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CHOOSE YOUR PARENTS CAREFULLY!

The tongue-in-cheek advice often given to aspiring Olympic athletes or people hoping to become centenarians is that, first and foremost, they should choose their parents carefully. Similar counsel might well be given to children who are to be adopted, and in their case there are grounds for taking it considerably more seriously.

Few would disagree that bringing a child from another country for adoption, as a child protection measure, must be prepared in a way that gives the best chances for the new family relationship to develop strongly and durably. Likewise, everything possible must be done to avoid breakdowns once the child is in his or her new home..

Most adoptions, even if they very often go through difficult phases, turn out to be highly positive. Nonetheless, according to some studies, as many as 25% of pending adoptions disrupt and some 10% of adoptions are dissolved after being finalised.

Adoption breakdown is a delicate subject on which robust data on incidence and causes is relatively scarce. That said, research findings to date confirm that breakdown is increasingly likely the older the child is at adoption and for every additional year that a child has spent in residential care prior to adoption. Several studies indicate that children with “special needs” also run an unusually high risk: not so much children with physical health problems and developmental disabilities, but more particularly those with severe behavioural problems grounded largely in their previous experiences in their family or in alternative care, such as physical and sexual violence, destructiveness and interpersonal emotional difficulties.

As we know, and almost ironically, intercountry adoption is now being sought more and more for precisely those children most at risk of potential breakdown. Clearly the provision and consideration of full information on the children and prospective adopters alike will consequently be increasingly vital to enable an informed “choice of parents” to be made, in the interests of the child and of the future adopters. Indeed, from the adoptive parents’ side, the major cause of breakdown is identified as lacunae in information, guidance and support at both the pre-adoption and post-adoption stages.

“Independent adopters” are particularly exposed to inadequate preparation and support, and misinformation about a child is especially likely in countries of origin that are not subject to procedures and safeguards provided by the Hague Convention. At the same time, adoption agencies must also be sure they have correct and complete information, even in the case of adoptions from Hague countries, and must foresee the provision of appropriate support services. Well-motivated adopters can find themselves completely out of their depth and unable to cope if information on the child prior to adoption was doctored or incomplete, and if poor “matching” took place. Compounded with an unwillingness or inability to seek and access qualified support, this can have tragic – and sometimes even fatal – consequences.  

Under international standards, prospective adopters cannot “self-select”: responsibility for selecting adoptive parents and “matching” them to an adoptable child therefore falls essentially to professionals. To fulfil that responsibility, the latter must be in possession of all the facts about the characteristics and needs of the child and the abilities and limitations of prospective parents. If the adoption goes ahead – which is the outcome in the great majority of “matched” cases – adopters must then be encouraged and enabled to access quality support to help them through the almost inevitable moments when they will find it difficult to cope alone.

With the changing face of intercountry adoption, the various elements in this process are taking on increasing importance. In essence, children are delegating to professionals the greatest responsibility of all: “choosing their parents carefully”…

Nigel Cantwell

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