Earlier today in our Stability, Permanency & Adoption (SPA) blog, JaeRan blogged about data in the child welfare system as being "unorganized, uncentralized, and differ[ing] greatly depending on who is managing the data." She concluded with an explanation of how having better and shared data can help us better answer our questions about the wellbeing [...]
As someone who is interested in understanding the impact of adoption on children, youth, families, and social welfare systems, one of my biggest frustrations is that there seems to be concurrently an over-abundance of data, and yet the adoption data is very unorganized, un-centralized and differs greatly depending on who is managing the data. This [...]
Today the Star Tribune published an article by Jean Hopfensperger highlighting the changes that adoptive parents wanting to adopt internationally are now facing. These changes include increases in older children, sibling groups, and children with disabilities available for adoption, and a trend toward open adoptions, once considered impossible and/or improbable (even if desirable) a few [...]
One of the practice issues that has been rarely talked about in academic, research or policy arenas that impact children that have been institutionalized or in foster care is the issue of eating behaviors. It is quite common for children who have been neglected or for those who have experienced food insecurity, institutionalization in foreign [...]
We all know that the media often sensationalizes adoption - either portraying adoption as only bubbles and sunshine without addressing loss, grief, trauma and attachment concerns or conversely, negatively focusing on those cases of extreme behaviors on the part of either adopted children and youth or adoptive parents. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, [...]
The North American Council on Adoptable Children will hold its 38th annual conference in Crystal City, VA on July 25-28, 2012. This year's theme, Celebrating Families: Valuable Lessons from Children, Parents and Professionals, begins with a pre-session workshop with Dr. Bruce Perry, noted expert on child trauma. Dr. Perry is a Senior Fellow at the [...]
MN Adopt is offering a training series, Beyond Consequences Training and Support - 8-part Series with Brenda Benning, MSW, LGSW. This training series will provide insight into children's behaviors as well as hands-on skills to help parents work with children that have experienced traumatic histories. The series is based on the book "Beyond Consequences, Logic [...]
A story by Gail Rosenblum was published today in the StarTribune that is, unfortunately, not all that uncommon a scenario in the child welfare system these days. Tomorrow, the MN Court of Appeals will hear arguments on behalf of two families that want to raise two young girls that have been in foster care. We [...]