Category: Adoption Professionals
Can military families adopt while a parent is on active duty? Should military families avoid adoption due to deployments and frequent moves? What do adoption professionals need to know and practice...
Download PDF May is National Foster Care Month, and NCFA is proud to join private and public sector organizations from across the country in raising awareness about the need for perma...
Choosing an open adoption is just the first step in a lifelong journey for birth mothers. In this issue of the Adoption Advocate, three birth moms share their stories and offer advice and encourage...
In many adoption processes, prospective adoptive parents are asked to agree in advance to comply with post-adoption reporting requirements. This is especially true for intercountry adoptions, as ma...
Download PDF Advocating for children to have a permanent family is the heart and soul of what we do as adoption professionals. Advocating comes with an enormous amount of responsibili...
Download PDF While Americans have a very positive view of adoption, a majority describe private adoptions as either expensive or very expensive.1 The Adoption Tax Credit (ATC) can hel...
Download PDF What Are Adoption Subsidies? Adoption subsidies are now recognized as a critical support for maintaining permanency for some of the country's most vulnerable children. Th...
Download PDF At various times throughout the year, we are immersed as a culture in times of annual celebration that are strongly linked to traditions, memories, friends, and family. Whi...
Subtle yet steady, a culture war has been slowly brewing in the child advocacy world. It boasts no herald to announce its merits to the nation, and few outside its fields of battle could articulat...
In honor of National Adoption Month 2020, NCFA is featuring various stories and perspectives on adoption. Today we welcome guest blogger Jessica, a birth mom, working to raise awareness about the i...
Each November, we recognize National Adoption Month as an opportunity to raise awareness and celebrate adoptive families and their children who have benefitted from both domestic and intercount...
Adoption: By the Numbers National Council For Adoption's Adoption: By the Numbers is the only comprehensive source of the most recent adoption statistics. Featuring data collected and analyzed by...
In 2019, 23 percent of all children in foster care were 13-17 years old, and nearly 6 percent of those were adopted that same year.1 While international adoptions have declined overall since 2005, ...
Weaving Hope Into Heartache – A Parent’s Perspective If you’re an adoptive parent like me who has had the benefit of training and education rooted in TBRI, then you know how essential Th...
Hope-Filled Strategies Come to Life in The Connected Parent – A Professional’s Perspective It’s not often that you remember exactly where you were when reading a book more than 13 years a...
Increasingly same-sex headed families are becoming a part of the adoption community. Since the legalization of gay marriage, many agencies have seen an increase in the number of same-sex couples loo...
Uplifting Youth Voices During National Foster Care Month & COVID-19 Entering this new chapter of leadership at the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI), I am excited to enga...
Home has taken on new meaning the past few weeks. We stay home to protect the broader community. We’re working from home. Having birthdays at home. And for many, a stable place to call home might ...
Breaking Jurisdictional Barriers in Older Child Adoptions from Foster Care She scanned the room of the various individuals who came to learn more about adoption from foster care, and after ...
In the early 1990s a treaty was drafted, debated, and eventually finalized that would shape the course of international adoption forever. The treaty, later known as The Hague Convention of 29 May 19...
Introduction Now more than ever, adoption agency personnel are being asked to help parents understand pediatric medical and mental health complexities. Whether children are adopted internationally, ...
Like all of you, we here at NCFA find ourselves navigating truly unchartered territory as the Coronavirus pandemic creates global uncertainty and societal upheaval. As we come to the end of thi...
Accreditation has long been used by professions to validate the qualifications of providers and the quality of services. This paper examines the accreditation of intercountry adoption service provid...
NCFA is celebrating 40 years of advocating for children, birth families, and adoptive families. We continue to see adoption practice evolve, including new or expanded opportunities for famili...
The start of any New Year is usually considered a milestone for people and organizations alike, but for National Council For Adoption (NCFA), 2020 takes on even more significance than usual. Not onl...
I. Introduction The work of intercountry adoption agencies has always been larger than simply the placement of children with families. In addition to the placement of children, these agencies— as ...
Introduction Historically, adoptions in the United States were strictly closed adoptions that entailed sealed legal records and absolutely no contact between the birth parents and the adoptive famil...
Adoption in the U.S., originally focused on placing healthy infants, has evolved to the point that now the majority of children available for placement either have recognized medical problems or ar...
The decision to begin or grow your family through adoption is certainly life-changing and rewarding. This decision can also bring with it a great deal of uncertainty and emotion. One hundred years a...
Download PDF In 1948, white parents in Minnesota adopted a black child and were the first recorded transracial adoption in the United States1. The following year, novelist and winner ...
What is Subsidiarity? Subsidiarity is one of the most hotly debated and diversely interpreted principles of intercountry adoption.1 But before diving into an explanation of subsidiarity in the inte...
The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, commonly referred to as the Hague Convention on Adoption, went into force internationally in ...
Editor's Note: National Council For Adoption asked Sarah Mraz to write this month’s Adoption Advocate following her presentation at last year’s NCFA conference. When asked her to write this piec...
Download PDF Why Reach Out to the Black Community? We address our attention to women experiencing unintended pregnancy and countless Black parents who could provide Black children ...
Words matter so much, especially when we’re speaking about something as deeply personal as adoption. Accurate adoption language can help stop the spread of misconceptions about adoption and reflec...
Ethiopia's parliament has passed legislation banning intercountry adoption. NCFA's Ryan Hanlon joined BBC World Service Radio to discuss how this decision places unparented children at risk. NCFA ...
Curiosity about who we are, where we came from, and our significance in life is universal. Today, opportunities abound to search family history to fill in the missing pieces of the past, whether a f...
The Council on Accreditation (COA) announced today that the organization has notified the U.S. Department of State of their intent to terminate their role as a national accrediting entity—a...
Military families have the potential to be outstanding adoptive families. They often have an incredible support network of friends. Military families tend to be flexible and adaptable and those are ...
On December 16, 2016, the Department of State temporarily debarred the Hague accredited agency European Adoption Consultants (EAC), citing noncompliance with federal regulations. Less than two month...
“Why don’t you just adopt?” is a go-to question frequently asked by friends and family of people who struggle with infertility. But infertility is a disease that does not have a one-size-fits-...
Over the past ten years, I've received many calls from young adult adoptees pleading with me to send them their adoption or birth records. Most are heartbreaking stories of lost documents due to fir...
Introduction The wait can be challenging for many attempting to grow their families through adoption. Along with this wait, which is oftentimes quite long, come significant emotions—including joy,...
Thirty years of research shows that positive interactions between a child and primary caregiver(s) significantly impacts brain development. Studies show that children raised in family-based care (bi...
Introduction Since the mid-1940s, the practice of adopting orphaned children internationally has experienced peaks as well as periods of decline, driven in part by public interest, world wars, chang...
Introduction Professionals involved in making child-placing decisions have a life-changing responsibility. These professionals must be properly qualified, trained, and supervised. There is little sc...
Introduction When Andrew1 and his girlfriend Maria chose adoption for their daughter five years ago, Andrew was astounded that he had to sign only one form to terminate his parental rights, while M...
Introduction Historically, private adoption agencies were founded to work on domestic infant and international adoptions. As time has passed and new policies and best practices have been established...
When considering intercountry adoption, prospective adoptive parents will hear countries often referred to as "Hague Countries" and "Non-Hague Countries". These can also be called "Convention Count...
Introduction First, let me answer the question on everyone’s mind: What is adoption medicine? Children who join families through adoption may have special health, behavioral, and developmental nee...
Introduction While adopting a child from another country, you receive word that the in-country court has scheduled the final guardianship or adoption hearing. You make travel plans with your family ...
Introduction Adoption. A special way for a family to be formed, and yet born of loss. A journey to navigate, with both joys and challenges. Not a one-time event, but a defining and ongoing experienc...
Introduction The increased regulation of adoption agencies and more stringent agency licensing requirements at both the state and federal levels have resulted in agencies being mandated to accept pr...
Editor’s Note: While it is often easier to focus on the majority of successful adoptions, it is important for adoption and child welfare advocates to look closely at the cases in which adoption di...
Disruption or dissolution is something that no one involved with an adoption wants to happen, and much has been written about the prevention of this occurrence. The reality is that some adoptive fam...
Editor’s Note: NCFA is committed to protecting the best interests of and advocating for all members of the adoption triad: birthparents, adoptive parents, and children. While it is possible for bi...
Introduction In January 2010, the earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath brought the longstanding debate over intercountry adoption and its place in the wake of an emergency to the public attention. ...
Federally subsidized guardianship would be a positive reform to the foster care financing system and can be achieved without undermining children's interests in adoption. A loving, permanent family ...