Changing nature of adoption and need for post-adoption services: Intercountry adoption practice in Taiwan and Australia

This study explores issues on post-adoption services in intercountry adoptions based on the perspectives of adoption professionals from Taiwan and Australia. Findings revealed that both birth and adoptive families identify service needs for material and emotional support and connection after the adoption process is finalized. However, the current lack of government funding for post-adoption services result in gaps in service delivery. Adoption agencies experience challenges in funding and balancing the interests of the child and the two families. Implications for practice and policy are discussed to enhance the quality of post-adoption services and improve the well-being of the adoption triad.

11. Adoption and special guardianship

This chapter examines the legal mechanisms by which children can be provided with long-term alternative secure family placements: the law on adoption and special guardianship. Topics discussed include: decision-making in relation to adoption; adoption agencies’ role in assessing suitable adoptions; rules relating to parental consent in adoption cases; placement for adoption; applications to adopt; post adoption contact; revocation of adoption; and special guardianship orders.

Study of the Awareness of Adoption as a Family-Building Option Among Oncofertility Stakeholders in Japan

Purpose The oncofertility decision tree was developed by the oncofertility consortium as a tool to support healthcare professionals and patients through the complicated process of deciding the most appropriate fertility preservation strategy for patients with cancer. Various strategies include oocyte retrieval, oocyte donation, use of a gestational carrier and adoption. However, differences in the cultural and legal landscape present serious barriers to utilizing some of these strategies in Japan. Patients and Methods We surveyed Japanese oncofertility stakeholders including 60 cancer survivors, 27 oncology facilities, 78 reproductive medicine facilities and 15 adoption agencies by a questionnaire to characterize awareness among oncofertility stakeholders in Japan about parenting options including adoption to inform work to establish guidelines for decision-making by cancer survivors in an oncofertility. Results Our results indicate that oncologists and reproductive endocrinologists in Japan have an insufficient understanding of adoption that prevents them from adequately informing their patients. Japanese cancer survivors self-describe a lack in confidence in finding a suitable partner and raising a child. Contrastingly, of the 9 adoption agencies which responded, no agency included being a cancer survivor as a criterion for disqualification and 4 of 9 (44%) adoption agencies reported at least 1 adoption to a cancer survivor in the last year. Conclusion Our work demonstrates that a cancer survivor’s medical history itself is not a hurdle to adoption and investment in patient-provider education could be a viable strategy to improve the utilization of adoption as a fertility preservation strategy in Japan.

The National Urban League and the Fight for US Adoption Reform

The National Urban League initiated its Foster Care and Adoption Project in 1953 to increase African Americans’ participation in formal adoptions. League officials encouraged reforms in US policies and practices to eliminate the economic and social obatacles that limited African Americans’ adoptions. League officials also promoted greater integration of adoption agencies’ administrative and social work staff to advance the organization’s goals of encouraging interracial cooperation in social service agencies. The outcomes of the national project were inconsistent, in part because of resistance from some white child welfare professionals and the organized efforts of white citizens’ councils to defraud and defund many League branches. The project did highlight the social and institutional barriers that affected African Americans’ domestic and transnational adoptions. This chapter foregrounds the challenges adoption agencies faced when they endeavoured to placed Korean black children with African American families. It reveals why many successful agencies had to implement, on a case-by-case basis, many of the reforms that the League had hoped would produce national, comprehensive adoption reform.

Generating a Market in Children

This chapter explores the transnational adoption industrial complex’s origins, paying careful attention to South Korea’s lack of support for unwed mothers and low-income families and the manufacturing of orphans by orphanages and adoption agencies. Korean families’ abilities to parent are curtailed by androcentric legislation concerning Korean citizenship, societal stigma against unwed motherhood, and limitations to women’s labor force participation. Orphanages and adoption agencies facilitate adoptees’ social death in the creation of new birthdates and names, among other natal details. Adoptees are also constructed as interchangeable with documented cases of adoptees being sent in place of another child. The chapter ends with a discussion of contemporary South Korean adoption policy and government overtures to adoptees as they return to the nation that previously cast them out.

11. Adoption and special guardianship

This chapter examines the legal mechanisms by which children can be provided with long-term alternative secure family placements: the law on adoption and special guardianship. Topics discussed include: decision making in relation to adoption; adoption agencies’ role in assessing suitable adoptions; rules relating to parental consent in adoption cases; placement for adoption; applications to adopt; and special guardianship.