Please Participate with Adoption Research Follow Up Survey

In 2012, the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute published: UNTANGLING THE WEB: THE INTERNET’S TRANSFORMATIVE IMPACT ON ADOPTION.

The report helped provide accurate information of the current state of adoption and can really help  show the various issues where much needed improvement regarding adoption ethics are involved.

For instance, just a few bullet points from the 2012 report:

• There is a growing “commodification” of adoption on the web, replete with dubious practices, and a shift away from the perspective that its primary purpose is to find families for children.
• Finding birth relatives is becoming increasingly easy and commonplace, with significant institutional and personal implications, including the likely end of the era of “closed” adoption.
• A growing number of young adoptees are forming relationships with birth relatives, sometimes without their adoptive parents’ knowledge and usually without guidance or preparation.
• Professionals who deal with expectant and pre-adoptive parents should get training reflecting the certainty that many, if not most of their clients. will be able to find each other at some point, and should educate them about the benefits of openness and the realities of such relationships.
• Practitioners should get additional training and resources to enable them to better assist the growing number of adopted individuals and others who seek help with search and reunion.
• Policy and law-enforcement officials should routinely review online adoption-related sites/activity for fraud, exploitation or other illegal/unethical practices, and should take action as warranted.
• Laws that impede the parties to adoption from gaining significant information, including “closed records” statutes, should be repealed since the Internet obviates their main contemporary rationale (i.e., preventing the affected parties from learning about and finding each other).

In other words, findings from this much needed research will help the various agreements that support Adoptee Rights Legislation and additional post adoption support, plus point out the areas where ethical oversight is greatly needed.

New Adoption Survey, Your Voice is Needed

The Institute is launching a new study seeking relevant information from adopted persons, adoptive parents, birth/first parents and adoption professionals. Please complete a private survey if you fit into any of those descriptions – and, whether you do or not, please spread the word to colleagues and friends, through email blasts and news stories, on Facebook and Twitter, in newsletters and blogs, and any other way you can think of so an accurate number of people truly affected by this research have a chance to be heard!