Adoption in America - Child Welfare League of America study

Children Today, May-June, 1989

Adoption in America

While thousands of prospective adoptive parents are waiting years for children, primarily healthy white infants, a recent study by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) found that at least 34,000 children are waiting an average of almost two years to be adopted. Eighty-two percent of the children waiting have special needs, and 51 percent of those waiting for adoption are minority children.

For the study, The State of Adoption in America, CWLA surveyed 48 statewide public and 103 private, voluntary agencies. The study--prepared with the assistance of CWLA's National Task Force on Adoption--explored such issues as the types of openness in adoption, how agencies allocate staff time, the degree to which post-legal adoption services are provided, and the presence or absence of formal policies in such areas as interracial adoption and the adoption of children with HIV infection. Among the study findings:

* Adoptive parent applicants on both public and voluntary agency lists wait approximately three years. Public agencies cite four major factors as critical barriers in achieving timely placements: lack of minority parents for the number of minority children awaiting adoption; lack of parents willing to take children with special needs; delay in termination of birth parents' rights; and lack of agency staff and money.

* Approximately one-third of the adoptions reported through the survey by voluntary agencies involved Americans adopting children from other countries.

* Openness in adoption appears to be on the increase. Voluntary agencies report increases in the participation of birth parents in the selection of adoptive parents, in meetings between birth and adoptive parents when identifying information is not shared, and in the practice of birth parents communicating to the child through the agency or adoptive family.

* A majority of agencies are providing post-legal adoption services to all members of the adoption triad.