The Biggest Challenges Facing the Evangelical Orphan/Adoption Movement

Far be it from me to say that the orphan care movement has a PR problem, but if my experience is common, then they just might. I attended the big (3000+) Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit 9 conference last week in Nashville. When I posted on Facebook and Twitter that I would be attending this conference, I received the following comment on Facebook from a well-respected adoption education professional, who is also a friend:

Question (I genuinely need an answer). Do any of these Orphan conferences talk about waiting US kids, or are they always about international adoption?

I then received the following email from another adoption education professional:

I was a little surprised to hear you were going to this conference since you are a leading national advocate for adoption education/preparation and this “movement” is not about preparation, it is known for candy-coating adoption to get people to jump on the bandwagon of adoption. I thought this wasn’t what Creating a Family is about.

Then as if to add a cherry on top, I turned on the car radio and heard an NPR Fresh Air interview with Kathryn Joyce, author of a new book that is critical of the orphan care movement– The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. You can listen to the podcast of the Fresh Air interview, or check out this article in Salon, with the totally non-inflammatory or discriminatory title of “How the Christian right perverts adoption: The evangelical adoption boom is driven by creepy links between the Christian right and a billion-dollar industry”. (Wow, talk about unbiased journalism!)

My Concerns with the Orphan Care Movement

I have expressed my concerns in the past that the larger “Orphan Care Movement” was not focused enough on educating and preparing would-be adopters. Over the years, Creating a Family has heard from a number of families who were drowning post adoption, and felt abandoned by the folks at church who weren’t prepared to help and support them when the going got rough. It’s fair to say that plenty of parents who adopt older kids struggle during the transition regardless of how much preparation they received, but it seemed that some of these people truly didn’t know what they were getting into.

I have also been critical of the abuses in international adoption. Who isn’t?!? I never thought, however, to blame a movement that encourages people to adopt for these abuses. That would be like blaming the locavore/eat-local movement for an outbreak of food poisoning from a local farm. The folks I know in the orphan care movement, both the supporters and well as adopters, are just as interested as the rest of us in ethical adoptions.

Adoption is Not a Happy Ever After Story

Needless to say, after the reception I received and the media focus on the orphan care movement, I was looking forward to the session on “The Biggest Challenges Facing the Orphan Care Movement” with Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and author of Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches, the book that more or less launched the evangelical orphans care movement.  I figured he had his work cut out for him, and he didn’t disappoint.

Dr. Moore talked for an hour and covered a wide variety of topics, but one thing was crystal clear—he was not all about having people jump on the bandwagon of adoption. Here are some of my notes, which are a rough paraphrase that I hurriedly scribbled down.

• If what you want is a risk-free life—Don’t Adopt!
• Welcoming someone into your life is an invitation to be hurt.
• Don’t sentimentalize what it means to be a parent. It’s hard and often unrewarding work.
• Adoption is not a happily ever after type of story.
• I spend more of my time talking people out of adopting now than encouraging them to adopt.

Ummm, not much candy-coating or bandwagon jumping going on there.  As much as I’m in favor of painting a fair picture, he went a little far focusing on the negative. I appreciate that he did this to make sure his audience heard that adoption is a lifetime choice that takes a lifetime of commitment, but still…he kind of scared me and I’ve already adopted and almost finished raising them.

In his assessment of the challenges facing the orphans care movement, Dr. Moore did not address the perception that they are primarily focused on “rescuing” poor kids from abroad, so I asked this question in the Q & A part of his session. He acknowledged that they needed to get the message out that the orphans care movement was encouraging all types of adoption. He chuckled when he said that it was sometimes a challenge to get churches to agree on the “right” kind of music, much less the right kind of adoption.

Based on what I saw and heard at Summit 9, the orphan care movement is not in the least focused primarily on international adoption and is totally focused on educating families about what they might be getting into. A quick perusal of the session listings showed an equal, if not greater, focus on providing families for waiting US kids than on adopting from abroad and many session on attachment and struggles of older child adoption. I spoke with several social workers from governmental child welfare agencies that were attending, and they universally sang the praises of churches as a source for families for children in foster care—both for fostering and adopting.

Although I realize this isn’t proof of anything, I couldn’t help but notice that in addition to the black and Asian kids (which may or may not have been internationally adopted) running around at Summit 9, I saw at least five children with Down Syndrome (again, hard to know if they were adopted, and if so, if they were adopted domestically or internationally, but all five were Caucasian.)

The Problem with Pictures

After I asked the question at the session on The Biggest Challenges, a woman came up to me to talk. I wish I had written down her name, but I think she said that she was with Hope For 100. She and her husband are involved primarily with promoting foster care adoption in churches, but she said from a very practical standpoint they struggle with how to visually represent this mission. They can’t use pictures of foster children, and pictures of families created from fostercare adoption often don’t look any different from families created by birth. Pictures are a shorthand, and for better or worse, pictures of kids from other countries are an easier shorthand for the orphan care movement. This was not something I had thought of before, and I see her point.

Where I Hope the Orphan Care Movement Moves

At Summit there were a few sessions on what churches can do to prevent orphans in the first place, which is where I hope the focus of this movement moves in the future. We often quote James 1:27 (pure religion is to look after orphans and widows in their distress). I’d love to see more emphasis on looking after the widows—be they actual widows or single moms struggling to hold their families together. Although not well known, the orphans care movement is moving in this direction. Saddleback Church where Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life) is pastor has a large program in Rwanda to help families stay together and to promote domestic adoption within Rwanda. This is in addition to the large foster care support program they have in California.

Heaven only knows (pun intended) that the Orphan Care Movement has a wonderfully efficient outreach campaign, but it does seem that they need to get the word out that they are way past being sugar-coating, band wagon jumping advocates of saving foreign orphans through adoption. Consider this blog a step in that direction.

Now I’m curious to hear what are your impressions of the orphan care movement? I wonder if the response I received was universal or just a coincidence.

Source: http://www.creatingafamily.org

EMERGENCY NOTICE: Fire Destroys Part of Mari Izmirlyan Orphanage

Very early yesterday morning, a major fire broke out on the second floor of Mari Izmirlyan Orphanage.  Mari Izmirlyan, located in Yerevan, houses approximately 100 special needs children.  Thankfully, none of the children were hurt.  While we are still receiving information about the extent of the fire and the needs of the orphanage going forward, we do know that the 42 children who occupied the second floor have been relocated.

Those who have read SOAR’s email blasts over the years may be familiar with my husband George Yacoubian’s writing style.  However, with Sunday’s fire at Mari Izmirlyan, I felt compelled to write all of you.  Some of you, like me, may not be Armenian.  Others may be Armenian, but have not been to Armenia.  Others may have visited Armenia, but not seen the orphanages.  I presume only a small proportion of you have not only visited the country but also the orphan institutions within.  For those in this group, I know you can understand what my words hope to convey.

My heart and mind start with the already devastating fact that these children do not know family the way many of us do.  Already heartbreaking, I can’t shake what I have seen in the many trips we took to Armenia to visit our daughter while we waited for her to be able to come home – the cold cement walls, the caving ceilings, and the mildew-stained, broken down common bathrooms.  That is why this news about the fire has left me significantly more heartbroken for these children.  To lose what little they had is one thing. What’s even harder to imagine is the trauma these children endured – losing what little they had and not being able to seek comfort in a hug from their father or reassuring words from their mother.  They can’t move in with family while repairs are made. There is no hotel to check into. They can’t count on repairs being made efficiently.  I write this email blast to ask for any help you can provide, not just for the renovation of a building but also for the rejuvenation of their spirits. In addition to any tangible donation you consider, we welcome any guidance from those that have experience helping others through something like this, and of course, as many prayers as you can spare.

If you would like to assist Mari Izmirlyan Orphanage, online donations can be made through PayPal at http://soar-us.org/ (designate SOAR-National) or checks can be mailed to the above address.  If you have any questions, please call us at 610.213.3452.

With all of our thanks,

Erica Carraro Yacoubian

Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief – Los Angeles Chapter (SOAR-LA)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPIv7A3zRo
http://www.facebook.com/bared.maronian

http://www.valleypbs.org/events/orphans_genocide.php
http://www.armenoidteam.com

Contact Armenoid Productions at 954-646-0944 or director, Bared Maronian at bared.maronian@gmail.com

Reposted with permission from Bared Maronian.

“STUCK”—The Unnecessary Pains of International Adoption!

The international adoption process pushes so many people away with inter-country politics, excessive costs and red tape, and sometimes even unnecessary rejection. Instead of pushing people away from adopting orphans, we primarily need to be pulling them closer together.

I recently made the Jewish case for promoting adoption and have previously shown the deep roots of this commitment. We need to create a much larger Jewish discourse about our role in responding to the global orphan crisis. The longer these children stay in orphanages the more risk of their suffering irreparable emotional, neurological, psychological, and educational damage.

I recently watched the must-see award-winning film, STUCK, by Both Ends Burning, which documents the struggles and rewards of international adoption. This very well done documentary follows the stories of four orphans from Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Haiti, and their heartbreaking struggles to make it home to their adoptive families.

The subjects of the documentary are just four examples of millions of children around the world who are stuck in a broken system, and the growing outcry in the international community is that every child must be granted the right to grow up in a loving family. We must become more aware and outraged by the incredible obstacles placed in the way of people who are only trying to become parents, and the children who desperately want to have a family. There are an estimated 17.9 children worldwide who have no living parents. This is probably a low estimate, as UNESCO data indicate that there are up to 150 million street children who spend their days in the streets of Latin America, India, Eastern Europe, and other areas. Some have families to return to at night, some have homes to sleep in, but millions literally live and sleep on the streets. In Latin America, they are called “los abandonados” (the abandoned ones), and many spend their days sniffing glue or paint thinner in an effort to get high and forget their hunger pangs. They are also subject to abuse by pedophiles and at risk of being intimidated and even murdered by the police, with little chance of obtaining justice. The idea that many of these children have families that can provide for them is a cruel exaggeration.

For years, liberal adoption policies allowed many Americans to have inter-country adoptions. The U. S. State Department reported that there were 233,934 total adoptions from 1999-2011, an average of about 18,000 a year. However, as the following list shows, the number of international adoptions has declined greatly in recent years.

• 2002: 21,467
• 2003: 21,654
• 2004: 22,991
• 2005: 22,734
• 2006: 20,680
• 2007: 19,608
• 2008: 17,456
• 2009: 12,744
• 2010: 11,058
• 2011: 9,319
• 2012: 8,668

The following factors should be noted:

• Due to increasingly difficult regulations, the number of adoptions to the United States has decreased by 62 percent.
• A 2012 State Department report noted that adoption service providers charged between $0 and $64,357 for all services, with a median charge of $28,425. The median wait takes 896 days; some adoptions have been held up for years due to bureaucratic obstacles.
• Current models predict that there will be even fewer adoptions in 2013, due to the Russian orphan ban. In addition, the State Department is not accepting applications from Cambodia and Guatemala.

STUCK is a film designed to raise awareness—and inspire outrage—over the deplorable practices allowed in current international adoption. Politics, inefficiency, and apathy leave children trapped and uncared for in orphanages around the world while there are loving families eager and willing to adopt them.

I would encourage others to watch the film, to consider volunteering to be part of the STUCK team when the film comes to your city, sign the petition, join the National March for Orphans in Washington, DC, on May 17^th. When we raise our voices and advocate the voices of millions of children, we can make great change.

Counterintuitively the Skulener Rebbe taught that one should even show more care to an orphan than to their own children. The Rebbe stayed in Europe after World War II defying the Soviets to look after refugees and keep orphans in his home. On one cold night, he found an orphan on his floor crying without a blanket. He went and took the blanket off of his old child and gave it to the orphan child. His son understood but nonetheless the Skulener Rebbe said “My dear son, please understand. You have a father. You can at least warm yourself with that. That child has no one in the world; let him at least have a blanket.”

May we open our hearts to the orphans of the world crying out for homes and for love.

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, the Founder and C.E.O. of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and is the author of “Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century.” In 2012 and 2013, Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.”

Source: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com

Realistic Expectations The First Year Home

Congratulations! Welcome to the journey of being an adoptive parent. As you get to know your child, you will realize what you don’t know! But not to worry, you aren’t alone. Take time to learn the skills to parent YOUR child. Connect with others who have similar experiences. Make time for yourself. The following articles were complied as a great starting point for your education as a new adoptive parent

• A Different Perspective By Cynthia Hockman-Chupp
• Strategies for Building Attachment By Karleen Gribble, BRurSc, PhD,
• Top Ten Tips for Successful First Year Parenting By Deborah Gray, MSW, MPA
• Why Grandma Can’t Pick Up the Baby By Sheena Macrae and Karleen Gribble
• What is This Thing You Call Sleep? By Dr Julian Davies, MD
• Transitional Feeding Difficulties By Dr Julian Davies, MD
• Alone No More…Recognizing Post Adoption Depression By Heatherly Bucher
• Adding The Oldest By Terra Trevor
• Creating a Fit By Carrie Kitze
• “When Do You Tell a Child he was Adopted?” And Other Secrets We Shouldn’t Keep By Adam Pertman
• Unexpected Special Needs By Nancy Hemenway
• Positive Outcome: How Can You Combat the Effects of an Orphanage  By Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS
• The Impact of Trauma on the Adopted Child By B. Bryan Post
• Ten Keys to Healing Trauma in the Adopted Child By B. Bryan Post
• How to Find a Therapist Experienced in Attachment and/or Trauma tips from the Attachment & Trauma Network
• Sensory Integration And the Internationally Adopted Child By Barbara Elleman, MHS, OTR/L, BCP
• Facts About Parenting a Child with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder By Teressa Kellerman
• How to Avoid the Syndrome of Parent Burn-Out by Harriet McCarthy
• Being an Ally to Families Raising Children with Challenges By Ellin Frank
• Help Your Child Ward Off a Mad Attack by Lynne Namke, EdD
• Being with Your Child in Public Places by Patty Wipfler
• Strategies to Deal with Anger and Power Struggles By Christopher J. Alexander, PhD
• When Adoptions Fail By Kim Phagan-Hansel

Read more (PDF)

World Syndrome Day 2013

Celebrate and bring awareness to World Syndrome Day 2013, by painting your nails blue.  Let your "Blue" shine in honor or someone you know with Downs – or hope to know! 

There are SO many children with Down Syndrome waiting for families in orphanages around the world.  Imagine how colorful and joyful your life could be with a child that needs a forever family…  If you are interested in learning more about adopting a child with Down Syndrome, call us today or email us at waitingchild@hopscotchadoptions.org

The Step Forward for Orphans March

Friday, May 17
Washington, D.C.

Our final premiere will be May 16, in Washington, D.C.. The next day, we’ll gather as a group to deliver copies of the petition to legislators on Capitol Hill in the Step Forward for Orphans March. Details are still being finalized, but we invite you all to join us!

The March
Starting time will be 1 PM, Friday, May 17, beginning near the Capitol (location to be announced) and finishing at Upper Senate Park. We’re in the process of arranging a block of hotel rooms at a nearby location—we’ll let you know once those plans are finalized.

If you plan to arrive a day or two before, we want to encourage you to set an appointment with your local legislators to meet with them prior to the march to personally discuss reforms in the international adoption process.

Gerda Weissmann Klein on Adoption and the film STUCK

Gerda Weissmann Klein introduces the documentary film STUCK. The film exposes how red tape and lack of political will has condemned millions of children to a life behind orphanage walls.

Gerda Weissmann Klein on Adoption and the film STUCK from Both Ends Burning Campaign on Vimeo.

Reconsidering Intercountry Adoption: Who Wants to Adopt and Who Could Be Adopted

By Christopher Balding

This article, which is based on a working paper presented at the Ninth Annual Adoption Law and Policy Conference in March 2012, utilizes the 2006-2008 National Survey on Family Growth (conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control), the USAID/ UNICEF Demographic and Health Surveys, and UN and U.S. Census Bureau data in order to profile adoptive parents in the United States and examine the serious and often life-threatening dangers faced by orphaned and vulnerable children.

Continue Reading (PDF)…

Orphans Without Borders – Global Action – NEED YOUR VOICE – Jan 27

Dear Colleagues,

Orphans Without Borders calls January 27th the day of Global Action For Children’s Rights to Have a Family. We invite people all over the world to support the orphans in Russia who became victims of the adoption ban.

Please, post your picture holding a sign that says – Orphans Without Borders (in your native language). Under it you can write – From Mother to Mother, From Parent to Parent, From Brother to Sister, From Father to Father, From Friend to Friend… Ask everyone to support it and "like" the page http://on.fb.me/WRlxYk

If you do not have a Facebook page, please, send your picture to Sasha D’Jamoos (Shulchev) alexshulchev@yahoo.com

Together we can help these children be with their families!

Best,
Natasha Shaginian-Needham, M.D.
Co-Founder of Orphans Without Borders
Executive Director and Co-Founder
Happy Families International Center,Inc.
www.happyfamilies.org
Co-Founder of Artist Foundation in Russia
Documentary Producer