FacePalm Friday
Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.
This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).
We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.
Your Host’s Selections:
(1) Group Home Disguised as Adoptive Home Part 753
Former foster child adopts 15 special needs kids [KSL 3/8/13 by Andrew Wittenberg]
Reformatina says, “Celebrating collectors again….this time it’s ok because they were in the system themselves. Sure.”
Rally says, “Now they have a chance? So they wouldn’t have a chance if they were adopted into a family with fewer children? How absurd!”
Yippee! Oops! only 4 balloons for the 15 kids…oh well, they will just have to share that too!
(2) Fundraising to compensate CWA family
So this family ALREADY blogged to get money for their Ethiopian adoption which now won’t happen because CWA is bankrupt, so NOW the church is AGAIN fundraising for the family to COMPENSATE them? Um…they got money from others to begin with. I know it says that they emptied their savings , but if they had completed the adoption, they still would have had empty savings another child. They still would have had those loans too. And of course they think all of the adoption problems are due to “red tape.” Do churches exercise PRUDENCE in giving anymore? Why not give to an organization helping orphans in Ethiopia?
Elk River families devastated after adoption agency goes bankrupt [KARE 3/10/13 by Lindsey Seavert]
(3)Oklahoma mom tries selling her children on Facebook for boyfriend’s bail.
She asked $1000 for her 2 year old and $4000 for her 4 year old. At least her pricing strategy matches how adoption agencies price things nowadays!
Mother, 22, ‘tried to sell her two young children for $5,000 to pay her boyfriend’s bail’ [Daily Mail 3/11/13 by Paul Thompson]
(4)Non-Reform bloggers
http://www.adoptionistas.com/tag/adoption-reform/
Adoptionistas, really? And where is the reform? And how legal was it for you to adopt “from Africa”? I see you don’t mention the agency or country. Gee, I wonder why?
(5)Rosie buys adopts her 5th child
My precious cargo! Rosie O’Donnell cradles newborn daughter as family arrive home from Miami holiday [Daily Mail 3/12/13 by Cassie Carpenter]
(6) Some AP’s head will explode with this one
John Eastman, National Organization For Marriage Leader, Calls Adoption ‘Second-Best Option’ [Huffington Post 3/14/13 by Alana Horowitz] says “”You’re looking at what is the best course societywide to get you the optimal result in the widest variety of cases. That often is not open to people in individual cases. Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief Roberts’ family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option,” said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage.
Eastman was responding to a question about the Chief Justice’s position on the rights of same-sex couples. Roberts and his wife adopted two children, Jack and Josie, in 2000. Both children are now 12 years old.”
(7) The horrid gift that keeps on giving…The Head “STUCK” in the sand movement
This is the tour bus blog http://blog.jessicamrose.com/ Each entry is a facepalm in and of itself.
One of them describes the HORROR of a Guatemalan child being “forced” to live with the birthfamily.
“” The parents to this now preschool aged child have traveled back and forth to Guatemala 32 times and they still have not been able to bring their child home. In fact, they now have been facing threats from the Guatemalan government as they have been told that the fight is over and the child is going to be forced to stay with his birth family or the birth mother faces arrest. After I had finished taking some portraits of the Sarkees couple, the father told me that while they want to continue going to their boy’s Latin homeland to fight for him, they fear that they will be recognized too quickly and could become one those traveling couples who just ‘disappears.’ “”
(8) Whitney Reitz
She was with the Department of State and USCIS for 19 years. She was a driving force in moving almost every child identified by US adoption agencies in Haiti to receive Humanitarian Parole after the earthquake. Now, she works with Senator Landrieu and the STUCK movement. They all are of the same mindset-legislative branch, executive branch and adoption agencies and their apologists. They don’t want actual reforms.
She even uses the word “stuck” as a prelude to the movie in this January 2013 interview:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/us-adoptions-from-abroad-decline-sharply.html?_r=0 [New York Times 1/25/13]
“The official, Whitney Reitz, who was then in charge of children’s affairs and parole policy at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, said at the time, in a speech at a conference on adoption, that while some might believe it is best not to allow adoptions from certain countries, “when I think personally about the individual children in these countries who need families and who are stuck in institutions, it really doesn’t look like such a great outcome to me”
This public post about Russia describes Whitney as a Landrieu STAFFER.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adoptionforamericansabroad/message/9505
“letter from Landrieu
January 7, 2013
Dear Adoption Advocate,
I’m deeply troubled by Russia’s recent action banning adoptions of Russian children by American families. In an overheated moment, the Duma has prevented thousands of Russian children from finding permanent and supportive homes in America. Whatever issues our two governments may be facing, there is no reason to put vulnerable children in the middle of political posturing. Children should be raised by parents, not in institutions or alone on the street.
Watch me explain on CNN why Russia’s ban is bad for its children and American families.
Last Tuesday, the Senate unanimously adopted a resolution expressing deep disappointment of the ban. It also urges the Russian government to permit processing of inter-country adoptions involving parentless Russian children, who were already matched with United States families before the enactment of the law. I remain committed to working with President Putin and his administration to find a long-term solution for the more than 700,000 un-parented children in Russia.
Adoption, both domestic and international, is an important child-protection tool and an integral part of child welfare best-practices around the world. It also helps prevent child abandonment and promote family reunification. In fact, the United States has just released a National Action Plan for Children in Adversity, which places a renewed focus on the importance of every child having a family and seeks to ensure that all children grow up within protective family care and free from violence. While Russia’s ban may only directly affect some of our citizens, it’s an injury to Russia’s own children.
Be sure to watch me discuss this issue on CNN or read the Times-Picayune’s story below. If you have any questions about my work on domestic or international adoption, do not hesitate to reach out to Libby Whitbeck or Whitney Reitz on my staff.
Happy New Year,”
And the Stuck blogger tells a tall tale about how Whitney “goal” was to help Haitians post-earthquake with FAMILY REUNIFICATION/RESTORATION.
“”The Senator’s posy [sic] included the ever intelligent Whitney Reitz, the Senior Policy Advisor on International Child Welfare, who spoke at the Q&A following the showing the of the film. Reitz, though not highlighted in the film due to brevity, was the person primarily responsible for getting the 3,000 Hatian children currently involved in the adoption process, home to their families after the horrendous earthquake that struck the small country. Reitz emphasized that the goal of her work is to get orphans home to families through any and all means possible including national adoption, international adoption, and family reunification/restoration. Essentially, some of the problems with getting international children clearance to arrive into the US deals with immigrations policies and Reitz is working towards using immigration to help, rather than hinder, people”
The agencies and JCICS quickly post earthquake arranged for a mass Humanitarian Parole even for prospective parents who just put in their applications.
Reece’s Rainbow families that straight up brag about homestudy-shopping, like Ruth Einfield. She writes that the first social worker declined to approve her family as she:
“did not think that they would be able to approve us. The reasons listed were vague and not clearly defined and most of them were things that could be worked out. Several of them were things that they were well aware of right from the start (several young children in the home, size of our home etc…). It felt like a smoke screen”
A social worker with common sense!! Those are reasonable grounds for recommending this family not adopt at this time.
Ruth, godly woman that she is, believes in corporal punishment for teeny-tiny biokids and was AGAHST that the social worker felt that was a dealbreaker. She hit her older kids and they turned out fine:
“I cried, and cried, and cried… Daryl was already in bed and had gone to bed very tired, so I didn’t dare wake him as he had to work the next day. Then I went to my Reece’s Rainbow Facebook group (a secure, closed group for people actively involved with RR, and lots of other adoptive families are there). There I found out much about why the agency we had been using is not recommended. I found out that they do not like to approve families who have several younger children in the home (I’m sorry, but 1, 41/2 and 7 is NOT a problem…I have it the easiest that I have had it in over 20 years right now!). They also do not approve of families who do not actively avoid pregnancy while in the adoption process…as if that is any of their business! But here’s the clincher. They will not approve a family for adoption unless the sign a form committing to NEVER us corporal discipline for their adoptive child. SAY WHAT? They admit in this form that corporal discipline is Biblical and legal, but since many children who are adopted come from situations of abuse, they will not allow any of “their children” experience corporal discipline. Again, SAY WHAT? Corporal discipline is legal in our state and most states. We explained to them that physical punishment is our last resort, and how we discipline each of our children is different according to their needs/personalities etc. We incorporate rebuke, with holding of privileges (like ice cream or going to a birthday party), or what some might call a “time out”, which for us means sitting next to me until they are calm enough to listen to what I have to say or take care of whatever conflict they are involved in. During our interview our children were almost all present and it was obvious that they are all happy, well adjusted, healthy children. Our older children all turned in references that showed that we were good parents. But policy is policy.”
Ruth consulted other RR families and determined the problem was with the *social worker*, as opposed to her family — so her new friends gave her the name of a different homestudy worker who will approve *anybody*:
“Back to my time that evening talking with other adoptive moms on the RR facebook page. They were so encouraging. They were convinced that it was a Bethany policy problem and not a problem with our family. Several of the moms even sent me private emails sharing with me their difficulties with this particular agency. All of them now had children in their home adopted internationally. All of them had been told by this particular agency that they would not be approved for one reason or another. Several of them recommended the same agency for our area, even our adoption agency!”
National standards – there’s a need for national standards.
http://aseventhsister.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-roller-coaster-ride-kind-of-week.html?m=1
Thank goodness there are FINALLY agencies taking a stand against using corporal punishment with adopted children. And kudos to them for sticking to their guns. FINALLY.
Sadly, that’s not the case… the family simply found ANOTHER homestudy agency (one happy to allow families to use corporal punishment to discipline their soon-to-be-adopted child) to approve ’em.
I actually feel sorry for the blogger/photographer who has clearly drunk the Stuck Kool-aid aka STOOL AID aka Full of It…. Anyone who can write about what a TERRIBLE thing it is for biological children to be returned to their biological families because Americans are desperate to pluck them away is clearly on the wrong path toward human understanding.
And Mary Landrieu…..what’s in it for ya, huh? Getting some good ol’ jambalaya from your lobbyist pals, right between the constituents, are ya, sugar? Otherwise why have your legacy as an elected official be so slimed with the STOOL AID?
Just askin’.
Rally,
Re: “…So this family ALREADY blogged to get money for their Ethiopian adoption which now won’t happen because CWA is bankrupt, so NOW the church is AGAIN fundraising for the family to COMPENSATE them? Um…they got money from others to begin with. I know it says that they emptied their savings, but if they had completed the adoption, they still would have had empty savings…”
As I read it, the fundraising was for the purpose of pursuing their adoptions through another agency, since a lot of the money they raised the first time disappeared when CWA went belly up. Whether they were used for paying for Ethiopian child care as implied, or it became part of CWA’s Chapter 7 protected “assets” is another question.
Re: “… the child is going to be forced to stay with his birth family or the birth mother faces arrest…”
HUH?!?!? Does anyone know the other side of this story? I’ve never heard of birth mother’s being forbidden to place their children for adoption.
BTW, I wonder if it has occurred to anyone outraged about STUCK ‘s stories about children spending years in an orphanage while their PAPs struggle for approval that maybe if it weren’t for identified adoptions, these kids wouldn’t face such long waits? I haven’t watched STUCK, but from reading the blog, most of these kids were healthy babies or toddlers when the PAPs started trying to acquire them. IOW, they were highly adoptable. Might they not have found homes fairly quickly either domestically or internationally with PAPs who got their approvals and clearances in order BEFORE being matched with a child?
Or am I wrong about identified adoptions increasing children’s “wait time”? Has anyone studied this?
Astrin, in the case of Guatemala, Sen. Mary Landrieu ASKED for identified children to WAIT for US parents INSTEAD OF being placed locally! This is why she is often lampooned in our FacePalm columns and why we smell a rat anytime she involves herself in any international adoption situation (through her role at CCAI). We blogged about it at https://reformtalk.net/2011/05/27/ccai-releases-guatemala-report/
Quote”Page 4 gets worse. “Porras presented the group with a list of 61 cases currently under review by the working group. He informed the delegation that five of the 61 cases being presented had been recommended and placed for adoption with a Guatemalan family. He stated that this is a possibility for any case that has had its notarial process suspended and is now before the CNA. Senator Landrieu and Ambassador Jacobs stressed that while domestic adoption is almost always the ideal for a child who cannot be returned to their biological family, in the case of these children, who have already developed bonds with families in the United States it is not.”
And CCAI/Landrieu proposed REFORM of….the investigative body not the illegal activities going on in Guatemala. See end of same post https://reformtalk.net/2011/05/27/ccai-releases-guatemala-report/
And the investigative body CICIG challenged her after her comments. See https://reformtalk.net/2011/05/04/guatemala-says-over-60-of-adoption-processes-contained-abnormalities-updated/
Also, for Bac Lieu Vietnam children, the AGENCY went into the village to “obtain” parental rights termination, so that takes things to another low level. See update 2 at https://reformtalk.net/2011/06/27/stopping-the-spin-on-bac-lieu-16-updated/
And one of those children ended up back with the biological family. See how the media describes it in a sick way https://reformtalk.net/2012/08/13/ftia-referred-child-rejoins-biological-family-in-vietnam/