Photo from October 2011 of 'Baby Veronica,' provided by Melanie Capobianco, the woman who was in the process of adopting her. AP Photo/NewsOK It is important that I provide some background to this post prior to delving into the issue. A toddler named Veronica is at the center of this story. This is what I've [...]
Full Disclosure: I have been asked to appear on MPR to discuss international adoption, in part as a response to criticism that the discussion on Monday was not inclusive enough of adoptee perspectives. This post was written earlier this week and scheduled to publish yesterday. More information will be provided about the show and where [...]
One of the long-held myths about adoption has been that children become confused about the concept of having more than one set of parents. This became one of the rationales used to amend birth certificates identifying adoptive parents as birth parents once an adoption finalization has occurred in the United States, and to justify closed [...]
An article highlighted in a recent Child Welfare in the News listing from Child Welfare Information Gateway discussed issues with Illinois' child maltreatment reporting hotline: Child abuse hotline callers must leave messages. The article states that "[m]ore than 60 percent of calls to Illinois' child abuse hot line...are answered by a message service instead of [...]
MN ADOPT is hosting a webinar on July 25, 2012 on Helping Children with Sexualized Behaviors: What Parents and Professionals Need to Know with Jane Seymour, MSW, LGSW. From the training desciption: This webinar will review the common myths and facts about children who are exhibiting sexualized behaviors. Participants will learn about the characteristics of [...]
I've mentioned before what a wonderful resource the Child Welfare Information Gateway Library subscriptions are to professionals, researchers and families.I subscribe to a number of their "Libraries" - adoption, permanency, prevention, well being, etc. Each month the CWIG gathers the newest research articles, practice guides and policy updates on a number of child welfare topics, [...]
Recently at CASCW's supportive housing training, the topic of full family (FF) foster care was brought up. This sparked my curiosity regarding current research on the effectiveness of FF foster care, which is also referred to as whole family foster care. In doing a brief search of the literature, it became apparent that the most [...]
A few weeks ago, we updated you on the new Adoption Assistance legislation that will go into effect in August 2012. Today we will summarize some of the other child welfare legislation that was enacted in the same legislative session. We will cover adoption policies in this post and in an upcoming post we will [...]