In Depth

In recent years, policy and practice has begun to recognize the long-established family ties and relationships of youth in foster care. Some social workers have been championing the importance of helping young people understand where and how they belong. The benefits of this work are substantial. Understanding their families can help youth form racial and individual identity, reduce loyalty conflicts between birth and adoptive families, and maintain cultural and family traditions.

Today, some young people are in open-adoption arrangements, either intentionally or because the young person is able to contact family members independently. Some open adoptions occur informally, while others, such as cooperative adoptions, are contractual.

The Benefits of Openness in Adolescent Adoptions

Research indicates that:

• Youth in foster care with adoption goals are likely to achieve better outcomes by maintaining connections with extended birth family members, siblings, and other significant adults.  learn more>
• Adoptive families of adolescents from foster care assume teens know their birth families and want to maintain contact; adoptive parents believe adopting an adolescent means adopting his or her birth family.  learn more>
• Adopted adolescents who have contact with birth parents are more satisfied with the degree of adoption openness than peers who do not have birth-parent contact.  learn more>
• Adolescents have ongoing contact with their siblings more than any other form of relative contact.   learn more>

Promoting Openness in Adolescent Adoption: Program Highlights

Child welfare agencies across the country have developed a range of programs to support greater involvement of birth families in the lives of their adopted children, including:

• Mediated cooperative adoptions: The Oregon Model
  Since 1992, Oregon has provided mediation services to support development of open adoptions for children and youth in foster care. Developed by Teamwork for Children under the guidance of Jeanne Etter, the mediation process engages birth and adoptive parents and youth. The program takes three to five months to complete at a cost of $3,500. By comparison, a court proceeding to involuntarily terminate parental rights takes two to three years and costs an average of $22,000. Other states, including Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, offer mediated cooperative adoption programs. Learn more: New Cooperative Adoptions Help Children in Foster Care
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• Federal grants promote open adoptions for adolescents.
  In FY 2005, the U.S. Children’s Bureau awarded nine Adoption Opportunities grants, including:
  • Realizing Open Adoption Dreams (ROAD)
    New York Council on Adoptable Children, New York City
    The ROAD promotes permanence through adoption for older youth in foster care while also maintaining youth’s existing family and other relationships. This is done by targeting adolescents ages 12 and older in New York City who are legally freed for adoption, have a permanency goal of adoption or “independent living,” and are with or without an identified adoptive family resource. The program creates awareness that permanence and open adoption are possible for youth. learn more>
  • Improving Permanency Outcomes through Open Adoption Project: Family Ties
    Homes for Black Children, Detroit, Michigan
    Designed to maintain the continuity of healthy birth family relationships in open adoptions, Family Ties offers assessment, preparation, and enrichment services that specifically improve an individual child or youth’s capacity to live successfully in an adoptive family. Through trainings and services, the program also increases the capacity of adoptive parents to care for youth and sibling groups who maintain birth family ties. learn more>

Planning for Open Adoptions for Adolescents in Foster Care

Because adoptive parents can decide who has contact with their adopted children, they may allow any level of contact with birth family members. In many cases, contacts are arranged mutually among adoptive parents, youth, and birth families without a formal agreement. In some cases, formal open-adoption agreements are developed. Collaborative adoptions should be considered when:

• Reunification is not a viable option and the parties are willing to work cooperatively;
• The youth wishes to maintain contact with the birth parents;
• The birth parents realize that they cannot care for the youth but do not wish to sever all contact; and
• The birth parents, youth, and adoptive parents desire to enter into a post-adoption-contact agreement.

In some cases, an ongoing relationship with birth parents may not be in a youth’s best interest. For example, a birth parent suffers from mental or behavioral health issues and is unable to maintain a healthy relationship, or contact with birth parents would result in additional trauma for youth.

Even when it is not safe for the youth to maintain a relationship with a birth parent, other birth family members may provide vital ongoing connections.

Approximately 20 states allow written and enforceable post-adoption-contact agreements. The features of these statutes vary, but they typically address who may be party to the agreement, the court’s role in establishing and enforcing the agreements, and the role of mediation in resolving disagreements. Learn more: Child Welfare Information Getaway: Openness in Adoption and Child Welfare Information Getaway. Post-Adoption Contact Agreements between Birth and Adoptive Families.