Homestudy Rubberstamping and Homestudy Fraud UPDATED

Question: What do the following children all have in common?

Masha Allen
Kelsey Hyre
Nicolai Emelyantsev
The Gravelle Children
The Hedstrom Children
The Schmitz Children
The Groves Children
The Banks Children
And many, many more…

**See link below for information on these public cases.

Answer: All of the families who adopted these children were approved to adopt by a social worker.

We at REFORM Talk have seen this issue come up again and again over the years. At first shockingly because all of the bloggers here underwent what we believe were thorough home study investigations. For those readers who have not adopted, a homestudy is an investigation into the suitability of prospective parents to adopt a child.

However, far too often social workers are either simply approving families without doing thorough checks or committing outright fraud and the results as you can see at this site, http://poundpuplegacy.org , can be disastrous.

In our various advocacy work in adoption we have heard from families whose social workers actually encouraged them to lie in their homestudies. Some of these lies include; not reporting all of the children already in the home in order to qualify to adopt from countries who place a limit on the number children one can already have; omission of psychotropic medication used by the adopting parents for various mental health conditions; the size of their homes and their ability to accomodate more children; income earned; ability to parent; omitting how many other adults are living in the home; and, unbelievably, prior arrests and criminal indictments.

Enough is enough. Children are suffering and being hurt. In some cases, parents have been arrested prior to an adoption, and yet the social workers who either turned a blind eye to red flags in the adopting family or actively participated in fraud by approving them are able to continue their unscrupulous work without so much as a letter of discipline.

With a few extremely rare exceptions, it is very difficult NOT to get an approved homestudy. Given the terrible outcomes for too many children, this is an issue that needs to be remedied today. We cannot tell you how many cases we have seen where a family uses a social worker “friend” to adopt, or where an agency allows their social workers on staff to simply go through the motions and approve families with red flags. Whether the problem is untrained social workers, social workers with a conflict of interest, or social workers who are unlicensed in one state but operate under supervisors in order to create more business, these practices must stop. Vulnerable children are put at risk by these selfish, self-righteous, hypocritical practices.

We are calling for these critical issues in home study investigations to be addressed now:

1. Social workers must be better trained in thoroughly vetting a family to adopt.
2. Social workers must be held accountable for passing families who should not be adopting.
3. There must be better oversight into the home study process by a third party.
4. Social workers’ licenses must be pulled when they actively engage in fraud.
5. Social workers need to be vetted for conflicts of interest before being assigned to a family.

http://poundpuplegacy.org/abuse_cases

Update: We qualified this post by saying, “At first shockingly because all of the bloggers here underwent what we believe were thorough home study investigations…” None of us went through either of the two aspects listed below. These two items focus on the prospective parent and not just the social worker.

We believe that both of these should be required for ALL prospective parents PRIOR to homestudy approval and PRIOR to being referred to, being matched to, or gaining access to the information on any child. Agencies should not allow public photolistings. PERIOD. Nonagency personnel SHOULD BE PROHIBITED from photolisting AND controlling access to child information. No child should be “held” for anyone that has not had an approved homestudy.

These reforms must take place in conjunction with each other. There are too many cases in which a prospective parent finds a child on a photolisting first and the homestudy is an afterthought,  rubberstamped or fraudulent.

1. Prospective parents should undergo a psychological examination by someone not employed by an adoption agency prior to homestudy approval. The insightful people at PoundPup have suggested this and we support it. Only a few countries require this at this time.

2. Prospective parents should be required to have a written plan for how they will address medical, educational and other needs of the child in the first few years including potential doctors and therapists and emergency numbers (local mental health hotlines, CPS etc.) PRIOR to homestudy approval. This shows that they have researched exactly what their health and mental health insurance will provide, not just that they have insurance; that they have researched common health and behavioral issues; that they have the time, home capacity and finances to take care of these needs in the context of the total needs of the family; and that they have determined that they are in a location and mindset to provide a course of action and to fulfill needs. This plan can and should be modified as time goes on and as circumstances change.

REFORM Puzzle Piece

At the present time, there is not enough or appropriate screening.