chinese orphans started in 2001, these children were almost entirely voiceless. Since then, the Chinese government has committed to improving child welfare. We argue that a mixed welfare system, in which state provision supplements family and community care, is an effective direction to improve support for orphaned children. Government needs to take responsibility to guarantee orphans' rights as children, and support family networks to provide care so that children can grow up in their own communities. The book contributes to academic and policy understanding of the steps that have been taken and are still required to achieve the goal of a child welfare system in China that meets the rights of orphans to live and thrive with other children in a family.

This book, which updates and expands the third edition published by Springer in 2015, explains, compares and evaluates the social and legal functions of adoption within a range of selected jurisdictions and on an international basis. From the standpoint of the development of adoption in England & Wales, and the changes currently taking place there, it considers the process as it has evolved in other countries. It also identifies themes of commonality and difference in the experience of adoption in a common law context, comparing and contrasting this with the experience under civil law and in Islamic countries and with that of indigenous people. This book includes new chapters examining adoption in Russia, Korea and Romania. Further, it uses the international conventions and the associated ECtHR case law to benchmark developments in national law, policy and practice and to facilitate a cross-cultural comparative analysis.

Conversations about multiculturalism rarely consider the position of children, who are presumptively nested in families and communities. Yet providing care for children who are unanchored from their birth families raises questions central to multicultural concerns, as they frequently find themselves moved from communities of origin through adoption or foster care, which deeply affects marginalized communities. This book explores the debate over communal and cultural belonging in three distinct contexts: domestic transracial adoptions of non-American Indian children, the scope of tribal authority over American Indian children, and cultural and communal belonging for transnationally adopted children. Understanding how children belong to families and communities requires hard thinking about the extent to which cultural or communal belonging matters for children and communities, who should have authority to inculcate racial and cultural awareness and under what terms, and, finally, the degree to which children should be expected to adopt and carry forward racial or cultural identities."

This book explores a deeply personal aspect of globalization: the adoption of Asian children by white Americans. It is based on dozens of interviews with adoptive mothers and adoption social workers, nearly two hundred letters and essays written by Korean birth mothers who put their children up for adoption, and field work at an adoption agency in South Korea. It also includes analyses and explanations of U.S. and South Korean governments' social characteristics and policies regarding adoptions and how relations between nations have affected international adoption. The book focuses on whether the commonly held notion that adoptions are to serve children's welfare and their best interests has tended to render gendered aspects of international adoptions invisible. Factors such as gender inequality, social control of women's reproductive power, patriarchic family structure, and social beliefs concerning womanhood and motherhood that affect international adoptions are revealed in this book. The multiple ways in which adoptive, birth, and foster mothers experience gender oppression from their different social positions of class, race, and nationality are explored and the interdependencies and inequalities of the motherhoods of these three groups of women are brought to light.

Native American Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories presents twenty interviews with Native American adoptees raised in non-Native homes. Through the in-depth interviews they conduct with each participant, the authors explore complex questions of cultural identity formation. The participants of the study represent a range of positive and negative experiences of transracial adoption. Regardless of their personal experiences, however, all twenty respondents indicate that they are supporters of the Indian Child Welfare Act and that they believe that Native children should be raised in Native households whenever possible. However, eighteen of the twenty respondents concede that non-Native families can raise Native children to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults. Through the interviews, Simon and Hernandez allow readers to better understand the different experiences of Native American adoptees.

Beneath the Tapestry devotional walks alongside hopeful adoptive parents and families through the process of adoption and beyond. Natalie Schram shares her family's stories of completing their first home study, finding adoption experts to support them, walking through the tangled mess of fear and unknowns, battling through spiritual warfare, experiencing unsightly beauty, and navigating life after placement. Beneath the Tapestry shares many details of how God weaved four adoptions into the masterpieces that they are. It's through these honest stories that many have found hope and healing. Natalie shares how each adoption holds unique details all their own, but the universal characteristic in every adoption is that it comes from a broken place and therefore carries that brokenness with it. Beneath the Tapestry reveals as many details about the Schram's adoption journeys as possible and in a very real, honest, unique, and vulnerable way. Natalie Schram draws you in and speaks to you directly. You will feel as if you are in an actual conversation with her. You will be guided and supported through scripture, real life stories, and prayer as Natalie teaches you to love and live selflessly through the process. Journeying through adoption four times has allowed the Schram family the joy of growing deeper in Christ while seeking God's Will for expanding their family. Beneath the Tapestry goes beyond offering support during the adoption journey and seeks to reach the heart of the reader. Through Beneath the Tapestry Natalie's hopeful prayer is for each reader to seek a deeper relationship with Christ, grow in their faith, and learn how to love and support others selflessly, in the midst of their journey

This book draws on archival, oral history and public policy sources to tell a history of foster care in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present day. It is, primarily, a social history which places the voices of people directly touched by foster care at the centre of the story, but also within the wider social and political debates which have shaped foster care across more than a century. The book confronts foster care's difficult past-death and abuse of foster children, family separation, and a general public apathy towards these issues-but it also acknowledges the resilience of people who have survived a childhood in foster care, and the challenges faced by those who have worked hard to provide good foster homes and to make child welfare systems better. These are themes which the book examines from an Australian perspective, but which often resonate with foster care globally.

This comprehensive resource offers a detailed framework for fostering resilience in families caring for their older members. Its aim is to improve the quality of life for both the caregivers themselves as much as for those they support. Robust interventions are presented to guide family members through chronic and acute challenges in areas such as emotional health, physical comfort, financial aspects of care, dealing with health systems, and adjusting to transition. Examples, models, interviews, and an extended case study identify core concerns of caregiving families and avenues for nurturing positive adaptation. Throughout, contributors provide practical applications for therapists and other service providers in diverse disciplines, and for advancing family resilience as a field. Included in the coverage: Therapeutic interventions for caregiving families. Facilitating older adults' resilience through meeting nutritional needs. Improving ergonomics for the safety, comfort, and health of caregivers. Hope as a coping resource for caregiver resilience and well-being. Perspectives on navigating care transitions with individuals with dementia. Planning for and managing costs related to caregiving. Family Caregiving offers a new depth of knowledge and real-world utility to social workers, mental health professionals and practitioners, educators and researchers in the field of family resilience, as well as scholars in the intersecting disciplines of family studies, human development, psychology, sociology, social work, education, law, and medicine.

The 'mixed race' classification is known to be a factor of disadvantage in children's social care and this fastest growing population is more likely than any other ethnic group to experience care admission. How does knowledge of 'mixedness' underpin policy and practice? How, when and why is the classification 'mixed' a disadvantage? Through narrative interviews with children currently in foster care, Fostering Mixed Race Children examines the impact of care processes on children's everyday experiences. Peters shows how the 'mixed race' classification affects care admission, including both short and long term fostering and care leaving, and shapes the experiences of children in often adverse ways. The book moves away from the psychologising of 'mixedness' towards a much-needed sociological analysis of 'mixedness' and 'mixing' at the intersection of foster care processes. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners working with families and children. Peters presents a child-centred narrative focus and offers unique insights into a complex area.

"The book chronicles not only the adoption of their three children abroad, but follows each of their children (including their biological son) into young adulthood. It vividly depicts their difficulties in raising teenagers in a cross-cultural, transracial home, and also exposes the frightening conditions facing today's kids in our public schools, including gang issues, drop outs, and culture clashes. It provides valuable insights to parents and non-parents as well. This book was a real eye-opener and awakened me to the harsh realities our teens must face in what I would have thought were quality schools. Although told from a parent's point of view, they very effectively explored the emotions, indeed the angst, of their teenage children."
--Jo-Anne Weaver, adoptive parent of a Chinese daughter placed by Los Ninos International, and Senior Acquisitions Editor of Education and Developmental Psychology for Harcourt Brace.

This book looks at the simultaneous processes of making and un-making of families that are part of the adoption practice. Whereas most studies on transnational adoption concentrate on the adoptive family, the author identifies not only the happy occasion when a family gains a child, but also the sorrow and loss of the child to its family of origin. Situating transnational adoption in the context of the Global North-South divide, Hogbacka investigates the devastating effects of unequal life chances and asymmetrical power relations on the adoption process and on the mothers whose children are adopted. Based on unique primary material gathered in in-depth interviews with South African families of origin and Finnish adoptive families, the book investigates the decision-making processes of both sets of parents and the encounters between them. The first mothers' narratives are juxtaposed with those of the adopters and of the adoption social workers who act on the principles of the wider adoption system. Concluding with a critique of the Global Northism that exemplifies current practices, Hogbacka sketches the contours of a more just approach to transnational adoption that would shatter rather than perpetuate inequality. The book can also be read as an expose of the consequences of current inequalities for poor families. Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption will be of interest to students and scholars of adoption studies, family and kinship, sociology, anthropology, social work and development.

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are home to more than 90,000 transnational adoptees of Scandinavian parents raised in a predominantly white environment. This ethnography provides a unique perspective on how these transracial adoptees conceptualize and construct their sense of identity along the intersection of ethnicity, family, and national lines.

Normally, our relationships with our brothers and sisters are the longest relationships in our lives, outlasting time with our parents, and most marriages today. The sibling relationship is emotionally powerful and critically important, giving us a sense of continuity throughout life. So what happens when a child loses contact not only with his or her parents, but with siblings too? That is what happens in thousands of cases each year inside the child welfare system. Children are surrendered by parents - or taken by the government - and placed in the foster care system. There, they are often separated and sent to different foster families, or adopted by different couples. In this work, a team of top experts details for us how this added separation futher traumatizes children. This stellar team of internationally known researchers - some of whom are themselves adoptees - shares with us hard, poignant, and personal insights, as well as ways we might act to solve this widespread problem.

Contributors address not only the importance of nurturing sibling bonds and mental health strategies to support those relationships, but also the legal rights of siblings to be together, as well as issues in international adoptions. Emerging and standing programs to encourage and facilitate adoptions that keep siblings together are featured, as are programs that at least enable them to stay in contact.

In the last fifty years, transnational adoption--specifically, the adoption of Asian children--has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish. In Global Families, Catherine Ceniza Choy unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States. Beginning with the post-World War II presence of the U.S. military in Asia, she reveals how mixed-race children born of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese women and U.S. servicemen comprised one of the earliest groups of adoptive children. Based on extensive archival research, Global Families moves beyond one-dimensional portrayals of Asian international adoption as either a progressive form of U.S. multiculturalism or as an exploitative form of cultural and economic imperialism. Rather, Choy acknowledges the complexity of the phenomenon, illuminating both its radical possibilities of a world united across national, cultural, and racial divides through family formation and its strong potential for reinforcing the very racial and cultural hierarchies it sought to challenge. Catherine Ceniza Choy is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of the award-winning book Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History.