Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Sometimes I Think We Worry About the Wrong Things
Buddy has always made it a point to see to it that his adopted son stayed in touch with his brother, who was not adopted. Buddy has moved with the Department of Defense to various teaching positions around the globe. He used video tapes, telephone, and Skype. The boys spent vacation time together as they were growing up.
Once the decision was made not to place the boys in the same family, I imagine they were in as frequent communication as they would have been if they’d been in foster or adoptive homes in the same city.
According to the International Herald Tribune (July 19, 2004), if you pull into the drive-up window of a McDonald’s near Cape Girardeau, MO, you’ll get fast, friendly service, even though the person who takes your order is not in the restaurant….or even in the state of Missouri. The order taker is in a call center in Colorado Springs, CO, nearly 1,000 miles away.
And we worry about how a child living in one location can stay in touch with siblings in another?!
______________________________________________________
Learn more about Dixie.
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Some Numbers
The latest statistics from the federal government are that 123,000 children in the USA are waiting for adoption (down from 129,000 the prior year) and that 55,000 children moved from foster care into adoption in federal fiscal year 2008 (up from 51,000 in fiscal 2007).
I’m cheering for each of those. The children don’t really need for me to do that because they now have their very own families who are cheering for their progress.
But the families need for us to cheer them along and support them in their roles as they raise the children. That’s why the Board of Directors of The Adoption Exchange supports post-adoption programs in many of our states.
Okay, so the number of waiting children has dropped. On the surface that sounds good. But the same report from the government has another number in it that I don’t like at all.
In fiscal 2008 there were 29,516 children who emancipated from foster care. That number is up by about 18%. This figure has been steadily climbing for the past several years.
The government report doesn’t project into the future. But it’s clear to me that if nothing changes, the coming decade will see 295,160 young adults discharged from foster care – to what?
These numbers tell me that I need to focus on the teenagers – the youth who are hardly children anymore. I need to focus on the young people who are about to be thrust into adulthood before they are ready and without the typical supports that families provide.
It’s past time to get alarmed. But it certainly isn’t too late to act.
There is a teenager who needs you. I hope you’ll think about it and click here to meet Matthew.
______________________________________________________
Learn more about Dixie.
Join Dixie in the Count Up to 6,000 Adoption Placements!<
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Adrian’s Family
Adrian knows from experience what he is talking about when he says that state employees are “family” for children in the foster care system.
Though their qualifications and dedication are not in question, the point is that they are employees. They will get transferred or promoted, move, change careers, and retire.
They are not reliable family member.
Adrian Mclemore addressed a subcommittee of the Ohio legislature not long ago. He addressed them as “future colleagues” and said he hopes one day to be mayor of Dayton, governor of Ohio and then president of the United States.
He also addressed the panel as “Momma Brown, Daddy Burke, Auntie Sears, Sister Boyd and Cousin Driehaus,” making the point that it is the state that is family for foster youth.
Over 500,000 children live in foster care in the United States, relying upon government employees to care for them.
But children don’t belong to the government. They belong to all of us. They are our responsibility. We should not leave them alone in this difficult world. We owe them real families.
You can read Adrian’s story and learn more about what foster care alumni have to say about their own experiences.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Learn more about Dixie.
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Waiting Parents
We’ve often said that our ideal would be for the parents to be prepared and waiting, so that as children become legally free for adoption they don’t have to wait for families.
We have a long way to go in order to make that happen. But, oddly enough, parents still wait. Probably they wouldn’t be as frustrated about that, if there were no waiting children. But there are.
While the wheels of review and selection of families for specific children move in a slow, maddening pace, parents are impatient to hear if their offers to adopt will be accepted.
After you’ve taken the classes, completed the home study, and submitted your request to adopt a child or sibling group you’ve seen on Wednesday’s Child or on the internet, what then?
What can you do, if you’re the waiting parent(s)?
If you have tips for waiting parents, please click below and share them.
_______________________________________
Learn more about Dixie.<br/>
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Tommy’s Recipe for French Toast
We put Tommy’s photograph in the cookbook, hoping that someone who used the book would call and ask about adopting him. And we invited Tommy to submit a recipe. When I read his recipe, my heart hurt.
Most twelve year old children aren’t into quantity cooking. Tommy’s recipe on page 149 conjures up images of a huge griddle and a giant mixing bowl. I pictured a commercial sized kitchen to make his French toast.
What is a twelve year old doing with a recipe like this?
French Toast For Lots Of Kids
6 dozen eggs
6 loaves of bread or raisin bread
Butter
Syrup
Break eggs into bowl and beat. Heat butter in large pan. Dip bread in eggs and fry in pan on each side until brown. Serve with butter and syrup.
What were you doing when you were twelve? Not making French toast for a crowd, I don’t imagine.
Tommy learned to cook breakfast in a children’s residential center. Just think what children like him could do in the kitchens of their very own families.
To find out more about the cookbook, go to http://www.voice-for-adoption.org
___________________________________
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Don’t Fence Us In.
On page 4 of his book Tribes, Seth Godin wrote, “The Internet eliminates geography.” We know this to be true when we communicate in real time through interactive video with friends half way around the world.
Trouble is — the adoption community hasn’t yet figured out how to catch up to that reality.
Adoptions across county and state borders and across public/private differences still smack up against state laws that confine us. We are still “fenced in” by our own perceptions. And all the while I keep waiting to hear a parent insist on adopting a child from her own county. I’ve never heard a child say that most important thing is to be adopted by a family from Lakewood, or Clayton, or Burlington – or any other community.
I don’t think love or longing recognize geography.
Professor Randy Pausch created a computer engineering lab at Carnegie Mellon University called “Building Virtual Worlds”. He enrolled students from multiple disciplines and divided them into teams. The teams included actors, English majors and sculptors mixed with the expected — engineers, math majors and computer geeks. But he thought diversity was a necessary ingredient in order to create something dynamic.
He said he wanted to force the students to achieve something they couldn’t possibly do alone. And the results exceeded expectations.
Professor Pausch eliminated geography. He broke down the barriers of academic discipline, and his students came up with virtual worlds that included you-are-there white water rafting, loveable 3D creatures, and roller-skating ninjas. (You can read about his approach in his book, The Last Lecture.)
I guess there will always be map-makers and people who like the certainty of borders neatly drawn and observed.
But I wonder what would happen if we were to bust out of the beliefs and rules that confine us. What innovations would help us create a world where adoption borders would become invisible?
I don’t mean to over-simplify the issues of government jurisdiction and ensuring that children who are moved from one place to another are kept safe. But the Carnegie Mellon model makes me wonder whether we’ve had all of the best thinkers at the table when we’ve talked about inter-state adoptions. What would the poets and mathematicians and engineers suggest?
How would you recommend that we eliminate geography in adoption?
P.S. If you’re interested in eliminating geography, you might want to visit the Children’s Gallery at www.adoptex.org. There are children from eight different states who would love to have you cross the borders.
________________________________________________
Learn more about Dixie.
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Adoptive Family Beware
Almost every day the news carries a report about an adoption scandal of some sort. In recent months a Colorado agency was forced to shut it doors due to malpractice. A Utah agency was charged with mishandling money. An international agency placed children from another country with American families when the children were not legally free for adoption.
Unethical adoption practices impacting children from India were recently reported in Australia, bringing home a message of heartbreak and dishonesty.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/22/2498030.htm
Most adoption agencies and facilitators are ethical and legal, and most adoptions are completed smoothly, but. . . .
ADOPTIVE FAMILY BEWARE IF. . .
1. Someone offers to place a child in your home without investigating you and your family’s suitability for adoption. This suggests that safeguards are not in place to protect the child or your family.
2. The birth father has not been involved in the plan for adoption. Fathers do have rights. Failure to respect those rights could invalidate the adoption.
3. You have no evidence that the child is legally free for adoption. You cannot legally adopt a child until the parental rights of the birth parents have been terminated either through relinquishment or involuntary court order.
4. The birth mother has not received substantial psycho-social counseling about her decision to place her child(ren) for adoption. Consenting to adoption is an extremely difficult and heart breaking decision.
5. The placing agency or facilitator is not licensed in your state or the state of the birth family. This means that the agency/facilitator is not held to any professional standards, not monitored, and there is little recourse for you to take in the event things go wrong.
6. You are asked to pay a substantial sum of money before receiving services.
7. You are asked to pay for “suspicious” expenses of the birth parents.
8. You cannot obtain information about the reliability and ethical standards of the placing agency or facilitator.
9. No special procedures are required for adopting across state jurisdictions. The Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children is required for all cross-state adoptions.
10. There is no background information on the health of the child(ren) or birth family. Failure to comply with the Indian Child Welfare Act may invalidate an adoption. Information about the health background can be critical to you and your child in future years.
11. You have no legal paper work or legal standing with a court which has jurisdiction over the adoption. No adoption is legally final without a court order.
12. Promises are made to you that sound too good to be true. They probably are.
If you are feeling desperate or you have a nagging feeling that this may not be completely on the up-and-up, don’t do it. For a list of reputable agencies eager to work with you click here.
You can always contact The Adoption Exchange and talk with an adoption specialist at 1-800-451-5246.
_______________________________________
Learn more about Dixie.
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
It Isn’t Easy
Times are tough. If you don’t believe it, listen to the news. There are opportunities to get depressed, to close our eyes to unethical behavior, and to take on an “everyone for himself” way of acting.
International adoption numbers have dropped here in America, and I’m beginning to hear about a drop in infant adoptions, too. Agency fees and international law are sited as causes.
Even though fees have never been an obstacle in foster care adoption, in today’s economic climate will American families become afraid to make a commitment? The Adoption Exchange teamed up with the Child Welfare League of America, the Adoption Exchange Association and the National Endowment for Financial Education to publish a online resource guide of fiscal and other support resources for adoptive families, Financial Strategies and Resource Guide for Adoptive Families.
In some places in the country child abuse reports have risen by 10% while government agencies are struggling through budgets that are lower than past years. Loss of jobs lowers the tax base. Loss of income increases the stresses on families who are already living on the margins. Families break down. And the public and private agencies serving those families have fewer resources.
Will you and I meet the economic challenges by pulling in, or reaching out? Will we choose generosity over fear?
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves,
When I think it might be nicer being red, or yellow, or gold
Or something much more colorful like that
No one ever told me it would be easy – doing what we do. In fact from time to time people have told me it couldn’t be done at all. But none of us chooses to do what we do because it’s easy. We chose to do what challenges and fulfills us. Someone wrote a song about that, too.
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over,
‘cause you’re not standing out like flashy sparkles on the water,
or stars in the sky
But green is the color of spring
And green can be cool and friendly like
And green can be big like an ocean
Or important like a mountain
Or tall like a tree
Like being green, it isn’t easy for any of us these days. But we are each doing what we need to do and working on becoming who we really want to be. The children need us now more than ever.
Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, said “…I think this is why we’re here – to work our way through all this, and, hopefully, come out a bit wiser and better for having gone through it all.”
It could make you wonder why.
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green, and it’ll do fine
And I think it’s what I want to be
–Kermit
Each one of us has to be there for the children.
Is it really as simple as that? Is it as simple as merely knowing who we are and committing ourselves to become who we really want to be? Why wonder? I think who we are will do fine. It’s a pretty big job.
And it’s what we need to be.
Jim Henson, The Muppets, and Friends, It’s Not Easy Being Green and Other Things to Consider. Edited by Cheryl Henson, The Jim Henson Company
___________________________________________