Adoption Policy and Evidence‐based Domestic Adoption Practice: A Comparison of Romania, Ukraine, India, Guatemala, and Ethiopia

Groza, Victor; Bunkers, Kelley McCreery

doi:10.1002/imhj.21439

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Domestic adoption is considered an essential means of ensuring that an adoptable child’s right to be raised in his or her country of origin is adequately met. South Africa has ratified international and regional commitments, such as those pledged by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 (CRC), the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 1999 (AFCRW) and the Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption which emphasises that domestic adoption be ‘… developed, resourced and made accessible to adoptable children’ (Groza and Bunkers, 2014: 160). Skelton (2009: 492) highlighted that Article 24 of the African Charter includes ‘the principle of subsidiarity’, which is similar to the code of the CRC, but stated more forcefully in that it describes intercountry adoption as ‘a last resort’.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adoption of abandoned children in South Africa: why black citizens are difficult to recruit as prospective adopters

Gerrand

2018

Adoption & Fostering

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In South Africa, hundreds of black, abandoned children enter the legal child care system on an annual basis and become eligible for adoption. Although these children have a right to be raised in their country of origin, they are often made available for intercountry adoption owing to a lack of prospective domestic adopters. Statistically, middle-class black South Africans present as a significant source of domestic adopters, but the number of black South Africans legally adopting abandoned children is small. A qualitative enquiry, using grounded theory, was conducted to establish what factors dissuade involuntarily childless black South Africans from legally adopting abandoned children. Personal interviews were conducted with 39 purposively selected black participants to gather data. The conclusion drawn is that five main factors dissuade black South Africans from adopting abandoned children: (1) meanings of kinship; (2) racial connotations associated with legal adoption; (3) conflicting Christian beliefs; (4) parenthood, gender and identity; and (5) empowered single women prioritising climbing the socio-economic ladder. Recommendations focus on social marketing strategies, policy and practice innovations and research to promote domestic adoption in the African context.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adoption of abandoned children in South Africa: why black citizens are difficult to recruit as prospective adopters

Gerrand

2018

Adoption & Fostering

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“…As noted earlier for Nepal and Uganda, this can be challenging because many countries have historical, political, religious, and administrative challenges to families rearing someone else's child. Groza and Bunkers () examine trends over the last several years of domestic family placements, international adoptions, and the number of children in institutions in Romania, Ukraine, India, Guatemala, and Ethiopia—countries with very different circumstances. Generally, they find that attempts to create and support domestic adoptions and fostering have placed increasing numbers of children in families, and studies they cite indicate that these placements have been largely successful.…”

Section: National Child Welfare Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Research, Practice, and Policy Issues on the Care of Infants and Young Children at Risk: The Articles in Context

McCall

Groark

Rygaard³

2014

Infant Mental Health Journal

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This Special Issue includes articles that contribute to (a) the global research base pertaining to the development of infants and toddlers at risk, primarily those who are institutionalized in lower resource countries; (b) interventions in institutions and to promote family alternatives to institutionalization; and (c) attempts to create modern child welfare systems emphasizing family care in entire states and countries. This introduction places these articles into the broader contexts of the literature in these three domains of interest. Across the world, urbanization, migration, armed conflict, epidemics, and famine disrupt families. Add poverty, abuse, neglect, and parental incapacity due to substance abuse and mental health problems, and the result is millions of children without parental care who come under governmental responsibility, often to be reared in institutions, and at risk for long-term developmental deficiencies and problems. Over the last 2 decades and especially recently, national and international governments and nongovernment organizations have increased efforts to help such children, especially those in low-resource countries. Two types of efforts have been made: one to improve the quality of care provided by institutions and the other to minimize the use of institutions and promote family residential care alternatives. The latter effort includes preventing family separations in the first place, reunification of children with birth families, and developing systems of kinship care, foster care, and adoption. This Special Issue of IMHJ is devoted to reports pertaining to issues in the research knowledge base, program practices, and countrywide policies for infants and young children at risk. We attempt in this introduction to place these reports in the broader context of this field, identify their unique contributions, and highlight lessons learned that can contribute to improved care practices and better child welfare systems.

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“…This led to unprecedented humanitarian aid, external pressure on the government and persistent demand from Western families and individuals to adopt Romanian children (Kligman, 1998). As a result, conditions in institutions were somewhat improved in the 1990s and the number of intercountry adoptions increased to a rate that caused concern to international organisations such as the European Union and the United Nations (Groza, 2014). As Dickens (2002,76) put it 'Romania became almost synonymous with intercountry adoption'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who do they think they are: Making sense of self in residential care, foster care, and adoption

Neagu

Sebba

2019

Children and Youth Services Review

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This article explores how the type of placement in children's social care influences identity formation and contact with the birth family. It draws on 40 life history interviews with Romanian-born, care experienced young people who entered adulthood from different types of placement: 16 from residential care, eight from foster care, seven from domestic adoption and nine from intercountry adoption. The article contributes to an understanding of how residential care, foster care, domestic adoption and intercountry adoption affect identity formation and contact with the birth family from the perspectives of those who lived them, the challenges they encountered and the strategies they adopted to make sense of who they were during adolescence and transition to adulthood. The findings suggest that all the research participants had met or wanted to meet their birth families, and that stigmatisation occurred in all types of placement. The type of placement they were in influenced the support or the challenges they faced when they wanted to gain knowledge of their birth families and the circumstances in which they met their birth family. In some cases, their intention to search for the birth family led to tensions or conflict between them and their adoptive or foster carers. However, this study suggests that knowledge of, and contact with their birth family did not modify the quality of the children's relationship with them (foster carers or adoptive parents). It also suggests that when raised by carers other than their birth parents, children allocate parental roles to carers or other significant adults and that challenges related to identity formation in adolescence differ between residential care, foster care and adoption.

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Adoption Policy and Evidence‐based Domestic Adoption Practice: A Comparison of Romania, Ukraine, India, Guatemala, and Ethiopia

Cited by 11 publications

References 24 publications

Adoption of abandoned children in South Africa: why black citizens are difficult to recruit as prospective adopters

Adoption of abandoned children in South Africa: why black citizens are difficult to recruit as prospective adopters

Global Research, Practice, and Policy Issues on the Care of Infants and Young Children at Risk: The Articles in Context

Who do they think they are: Making sense of self in residential care, foster care, and adoption

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