"The influx of children adopted into the United States from other countries has increased the need for social workers experienced in practice techniques that asssist in building rapport between the parents and children in these newly formed families. This study explored the use of employing the kinetic family drawing as a tool to build rapport between parents and children. This was an exploratory multiple case design. Six families participated in the process of drawing a picture of their family engaged in an activity together. It was anticipated that the drawings would be an effective tool to build rapport between parent and child."

Life story methods were used to explore the contextual factors that influenced the experiences and identity formation of seven Native American adults who were transracially adopted prior to the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. These methods provided a deeper understanding of how these individuals have integrated their adoption experiences into their evolving sense of self. The life story methodology offered a way to acknowledge and validate participants' life experiences and allowed for the collection of rich information from the perspectives of the adoptees. The life story interviews were structured to gather information on the influence of one's adoptive family and cultural, social, and educational experiences on participants' developing sense of self. Even though an interview guide was developed for use in the study, each story uniquely unfolded in a manner the participant was comfortable sharing. The study examined the life stories for patterns or emerging themes related to identity development at different points in the narrators' life cycles in order to develop an aggregate account of the contextual factors influencing identity formation as well as a collective understanding of sense of self. The study identified 12 contextual factors that have both positively and negatively influenced identity development among the participants throughout their lifespan. These factors are: (1) adoptive family; (2) community; (3) educational experiences; (4) religion/spirituality; (5) travel; (6) exposure to cultural experiences; (7) employment; (8) friendships; (9) peer groups; (10) military; (11) societal messages, and (12) reconnection to tribal heritage. Overall, findings from this study suggest that the majority of participants have developed strong Native American, multi-cultural, and/or bi-cultural identities that incorporate their various experiences as transracial adoptees. Practice considerations for transracial adoptees as well as adoptive parents are suggested. Policy implications relating to granting access to original birth and/or adoption related records are presented. Finally, future research recommendations are offered specific to Native American transracial adoptees, their biological families, and tribal communities from which they adopted. While the practice, policy, and research recommendations are specific to Native American transracial adoptees, the recommendations may have broader implications to a wider population of adoptees in general.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Awaiting adoption is a social problem in America that affects thousands of children as well as families, agencies, communities, the mission of the child welfare system, and society at large. In 2014, over 101,000 children were awaiting adoption in the United States. On average, waiting children have been in out-of-home care for approximately three years. One phenomenon that plagues waiting children and their opportunity for adoption is the disruption of their pre-adoptive placements or the change in a waiting child's placement prior to a finalized adoption. Despite unique placement and permanency needs, waiting children and their foster parents are seldom recognized as unique cohorts. Thus, little is known about the experience of pre-adoptive placement disruption. The status of waiting children, foster care and adoption history and policy, and literature and theory relevant to pre-adoptive placement disruption are discussed. In-depth, semi-structured interviews and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis were used to investigate the research question: What is the experience of pre-adoptive placement disruption for pre-adoptive foster parents? Eleven foster parents participated in nine interviews. Participants were licensed through public or private child welfare agencies. The majority of participants were married, Caucasian, and had adopted from foster care. Important findings emerged from the experiences participants shared. Pre-adoptive placement disruption is characterized by "compound loss" including both the loss of the child and the loss of purpose. Participants experienced the disruption like a broken social contract and attributed the disruption to the child welfare system or the children's perpetrators. Disruption experiences resulted in lasting effects including changes to the profiles of the children participants would foster or adopt in the future, pre-adoptive status, and advocacy efforts. Resolve emerged as a critical factor for participants to approach foster and pre-adoptive care in new ways. Vulnerability, isolation, and ambivalence emerged as essential elements of living through disruption. Findings suggest the importance of assessing pre-adoptive parents' motivations and expectations, validating their experiences, acknowledging their losses, and practicing with transparency and competency. Implications exist for child welfare and social work practice and education. Additional research is needed regarding barriers and supports of adoption from foster care.

No description available.

This study’s aim was to identify what racialized adoptees experience as strategies and support in relation to racially differentiating expressions (racism). Data was collected using qualitative interviews with five racialized transracially adopted adults. The transcriptions from the interviews were analyzed via thematic analysis. The theoretical approach was based in critical race theory and postcolonial theory. Identified strategies was modification of the body, use of adoptionhood, identity, silence, violence and knowledge of racism. Identified sources of support was other racialized people, white people with special relations to the respondents, the adoptive parents, the LGBTQ-community, separatist rooms for people of colour and the internet. White people are described as a particular group with less ability to give support. The study’s results show that racialized adoptees have little support in their immediate environment and have to develop strategies mostly on their own.

No description available.

This PhD Dissertation was completed through 2011 to 2016 and was nominated for a CAGS-UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award. / My dissertation explores transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents as a site through which to think about global affective relationality and transnational histories within intimate proximities. The image of an interracial, transnational family can seem to be a fulfillment of the potential for transcendent love symbolized by humanitarian fundraisers such as Live Aid— a love that collapses borders and brings together races in multicultural bliss. Furthermore, adoptions of African children can potentially challenge discursive systems of categorization that frame the black body as existing outside the body politic. At the same time, however, we cannot understand transnational adoption without taking into account the histories of power that make possible and potentially limit the contours of these affective orientations. Indeed, representations of a transnational family consisting particularly of black African children and white Western parents not only invoke the logic of white moral motherhood within the context of contemporary globalization; they also point to European philosophical traditions that presuppose the colonizer’s right to the black body. In this project, thus, I ask: what are the sociopolitical and cultural motivations behind the desire to express humanitarian love towards African children through the act of adoption? How might these motivations create avenues for exclusion and exploitation even as they create new geographies of belonging? To answer these questions, this project brings the affective domain of contemporary transnational adoption between African children and white American parents into conversation with histories of colonial transnational intimacies and the precarious lived experiences of classed and racialized individuals in the African postcolony. In challenging popular celebratory fictions of the transnational family, it critically examines not only the utopian aspirations and social costs of transnational adoption as a humanitarian project, but also the very affect produced and channeled through adoption as a humanitarian act. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation takes a multidisciplinary approach to analyze transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents. It offers answers to the following questions: 1. How do the ghosts of colonialism, along with the violent realities of globalization, expose the inequities hidden within idealized humanitarian narratives of rescue underlying global adoptions while at the same time revealing their transformative potential? 2. How can we account for the experiences and psychic struggles of the African adoptee, and what do their contradictions of idealized Western narratives tell us about the fantasies and anxieties of their Western parents? Ultimately, I argue that while the transnational family suggests transformative transnational connections, Western humanitarian frameworks have also sought to manage the messiness of these connections, to fix white and black bodies into old colonial roles, and to exclude certain bodies, namely those of the African birth mothers, out of the affective realm of transnational adoption. At the same time, these attempts at management, I argue, only speak to the productive potential of these messy relations to transform and exceed colonial limitations.