Good Article

This from the Orlando Sentinel... November is National Adoption Month.

For foster-care kids, adoption remains elusive
Many adoptive parents opt for foreign children, a process that can be faster, a new survey finds.
Kate Santich
Sentinel Staff Writer
November 3, 2007
Most Americans think the country should be doing more to encourage the adoption of children in foster care, and a whopping 48 million adults have even considered such adoptions. But numerous roadblocks -- red tape, a lack of infants available for adoption and misconceptions about children in foster care -- scare off all but a very few of those potential adoptive parents from ever taking the first step.
Those findings come from a national Foster Care Adoption Attitudes Survey released this week by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a creation of the late titan of the Wendy's hamburger chain.
"What surprised us most was that out of those adults who have considered adopting, a majority of them have considered foster-care adoptions -- more than international adoptions, more than private infant adoptions," said Rita Soronen, the foundation's executive director. "So then we wanted to find out what the barriers are."
The number of children growing up in foster care never to find a permanent home has become an increasing concern among child-welfare workers and civic leaders. In Florida, there are more than 11,000 children in foster care. Nationwide, an estimated 114,000 foster children are currently available for adoption -- a number that has remained stagnant for five years despite a recent push to increase adoption rates.
Yet foreign adoptions have doubled in the past decade, thanks to backing by church groups, international charities and celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
"There's a perception that adopting internationally will be easier to do and perhaps the children won't be as stigmatized because they haven't been in foster-care systems there," said Gregory Kurth, chief executive officer of Family Services of Metro Orlando, the agency that handles foster-care adoptions in Orange and Osceola counties.
The truth is, while they often can be faster, they are not always easier. But it is possible to get infants through international adoptions -- and extremely difficult to adopt infants through local foster-care agencies. Under the law, social workers first have to try to reunite children with their biological families, then terminate parental rights before making the children available for adoption. That can take more than a year.
Searching for a baby
"When we were looking at adding another child to our family, we felt it would be great for it to be a baby," said Tracy Matheson, 41, of Winter Park, who ultimately adopted two boys -- a baby and a toddler -- from South Korea.
She and her husband already had two children in elementary school when they made the decision. And though they seriously considered becoming foster parents, their conversations with other foster parents dissuaded them.
"Because the kids here are older and have been through so much, you can end up with a child who is very wounded, and that requires parenting skills that not everyone has," Matheson said. "I had an obligation to the children I already had -- I couldn't knowingly put them in a situation with another sibling that could bring them harm."
Too many Americans, though, confuse the child-welfare system with the juvenile-justice one. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that 45 percent of adults wrongly believe that children in foster care enter the system because they have been arrested. In fact, nearly all of them enter through no fault of their own: They have been neglected, abused or abandoned.
Part of the solution, Soronen said, is education. But child-welfare workers also need to offer better "customer service" -- some parents interviewed said they couldn't get the agencies to call them back. Parents also need to know they won't be forgotten once the ink dries on the final papers.
"Indeed, a lot of these children have issues -- of course," Soronen said. "But we've got to insist as a nation that parents are provided the support and resources -- whether they're emotional or financial -- to make sure that they can work things out."
U.S. or foreign adoption?
Of course, like most of the issues surrounding adoption, the choice between bringing in an American or foreign child is a highly sensitive and complicated one. Some parents think they can offer more to a child from another country -- one who may literally die without them.
Jenifer Davis, now an Orange Circuit Court judge, adopted two children from Russia about six years ago, in part because the process seemed to afford her a greater sense of control than going through the government here. Once she had the children in her arms, she didn't worry that the biological mother or the Russian government would try to take them away.
"I had already been through five to seven years of medical stuff trying to have a child on my own by the time I reached the point of adoption," she said. "I didn't want to wait any more."