Second Russian-American Child Welfare Forum Q and A

This week child welfare advocates from around the world are meeting in Chicago.

In this interview, the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) representative has one softball question about Russia asked of her. The majority of questions are given to Shannon Catanzaro,  division manager of Foster Care and Adoption Services for  the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF). NCCF a COA-approved organization that gives adolescent, community-based, family, and adoption and foster care services in the Bethesda, Maryland.

Here is the Q and A with  NCCF. It is incredible that she admits that PAPs are not prepared and APs can’t find postadoption resources. She gives no solution whatsoever to deal with internationally adopted or foster children’s issues. I don’t know how one can come away from this interview and think that anything is right with the international adoption process or foster care system.

Q:”I wanted to ask  you, you said this has become a political issue and I  appreciate you are putting thing into perspective regarding the number of times that these sort of things happen, but how so that it has become such a political issue and why was this  particular case so publicized then?”

A: “No, it wasn’t this particular case and I am sure  that my colleague from Moscow will agree with that. I mean case  of Anton [sic Artyom]Saveliev was extremely publicized. As to this particular case again, people are just using this as a  nationalistic kind of approach and they feel that Americans  should not be adopting, nobody should be adopting Russian children. There are people who feel that way in Russia. But the  fact that me being an adoptive mother myself, I feel strongly that for the child the most important thing is a family, it’s  not a political issue, it’s not a game, it’s a very important  step.”

Q:”    I want to ask  you, here in the US what are the safeguards in place for  children when they are adopted by a family here in the US?”

 [She has no real answer! ] 

A:” I think that most of the children that are  adopted, who are in the adoptive families, one of the challenges  that adoptive families face is the lack of resources and the  lack of assistance that’s out there to help them when they do  have challenges with kids who are placed in their home after  adoption has taken place. And I think it is hard for families  who adopt kids, who start to struggle in their home, to find  resources and therapist out there to help them to stabilize  youth in their home and to get that support from other people.   And that again goes for not only people who adopt Russian  children, but people who adopt all children. We see that all the  time – families who really struggle to raise another child other  than a birth child. Kids who are neglected and abused come with  issues, and that’s only to be expected. And I think that  sometimes families don’t realize just a significance of what  they are getting into when they do adopt children. And so there  is a lack of resources out there for families and we need to do  a better job of providing resources and supports to those families when issues do arise.”

Q: ”    We mentioned this   case where a woman put the child on a plane back to Russia   with a note saying that she didn’t want him anymore. What  safeguards are in place for kids? You are talking about the  resources for parents that do get in these situations when they adopt children. What in particular resources are out  there to protect the children who are actually adopted, say,  for this little boy in this particular case and even here  domestically?

A:”    Unfortunately, I don’t know.  I think, unfortunately, for most of those kids that I work with, they are put back into the public welfare system and so those are the   safeguards for them.”

Q: “What’s the waiting process like for people who are waiting? What’s the  wait like as well who are waiting to adopt a child and what   kind of hurdles do they have to pass in order to go ahead and  adopt a child here in the US?”

A: “For us, from my experience, it takes time, there   are a lot of legal things that foster parents have to do before  they can adopt a child, their background checks, their home   studies, their home has to be licensed, not only do they have to  be licensed, but their homes have to licensed. So, there are   regulations around their particular homes; Clearances, as I    said, that they have to do in order to be adoptive parents.  Unfortunately, one thing that I don’t think that they get enough  of is training on what their experience will be like when that  child is placed in their home from the beginning until the end,   no matter what age. We have folks who are adopting babies to  teenagers. And so I think that training is extremely important,  that they need to be trained on how to parent a child and adopt  a child.” [Then why isn’t anyone given any training?]

US adoptions from Russia: children in danger

[The Voice of Russia 6/29/12 by Jessica Jordan]

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