A common phrase one hears from good adoption organizations is, “We’re not in the business of finding children for parents; we’re in the service of finding parents for children.” One measure of this “children first” philosophy can be an agency’s commitment to helping those children who will not be adopted.
It is common for agencies including Holt, Children’s Home Society and Family Services, Catholic Community Services, WACAP and others to partner with organizations in sending countries to support children’s homes, orphanages, and medical facilities in sending countries. Some of these partner agencies sponsor job training and counseling for unwed mothers to increase the likelihood of a stable job and family life in their future.
Of course, some of these activities, such as children’s clinics and prenatal care, benefit eventual adoptees and adoptive families as well. One unique program initiated an exchange between an early intervention program in Seattle and a region of Eastern Europe from which an agency facilitates adoptions. Physical, occupational and speech therapists met with their Russian counterparts for training. This built goodwill for the adoption program in addition to helping children receive up-to-date intervention.
It is also common for adoptive parents to fill their suitcases with clothing and simple medicines like Tylenol for orphanages overseas. Some teen adoptees touring their birth countries have been able, with adult supervision, to help escort babies to the U.S. for adoption.
But a few agencies maintain a presence in countries which no longer have international adoption programs. Holt offers families the chance to sponsor a Ugandan child’s school uniforms and books. They also have an intensive program for fifty families, selected because they include 200 “highest-risk” children. These include families affected by HIV/AIDS and/or families where impoverished grandparents or even older siblings are raising younger children. The families receive some emergency assistance, hygiene training, life skills training, and assistance in developing income-generating opportunities. This might include traditional job training or assistance in marketing homemade craft items, for example.
A program in Thailand also assists AIDS orphans. A program in Mongolia sponsors field trips for orphanage children ages 3-8. For many of these children it is their first time playing in a park and eating at a restaurant.
WACAP’s sponsorship program in Korea enrolls not only children in institutions, but children from poor families as well, thus enabling families to stay together.
This is a small sampling of programs around the world. Author and adoptive parent Cheri Register mentioned the “paradox of both promoting international adoption and working to make it unnecessary”. Many adoption agencies and adoptive parents are doing their part.
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