When Deborah Gold and her husband signed up to foster parent in their rural mountain community, they did not foresee that it would lead to a roller-coaster fifteen years of involvement with a traumatized yet resilient birth family. They fell in love with Michael (a toddler when he came to them), yet they had to reckon with the knowledge that he could leave their lives at any time. In Counting Down, Gold tells the story of forging a family within a confounding system. We meet social workers, a birth mother with the courage to give her children the childhood she never had herself, and a father parenting from prison. We also encounter members of a remarkable fellowship of Appalachian foster parents-gay, straight, right, left, evangelical, and atheist-united by love, loss, and quality hand-me-downs. Gold's memoir is one of the few books to deliver a foster parent's perspective (and, through Michael's own poetry and essays, that of a former foster child). In it, she shakes up common assumptions and offers a powerfully frank and hopeful look at an experience often portrayed as bleak.

White Parents, Black Children looks at the difficult issue of race in transracial adoptions-particularly the adoption by white parents of children from different racial and ethnic groups. Despite the long history of troubled and fragile race relations in the United States, some people believe the United States may be entering a post-racial state where race no longer matters, citing evidence like the increasing number of transracial adoptions to make this point. However, White Parents, Black Children argues that racism remains a factor for many children of transracial adoptions. Black children raised in white homes are not exempt from racism, and white parents are often naive about the experiences their children encounter. This book aims to bring to light racial issues that are often difficult for families to talk about, focusing on the racial socialization white parents provide for their transracially adopted children about what it means to be black in contemporary American society. Blending the stories of adoptees and their parents with extensive research, the authors discuss trends in transracial adoptions, challenge the concept of 'colorblind' America, and offer suggestions to help adoptees develop a healthy sense of self.

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.

From 1870 until after World War I, reformers led an effort to place children from orphanages, asylums, and children's homes with farming families. The farmers received free labor in return for providing room and board. Reformers, meanwhile, believed children learned lessons in family life, citizenry, and work habits that institutions simply could not provide. Drawing on institution records, correspondence from children and placement families, and state reports, Megan Birk scrutinizes how the farm system developed--and how the children involved may have become some of America's last indentured laborers. Between 1850 and 1900, up to one-third of farm homes contained children from outside the family. Birk reveals how the nostalgia attached to misplaced perceptions about healthy, family-based labor masked the realities of abuse, overwork, and loveless upbringings endemic in the system. She also considers how rural people cared for their own children while being bombarded with dependents from elsewhere. Finally, Birk traces how the ills associated with rural placement eventually forced reformers to transition to a system of paid foster care, adoptions, and family preservation.

The fourth in a series of true short stories from foster carer Mia Marconi. Kira first came to foster carer Mia Marconi's home on respite care when she was three. She had suffered an unimaginable amount of abuse in her short life. Although she couldn't tie her shoe laces, she could smash a room to pieces; she fought against everything like a wild cat. At the age of five Kira moved permanently to live with Mia and her family, but by the time she was nine years old the whole family was at breaking point. Mia is the kind of person who won't give in and believes she can always change things for the better, but try as she might she can't change Kira. So after six years, with a very heavy heart, she is forced to question whether she can really help this lost and damaged child. Raw, shocking and honest, this short story will shed new light on the role of foster carers, revealing the kind of heartbreaking real life situations carers like Mia Marconi are confronted with every day.

Working with children in foster care is a demanding and rigorous aspect of social work practice. Difficult decisions in fast-moving and often complex situations have to be made, and for students and practitioners alike, there is a vast array of legislation, law and social policy to understand.

This book is written to help social workers and social work students get to grips with the complexity of foster care. The child is placed at the heart of the text and there are substantial chapters on law, policy frameworks and the overreaching theoretical and research evidence to support good practice. There is also a strong focus on practical skills such as empathy and relationship-based practice. This is an essential text for experienced social workers or those currently in training.

Foster care is a temporary living arrangement for children who cannot remain safely in their own homes. For nearly every child who enters foster care, a first goal of the child welfare agency is to ensure necessary services are identified, and provided, so that the child can quickly and safely return to his or her parents. Most children who leave foster care do so to be reunited with parents or other family members. For some children, however, this is not possible. In those cases, the child welfare agency must work to find a new permanent home for these children and this may be accomplished through adoption or legal guardianship. This book examines Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, which declares that states, territories, and tribes are entitled to claim partial federal reimbursement for the cost of providing foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship assistance to children who meet federal eligibility criteria. The Title IV-E program, provides support for monthly payments on behalf of eligible children, as well as funds for related case management activities, training, data collection, and other costs of program administration.

Adoption is one of the great, untold stories of our recent past. It is a truly epic tale of loss, guilt, identity, family feuds, reunion and redemption. It is a subject, until very recently, surrounded by secrecy and taboos.
In this enthralling memoir, Sue Elliot tells her own story of growing up as an adopted child. She details her emotional search for and meeting with her birth mother, Marjorie, the heartbreaking tale of how Marjorie came to give up Sue for adoption in 1950s England, and the shock of finding that she, Sue, wasn't the only child given away by Marjorie. This edition also includes an extra chapter about Sue's search for her siblings and father.
Weaved throughout is the vivid, emotional history of adoption in the UK. Drawing on a wide range of intimate personal experiences, it outlines the forces that shaped 20th century adoption practice, from baby-farming, the stigma of illegitimacy, incest and the bastardy laws, to children taken by force, the Magdalene laundries, mass emigration schemes without parental consent, to modern day adoption practices, buying babies from abroad, sperm donor fathers and tearful reunions on "Trisha."

While most young people have access to emotional and financial support systems throughout their early adult years, older youth in foster care and those who are emancipated from care often face obstacles to developing independent living skills and building supports that ease the transition to adulthood. Older foster youth who return to their parents or guardians may continue to experience poor family dynamics or a lack of emotional and financial supports. This book provides an overview of the federal foster care system and provisions in federal foster care law that are intended to help prepare youth for adulthood.

This volume examines adoption as a way of understanding the practices and ideology of kinship and family more generally. Adoption allows a window onto discussions of what constitute family or kin, the role of biological connectedness, oversight of parenting practices by the state, and the role of race, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic class in the building of families. The book focuses primarily on adoption practices in the United States but will also use examples of adoption and fostering across cultures to put those American adoption practices into a comparative context. While reviewing practices of and issues surrounding adoption, the authors' goal is to highlight the ways these practices and discussions allow us greater insight into overall practices of kinship and family.

Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into white families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice grew exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s. At the height of South Korea's "economic miracle," adoption became an institutionalized way of dealing with poor and illegitimate children. Most of the adoptees were raised with little exposure to Koreans or other Korean adoptees, but as adults, through global flows of communication, media, and travel, they have come into increasing contact with each other, Korean culture, and the South Korean state. Since the 1990s, as Korean children have continued to leave to be adopted in the West, a growing number of adult adoptees have been returning to Korea to seek their cultural and biological origins. In this fascinating ethnography, Eleana J. Kim examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization. Kim draws on interviews with adult adoptees, social workers, NGO volunteers, adoptee activists, scholars, and journalists in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, as well as on observations at international adoptee conferences, regional organization meetings, and government-sponsored motherland tours.

Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into white families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice grew exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s. At the height of South Korea's "economic miracle," adoption became an institutionalized way of dealing with poor and illegitimate children. Most of the adoptees were raised with little exposure to Koreans or other Korean adoptees, but as adults, through global flows of communication, media, and travel, they have come into increasing contact with each other, Korean culture, and the South Korean state. Since the 1990s, as Korean children have continued to leave to be adopted in the West, a growing number of adult adoptees have been returning to Korea to seek their cultural and biological origins. In this fascinating ethnography, Eleana J. Kim examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization. Kim draws on interviews with adult adoptees, social workers, NGO volunteers, adoptee activists, scholars, and journalists in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, as well as on observations at international adoptee conferences, regional organization meetings, and government-sponsored motherland tours.

"It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn't tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a 'disturbance.' Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion." So begins Greg Lucas' captivating account of life as a husband, a police officer, and Jake's dad. Jake Lucas, the first of four children, lives with severe physical and mental challenges. Caring for him each day is an ordeal few of us can imagine, and this story of Jake's first 17 years is not one you will soon forget. But the remarkable thing is how the whole narrative is saturated with wonder at the grace and goodness of God, who brings hope and promise through his Son into the darkest of circumstances. In this book, we see that Jake's problems are our problems, only bigger, and the challenges of caring for him carry profound lessons about God's care for us. Wrestling with an Angel is about tragedy and laughter and pain and joy. It is about faith and grace and endurance and God's unfailing, loving wisdom daily being worked out in each of our lives, whatever the nature or extent of our difficulties. Here is a book that may explain faith to you in ways you never quite grasped, through a life few of us can relate to. When it is all done, we come away better able to live as Christ calls us to live.

A Practical Guide to Fostering Law is an accessible, jargon-free guide to the key elements of the law that concern foster carers and the professionals who work with them. It aims to help foster carers understand where they fit into the complex web of regulations surrounding childcare and to demystify the jargon and terminology which is often used but rarely explained. The book covers the laws in England and Wales governing fostering agencies and foster carers themselves, including foster carers' rights, and the formalities of placement procedures. It also provides explanations of care proceedings, the foster carer as a witness, what happens if a young fostered person gets into trouble, and moving on from foster care. The last section provides a 'who's who' of the main professionals involved and a jargon-busting glossary of the key terms often used. It also includes illustrative case examples and each chapter concludes with suggestions for where to find more information. This guide will be an invaluable resource for current and prospective foster carers and the professionals who work with them, such as support workers, social workers and foster agency staff.

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.

Childhood separation and loss have become virtually a way of life for a large number of children throughout the world. Children separated from their genetic parent(s) and consequently their genealogical, social and cultural roots due to processes such as adoption, parental divorce/separation, donor insemination, single parenthood by choice and child trafficking can face social, emotional and psychological difficulties.

This book explores the premise that a proper understanding of the complex inner world of modern day separated children and their psycho-social development requires a shift in focus or emphasis. It presents the notion of socio-genealogical connectedness as a new theoretical framework for studying and promoting these children's growth and development. This new theory simultaneously challenges and complements existing notions of psycho-social development, including attachment theory and Erikson's psycho-social theory of personality development. Owusu-Bempah proposes that this sense of socio-genealogical connectedness is an essential factor in children's adjustment to separation and their emotional and mental health; much like those adopted, separated children suffer a loss of genealogical continuity, and hence, loss of 'self'. This hypothesis is discussed and ultimately supported through both the author's own research and a broad selection of theoretical and empirical material from other areas.

The book further considers the implications of this notion of socio-genealogical connectedness for childcare policy and practice, as well as directions for future research in this and related fields. Children and Separation is an invaluable resource for academics, students and childcare professionals. The accessible style of the book ensures that it will also be useful to parents and anybody affected by childhood separation.

You can do adoption right with the help of this authoritative and refreshingly candid guide. Uniquely qualified as coauthors, Dr. Cynthia Martin and Dr. Martin Groves combine their extensive personal and professional experience with adoption to help you take charge of the adoption process. Comprehensive and user-friendly, Beating the Adoption Odds is the indispensable manual for those seeking to adopt.

Featuring a spectrum of families from diverse backgrounds, this book reveals the joys and challenges of adoptive and foster parenting. The authors outline how the experience of adopting and fostering has changed for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people over the years, major changes in policy, and what the research can tell us about LGBT parenting. They interview families involved at different stages of the fostering and adoption process, from those undergoing assessments through to the experienced foster carers and adopters who were interviewed for the first edition of this book 20 years previously. While the number of LGBT people adopting or fostering has increased since then, some of the very real challenges still endure - including social stigma, homophobia and discriminatory policies - and families share some of the strategies they have used to help to address them. This is an essential source of information and advice for same-sex couples and LGBT single parents, as well as social workers, social work educators, sociologists of personal life, fostering and adoption panel members.

This book aims to share information about the experiences of birth parents and those currently working therapeutically with them, with the hope of promoting greater understanding and improved service development. With contributions from birth parents and professionals in the field, this book articulates the huge emotional challenges and pain faced by birth parents. Grounded in their experiences and drawing on the latest research, it outlines good practice for professionals, and puts forward a range of models for intervention, from very straightforward practical support through to therapeutic approaches and interventions. Practical and compassionate, this book provides a deep understanding of birth parents and their support needs which will inform not only individual practice, but also encourages the development of more humane and effective support services.

"Who makes adoption a success? We do: the kids and parents in the new family as we change shape to accommodate each other." With more than 70 real life stories, revealing moments of vulnerability and moments of joy, this book provides an authentic insight into adoption. These stories take the reader on a journey through every stage of the adoption process, from making the initial decision to adopt to hearing from adoptees, and offer an informative and emotive account of the reality of families' experiences along the way. It includes chapters on adopting children of all ages as well as sibling groups; adopting as a single parent; adopting as a same sex couple; adopting emotionally and physically abused children; the nightmare of adoption breaking down; contact with birth parents; tracing and social media and more. Adopting: Real Life Stories will be an informative and refreshing read for adopters, potential adopters, professionals and all those whose lives have in some way been touched by adoption or want to know more about it.

Assessing prospective adoptive parents, foster carers, kinship carers and special guardians is an extremely complex task, and one that happens within a pressurized time frame. Currently, assessments draw substantially on interviews, which can generate a lot of information but little analysis to enable professionals to establish a meaningful understanding of parenting capacity. Children with histories of trauma, loss and hurt need to join families in which parents exhibit the ability to be good at relationships, are able to manage their own stress and bond with the child in their care. Now fully updated and expanded to cover the assessment of kinship carers and special guardians, this book combines the latest findings from neuroscience with research on what makes good assessments and provides guidance and tools for making thorough, analytical and effective assessments. With contributions from leading experts including Dan Hughes, Jonathan Baylin, Kim Golding and Julie Selwyn, it will provide you with the information you need to ensure the best possible chance of placement success.

Andy Pithouse and Alyson Rees use original research to identify key ingredients needed to help create successful foster placements and help prevent placement breakdown. Studying the lives and activities of 10 foster families who provide lasting and effective care, the authors explore the families' everyday worlds. They look at the negotiations, activities, settings, meanings, rituals and relationships which help to create their successful placements. The authors identify the main components which, according to the carers and the children, contribute to acceptance, belonging and stability in the family. The book examines the emotional and practical work involved in caring, and explores how it is received and reciprocated by fostered young people. With important insights into child and carer perspectives on fostering, this book is a source of invaluable information for foster carers, children's service professionals, and trainees and care staff who may be engaged with children who are looked after.

How do you give your adopted or fostered child the best opportunities to grow up to be happy, healthy and successful? In this accessible book, psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Sue offers simple advice to those supporting children aged 7+. She explains why adopted or fostered children can often experience self-esteem issues, the impact it can have on their lives, and offers everyday strategies to help the child to move beyond their trauma and develop healthy self-esteem. Ideal for foster and adoptive parents as well as professionals supporting children and families, this book reveals the powerful role you can play in your child's well-being.