We just had a unit on transcultural adoption in our class. The facilitator made the excellent point that even within the same race, an adoption is often transcultural when it crosses socioeconomic lines. In a class where the large majority of parents are black, the discussion (mostly about black placements with white parents) was very interesting. I'd write about it more, but I'm feeling too down about a brief conversation we had before class. We're being gently but firmly pushed to move up to 8 from our current range of 0-5 years. Next Tuesday we'll have an individual consultation and get some more information about where we stand on this.
I'm also starting to get paranoid about where I stand because of my own race. After making it crystal clear that I don't care about getting a same-race placement, I've had several people tell me "I've seen Asian kids in Northwest states and Alaska, maybe you could look there." The kids in Alaska are Alaskan Natives, not Asians, and the Indian Child Welfare Act makes their adoption just as difficult for me as for any other non-tribal member. Once we're all certified we can adopt from out of state, but I know the agency strongly encourages us to stay within Georgia, for practical, financial and logistic reasons. I've already seen the photolisting sites in question and know there is a vanishingly small number of Asian children on them (as opposed to zero in Georgia). So what I'm hearing when people tell me there are kids available in the Northwest is "I'm ignoring what you say about not needing a same-race placement, and so state adoption will be a hundred times harder for you than for a black or white parent, but hey, don't lose hope!". I know the people who've told me this mean well. They really do. Like I said, maybe I'm just paranoid and hearing the wrong things. I do intend to get a clearer understanding of our situation by next week. Luckily my husband is maintaining an optimistic attitude.
Foster Care System Perspectives
5 comments:
People step forward and make all sorts of odd comments. I think (at least I hope) they mean to be helpful, but usually it's just annoying.
Why does your agency feel going across state lines will be more difficult/have associated costs?
Hi Margaret! I think some of it has to do with subsidies. A child who has a subsidy in their home state might not have the same subsidy here in Georgia. Also, the cross-border arrangements are all different. At the orientation the agency warned us that they couldn't adopt at all out of some states like Florida, but had good relations with others, like Ohio. They are a private nonprofit agency doing only state special needs adoption.
Ahh. Gotcha. I'm going through a private agency as well. They're great. I'm looking through every state, but my agency said pretty much the same thing as yours. Some states they've never worked with so they can't predict how it will go, other states (like Oregon, Washington, Ohio, and Texas) they've worked with a lot and have existing relationships with many placement workers.
I hope you don't mine my commenting. One of the reasons you might get the pressure to expand your age range is because generally there are just more children in need of homes who are older - and the wait is often younger for the kids 5 and under. I work in a foster care adoption program in my state and that is why most of the homestudy workers do this. It's for both you and for the children.
It's great that their transracial training includes more than just cross racial information. Our state also discusses the culture of poverty and the culture of addiction in our trainings, and at our last one, which I observed, they discussed religion/spirituality too. The more you know, the better for everyone.
Thanks for commenting, Jae Ran! I knew we would get some pressure about age range coming into the program, and they actually warned us all in advance on that. The religion issue is another separate source of stress... the vast majority of Georgians are Christian of course, so is everyone else in our class, there's a church on every street corner, and we're definitely not. The best I can do and still be true to my beliefs is join the Unitarian Church, which I'm currently doing.
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