Adopting and Advocating for the Special Needs Child bridges the gap between the desire to help a waiting child and the reality of America's special needs adoption system. It is designed to be used by adoption professionals and adoptive parents, to help them get started, keep going, and locate whatever additional information and support they need. The authors are adoption professionals, long-time support volunteers, child advocates, and mothers of a total of 21 children, 13 of them adopted children with special needs. Tens of thousands of children in the United States alone are waiting in foster care for parents, and many Americans, single and married, want to open their hearts and homes to these children who wait. A landmark 1980 federal law made adopting and raising special needs children affordable even for people of limited means. What could be easier than matching these kids to these families? The reality is that many prospective adopters never complete the adoption process because of red tape, regulations, and institutional lethargy. Among the adults who complete a homestudy or placement, lack of support services and advocacy training sometimes leads to heartbreak and adoption failure—not a happy ending. Adopting and Advocating for the Special Needs Child bridges the gap between the desire to help a waiting child and the reality of America's special needs adoption system. It is designed to be used by adoption professionals and adoptive parents, to help them get started, keep going, and locate whatever additional information and support they need. The authors are adoption professionals, long-time support volunteers, child advocates, and mothers of a total of 23 children, 14 of them adopted children with special needs.

Without avoiding the grim statistics, this book reveals the real hope that hurting children can be healed through adoptive and foster parents, social workers, and others who care. Includes information on foreign adoptions.

Adoption is a process that can require both time and patience. This guide helps you efficiently handle all steps in an adoption case, from consultation through finalization. Jennifer Fairfax, an experienced adoption attorney covers the primary types of adoption, both domestic and international, and examines the full range of issues impacting the adoption process, including the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, special needs, adult, and stepparent adoptions, financing and tax issues, open records, and wrongful adoption.

The Oxford Handbook of Children and the Law presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship on a broad range of topics covering the life course of humans from before birth to adulthood, by leading scholars in each area. Authors present and analyze the law and science pertaining to reproduction; prenatal life (including fetal exposure to toxic substances and abortion); parentage (including biology-based rights, background checks on birth parents, adoption, ART, and surrogacy); infant development; child maltreatment (including corporal punishment and religious defences to abuse and neglect); the child protection system and foster care; child custody disputes between parents; schooling (including financing, resegregation, religious expression in public schools, at-risk students, special education, regulating private schools, and homeschooling); delinquency; minimum-age laws; and child advocacy. It is an essential resource for scholars and professionals interested in the intersection of children and the law.

Previous edition, 1st, published in 1995.

Practical, easy-to-follow guidelines for anyone interested in adopting a child; More than 1,200 Internet sites at your fingertips that will increase your chances of finding the child for you; Simple techniques thousands of parents have used to successfully adopt with the help of the Internet; Includes writing and posting a Dear Birth Parent letter that works; Details warning signs of scams and how to pinpoint individuals who can hinder your adoption; New financial resources for your adoption available on the web; Filled with helpful advice on safe and affordable adoptions, how to find birth mothers and how to safely network and screen professionals within the adoption community.

For decades, Katie D’Angelo and Valerie Harrison engaged in conversations about race and racism. However, when Katie and her husband, who are white, adopted Gabriel, a biracial child, Katie’s conversations with Val, who is black, were no longer theoretical and academic. The stakes grew from the two friends trying to understand each other’s perspectives to a mother navigating, with input from her friend, how to equip a child with the tools that will best serve him as he grows up in a white family. Through lively and intimate back-and-forth exchanges, the authors share information, research, and resources that orient parents and other community members to the ways race and racism will affect a black child’s life—and despite that, how to raise and nurture healthy and happy children. These friendly dialogues about guarding a child’s confidence and nurturing positive racial identity form the basis for Do Right by Me. Harrison and D’Angelo share information on transracial adoption, understanding racism, developing a child’s positive racial identity, racial disparities in healthcare and education, and the violence of racism. Do Right by Me also is a story about friendship and kindness, and how both can be effective in the fight for a more just and equitable society.