Each Friday on the Stability, Permanency and Adoption blog we will provide a selection of news from the past week that you may have missed.
Today’s news round up:
An article published in Pediatrics by Jones et al (2011) assesses the impact of missing or altered birth and medical information on internationally adopted children’s health care in the United States. Among the chief concerns mentioned in the report is the tendency to alter the birth certificate once the child is in the United States based on American pediatric assessments, which doesn’t always allow for time for the child to “catch-up” on developmental delays that result from pre-adoptive experiences. MedPage Today describes the report here. To read the article abstract, click here.
The Arizona Daily Star published an interesting article on how family courts struggle to respond to “changing definitions of family.” From the article, “”We’re redefining what constitutes a family,” said McGeorge School of Law professor Larry Levine, an expert on sexual orientation and the law. “It’s a whole new way of thinking about this.” Read the full article here.
A perennial discussion in child welfare permanency is whether children are better off in relative placements or in a foster home where they have formed attachments to their foster parents. The Tampa Bay Times published an article that discusses one family’s story and the tensions between two families when case workers do not do a diligent family search for placement. Read the article here.