For those of you that are against placing foster kids on websites, TV and papers ...?

Question

For those of you that are against placing foster kids on websites, TV and papers how do you suggest those kids get adopted. Each PAP who is trying to adopt from foster who is over worked and their job is to find a child/children for you . If you wait for the worker to introduce a child to you you may never see one. With the web and TV spots PAP who have been licensed can express intrest in a child and begin the process of introducing them to your home. For many of these kids they will age out of the system with no one if it weren't for the for this. They place childern of all types on there not just the healthy white babies. They place sibling groups, MRDD, developmemtally delayed etc. Some people actually see these spots on TV and decided to adopt from Foster care. So my question is for those who are against it what is your alternative? How would you find these kids homes? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aijo7Tvl19i0XfByZkl9G8jsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080404232056AAuFbwp&

Answer 1

I'm an adoption and foster care specialist. I have no problem with this, but you need to understand that those postings are often VERY misleading.

In my agency, priority is given to people searching for children...they are not given to an overworked social worker who doesn't do anything for them...we have specific people waiting to jump on leads.

If you think white healthy infants are a commodity...you should see how we jump on parents willing AND ABLE to adopt special needs children....I'll admit I am shameless!  If I think I  have good potential parents for special needs...we are all GREEDY!  We love our kids!  We are dying to see them with forever families!

I'm trying to steal Gaia Raain to my state, but it hasn't worked yet!  She even understands that it isn't my job to find a child for the parents, it is my job to find parents for my children.

Answer 2

What about the kids who go on tv and don't get picked?  It happens.  How psychologically devastating is that to a child?

Answer 3

I am not against the info being out there as it is how our family came together.  We saw a website w/ our children that were from a different part of the state from us.  After a long process they are part of our family forever.

Answer 4

Maybe people need to move to Oregon, lol.  The way the process works here, it's absolutely unnecessary to post these photos and bulletins.  I am really on the fence about this practice because it can encourage people to look into foster adoption, so I'm not answering this question because I'm totally against it.  I just wanted to point out that the arguments you present are not valid in MY state.

First off, if you see a picture on tv of a child who needs to be adopted, and you decide to start the adoption process JUST FOR THAT CHILD, you're going to be sorely disappointed.  I would say the chances of taking home that child is slim to none.  By the time you get through the adoption process, that child won't be available anymore.  Besides which, when your homestudy first gets approved, it automatically goes to the bottom of the pile.  The way PAP's are chosen by caseworkers in Oregon is the people who have been waiting the longest get looked at first.  So, if the caseworker finds three PAP's who might be a good  choice for that child near the top of the pile, then a newly approved PAP's homestudy won't even get looked at.  We've been waiting a year and a half since we were approved.  Not one single child we put in our homestudy for way back then is still available for adoption.

Everyone we came in contact with during our process made it VERY clear to us that their job is NOT to find children for us.  Their job is to find parents for the children who need them.  I didn't like hearing that at first, but now I couldn't agree more.

Last thing, you said, "If you wait for the worker to introduce a child to you you may never see one", but it doesn't work like that in Oregon, either.  Our social worker sends out bulletins on all the waiting kids (we've seen probably 150 or more bulletins in the last year and a half), and we choose between those children which ones we feel we could parent.  And if we saw a child on tv or a web site and then told our social worker we were interested in that child, we might have a 1% chance that anything would happen.

I think those ads can be a way for people to begin to consider foster adoption, and possibly decide that it's for them, so for that reason, I do think it can be a good thing.  But in the state of Oregon, that is the only purpose it would serve.  The children you see on the tv commercials or other ads are almost guaranteed to have found a family by the time you get your homestudy approved and end up at the top of the pile.

Answer 5

r...

i understand that SW are overworked...yet i don't think it rationalizes parading children on TV, websites and other mass media. it's too reminiscent of slave auctions and selling animals. it also allows for paps to "pick and choose" the babies they want, "i'll take the cute fair-skinned, curly haired one, over the ugly kinky-haired one!"  oh, yeah...let's not kid ourselves that this doesn't happen.. and what about the kids who are pimped...ooops, i mean...showcased over and over again, yet never get "chosen."  i'm sorry, it's too much like human trafficking to me...and i abhor it.

how about, informing paps that the children are available.  and then having the parents come in to the agency and go through a more ethical means of adopting a child.  like not allowing the paps to "pick and choose", yet to adopt the children available.  h**l...bio-parents don't get that choice. we get pregnant, and whatever comes out in the end is what we take home and love...why should aparents get to pick and choose?

isn't adoption the new pregnant?

Answer 6

IN australia you cant adopt foster kids...children can only be adopted if the parents agree

Answer 7

im in oklahoma and here on our news channels we have segments like thursday's waiting child, and a child is waiting... they show a different foster child everyweek... for adoption its great, but as a soon to be foster parent as long as the childs possible medical problems are something that i can handle i dont care who they are or what they look like... as long as they have a safe place to live while either their parents get their lives together or they find a forever home......

Answer 8

Where we are the social workers ALL know who is available for adopiton and PAP are matched rather quicky....children who are put on external media are there to try and get OTHER people to adopt them, not ones already thinking about adoption.  

I still am on the fence,  I think it invades their privacy, but also I think it can be a benefit if someone who was not thinking adoption sees that child and feels drawn and starts the process.