For Couples Who Adopt: How to Keep Your Relationship Strong

Source: adoptioncouncil.org

By Ryan North, Kayla North

Whatever stage of the adoption process you are in—from contemplation to post-adoption—working to fortify your relationship will have an impact upon those around you, most especially children in your care.

Amber Lewis, a licensed counselor in Oklahoma who works with families during the home study process and post-adoption says, “It is vital that couples go into an adoption with a relationship characterized by strong communication, cooperation, respect, and love. The challenges of adoption often exacerbate weaknesses in marriages, and it can be devastating for the whole family if those weaknesses grow. But, if a couple is strongly committed to each other with firm grounding in their love, roles, and mutual respect, the family is much better prepared to successfully weather the stress that can come with building a family by adoption.”

We encourage you to approach this article with a growth mindset—we all have things to learn and ways to improve and grow. Perhaps your relationship is strong heading into an adoption process—that is great—seek to identify ways to reinforce that foundation. Perhaps your marriage is falling apart five years after your family adopted—we are glad you are looking for resources and strongly believe there is good reason for you to be hopeful that change and help are possible.

Continue reading>

Bill Could Grant Citizenship to Thousands of Intercountry Adoptees!

Source: msn.com

Thousands of intercountry adoptees, many Asian American, lack citizenship, despite living in the U.S. for decades since they were children. They have spent decades working and paying taxes like other citizens but cannot access key social services. Many are also under threat of deportation, and several have already been deported to a country they are unfamiliar with.

Continue reading

Adoption Tax Credit Podcast

 

The annual CreatingaFamily.org Adoption Tax Credit podcast is dropping soon. Set an alarm on your phone to listen – wherever you get your podcasts or at bit.ly/adoptoptions on January 17th!

#adoption #fostercare #kinshipcare #AdoptionTaxCredit

HelpUsAdopt Grant Deadline: January 6th, 2024!

HelpUsAdopt.org will now have 6 grant cycles (instead of 4) in 2024 and will be awarding 1.2 million in adoption grants next year. Our next adoption application deadline is January 6th. 

Please share this message with your clients and networks.

The ADOPT Act (HR 6330)

 

Last week, the bipartisan bill, The ADOPT Act (HR 6220) was introduced in the House of Representatives. For years now, we’ve heard from you about the issue of online, unlicensed brokers playing a predatory role in private domestic adoption. Instead of working with licensed, local providers like you – expectant parents and prospective adoptive parents are often connecting with online brokers that take advantage of these vulnerable groups. 

The ADOPT Act marks the first time federal legislation has been introduced to prohibit these unlicensed intermediaries from advertising to expectant parents and from making payments to expectant and birth parents. While it’s an exciting milestone to celebrate, it’s just the first step. We need many more House co-sponsors, introduction in the Senate, etc. 

You can help! Please use this link to quickly and easily message your Representative on this issue. Even better, look up your Congressional offices and make a quick phone call, asking them to support this legislation. Better yet, do both! We need as much outreach as possible, so please consider sending a message to the clients, families, and other stakeholders you’re connected to.

Even if you don’t do private domestic adoption, improving the experiences and safeguards for expectant parents, birth parents, and adoptive families will only serve to enhance the perception of adoption in the wider public, so please join our efforts.

It will be a lot of work for us to see this bill passed, but I believe our community can rally around this issue and help bring about the change we’ve wanted for years. Take action today and please help spread the word so others join this effort as well.

Hopscotch Adoptions’ Ghanaian NGO Partner, #NurturingNations, in action!

 

Watch on Facebook>

C-Span Interview with National Council for Adoption’s Dr. Ryan Hanlon

Source: www.c-span.org

Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, talked about the adoption process in the U.S. and ways policymakers can improve it.

Click here to watch.

It’s Time for Congress to Overhaul Intercountry Adoption

Source: newsweek.com

by MARY L. LANDRIEU AND RYAN HANLON , FORMER U.S. SENATOR FROM LOUISIANA; PRESIDENT AND CEO OF NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION

Twenty-three years ago, former President Bill Clinton signed the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000, following the Senate‘s ratification of the international treaty on adoption, the Hague Convention on Adoption. After this bill was signed into law, regulations were promulgated, adoption agencies were accredited, and the U.S. Department of State began their role as the designated “central authority” partnering with the Department of Justice‘s Immigration and Naturalization Services (now transitioned to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) as required by the new law. Prior to the United States joining the Hague Convention, international adoption was regulated by a patchwork of state laws, immigration regulations, and foreign countries’ policies. By formalizing federal oversight, Congress hoped to create stronger partnerships with other countries to reduce corruption and enhance services to children in need of families. Though well-intentioned, the goal of helping more orphaned children find permanent families did not materialize. Instead, the total number of international adoptions fell from over 20,000 in 2004 to less than 2,000 today and the intercountry adoption process has become significantly longer and more expensive.

Other countries also experienced a decline in intercountry adoptions, though with the U.S. receiving about half of all intercountry adoptions globally, the decline in our country has an oversized impact on orphaned children. There remain hundreds of thousands of children around the world in need of a family—and many thousands of qualified parents in the U.S. and other countries who are willing to adopt them—yet bureaucratic policies delay or prevent this from happening. These delays also impact relative adoptions. For U.S. citizens who want to adopt their niece, nephew, or grandchild in another country following the death of the child’s parents, the process that used to take weeks or months now often takes many years and costs exponentially more.

Continue reading>

How To Talk About Autism Respectfully

Source: coda.io

First, thank you for being here and reading this. I appreciate it more than you probably think. Most people simply don’t take the time to get this stuff right, and if you’re a journalist or media producer who is taking that time then I want to thank you profusely.

If you take away nothing else from this essay I’d like you to take this: one of the core mottos of our community comes from South African disability rights activism: “Nothing About Us Without Us.” If you can keep those five words in your mind when writing about Autistic people your journalism is going to get a lot better.

If you take two things (and let’s be real, I want you to take more than two things but I’m a pragmatist) it’s that you shouldn’t be writing about Autism if you don’t understand the Double Empathy problem, it's covered in this article.

Finally, if this whole thing is overwhelming, let me please ask that before you bail out look at the Resources section. I’ve provided links to groups who can help you fact-check and sensitivity-read your work.

After all, you wouldn’t write about gay people without interviewing gay people, right? You wouldn’t support a women’s rights organization run entirely by men, whose policies directly contravene what the women they’re advocating for say they want, I assume? You wouldn’t listen to the caretaker of a speaking but physically disabled person speak over that person in a story about disability, right?

So remember that we have been systemically excluded from agency in our own lives, in small and large ways, for decades. And understand that when we say “Nothing about us without us” we are not expressing a preference, we are setting a boundary in terms of what respectful representation looks like.

Continue reading>

A Fabulous New Children’s Book for Our Armenian Children!

 We are elated to share a fabulous new children’s book written by a Hopscotch Adoptions Mom, Lisa Menasian Colloca!

We loved this book so much we will be adding this new book to future prospective adoptive parent curricula. We hope you’ll consider ordering a copy for your child and enjoy it for the years to come as a wonderful resource and treasure! 

HelpUsAdopt Grant Deadline April 1, 2023!

Don’t miss out! Helpusadopt.org will be awarding $1 million in adoption grants this year. There’s no application fee and they support all types of families with grants up to $20,000.

What to know about getting a U.S. passport in 2023

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/

by Natalie B. Compton

Washington Post illustration

The pandemic threw a wrench in the well-oiled machine of U.S. passport services. When offices were closed, in-person appointments were impossible and employees were figuring out how to work in the new normal, millions of passport applications got backlogged.

Fast forward a few years, and we’re not quite back to the 2019 norm, but we’re nearly there. Wait times are down, you can take your own photos (if you follow directions with military precision) and a new online system is rolling out for passport renewals that makes the process a lot easier (if you meet the specific criteria).

We checked in with the State Department to get the latest information on what travelers need to know about passport services.

Continue reading>

How to Adopt in 2023

 

Are you thinking about adopting this year? CreatingaFamily.org talked about How to Adopt in 2023, including the current state of domestic infant, international, and foster care adoption with guest experts from Adoptions From The Heart and Hopscotch Adoptions, Inc, Inc: http://ow.ly/Vnq950MmMxt

**This podcast is part of the Adoption Options awareness campaign. Check out the many other resources Creating A Family offers at bit.ly/adoptoptions today!

#domesticinfantadoption #internationaladoption #fostercareadoption #adoption

Urgent Call to Action to Support the Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act

 

Time is Running Out!

Join us in asking Congress to include the Adoption Tax Refundability Act in Year-End Legislation

It’s quick and easy to send a clear message to your Senators and Representative asking them to do two things:

1. Cosponsor the bill (S.1156/H.R.3031) if they haven’t yet
2. Convey to their tax committee and caucus leadership the importance of including the bill in their priority list for tax provisions in any year-end legislation considered in December.

Use the button below or visit adoptiontaxcredit.org/take-action/contact-congress to send a prewritten message to Congress in just a few minutes.

PS – Please don’t wait! Decisions are being made quickly as Congress works to meet a mid-December deadline for passing budget, spending, and tax related legislation.

Contact Congress
Share Our Facebook Post

Thank you for using your voice to make a difference!

Webinar Registration Is Still Open: Wired for Fear, Not Fun: Supporting Children During Holidays, Vacations, and Special Events

 

There is still time to register for this Thursday’s Lunchtime Webinar: Wired for Fear, Not Fun: Supporting Children During Holidays, Vacations, and Special Events. Registration includes access to a recording and those who attend live will receive a certificate of attendance. The cost to attend is $15 and this program is non-refundable.

Register Now>

NCFA Responds to the Department of State FY 2021 Annual Report on Intercountry Adoption

 Source: adoptioncouncil.org

The U.S. Department of State has published its annual report on intercountry adoptions completed between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021. During this time, there were 1,785 intercountry placements.  By way of comparison, in fiscal year 2020, there were 1,622 intercountry placements; in fiscal year 2019, prior to the pandemic, there were 2,970 placements. The Department rightly notes the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on placements during both the FY2020 and FY2021 reporting periods, with countries such as China still not processing adoptions due to the pandemic.

We note that many of the countries among the top ten sending countries in FY21 have had longstanding adoption partnerships with the United States. We encourage the Department of State to work with accredited providers to establish new country partnerships as well.

Concern for Delays in Adoption Processing

The Department’s report contains a table displaying the average number of days to completion of a Hague Convention country adoption. The ten Convention countries with the most placements in FY21, are listed in the table below:

As dire as these numbers are, this table significantly underestimates the actual timeframe an adoption takes, because it does not account for the time a family has spent before the prospective adoptive parents file their adoption paperwork with USCIS.  It nonetheless shows a staggeringly long span of time for an adoption to be completed. Measured in terms of child’s life, this timeframe discloses that so often years of a child’s life are spent living outside of permanent family care. Social scientists, neuropsychologists, medical doctors, and child development specialists all agree that the length of time a young child experiences institutionalization can having lifelong impacts. We should – and we can – do better to reduce the processing timeframes so that children spend less time in institutions and more of their childhood in a family.

While some delays are outside the control of U.S. adoption professionals and the U.S. government, oftentimes, a large part of the timeframe delays are due to inefficient systems and processing of the U.S. government. We have previously worked with adoption professionals to identify where there are stuck points and problems in our current system – findings that have been shared with U.S. government adoption authorities. Unfortunately, this has not been taken seriously – and the problem only seems to be getting worse. NCFA calls upon – and pledges to work cooperatively with – the Department of State and USCIS to reduce systematic processing delays of intercountry cases.

Continue reading>

Best Books on ADD & Learning Differences – brought to you by our friends from Creating A Family!

 Source: creatingafamily.org

Here are our 8 top books for adults on ADD and learning differences.

Continue reading>

Labeling Kids with Special Needs – How Much to Share – brought to you by our friends from Creating A Family!

 Source: creatingafamily.org

I have a love-hate relationship with labels. They can help our children get the help they need and can help us find the support of others in a similar situation, but they can also come with the baggage of stigma and preconceived ideas. I worry about the long-term impact of labeling kids.

Continue reading>

Establishing Daily Routines for a Child with Prenatal Exposure – brought to you by our friends from Creating A Family!

 Source: creatingafamily.org

Parenting a child with prenatal exposure often requires additional scaffolding to help them learn the daily routines we take for granted. Establishing consistent daily routines for your child with prenatal exposure gives repetitive experiential learning that supports him as he acquires the skills to grow to adulthood.

Continue reading>

Practical Tips for Parenting a Child with ADHD – brought to you by our friends from Creating A Family!

 Source: creatingafamily.org

Parenting a child with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) can be challenging. Your child’s behavior, lack of focus on tasks, and struggle to follow your family’s daily flow feel overwhelming and draining. What more can you implement in your home to ease the frustration and set your child up for success in his everyday life?

Continue reading>