“I had discouraging conversations where I ended up feeling not invited, to sum it up. 'You're not appropriate, you are too old, you are single, you're this, you're that, you want an infant, forget it.' It wasn't really any engagement about whether or not there was a match. That put be back a few months each time"

adoption applicant

LISTENING TO PARENTS:
Overcoming Barriers to the Adoption of Children from Foster Care

The Listening to Parents project began in response to a contradiction. While tens of thousands of children wait in foster care to be adopted- many “aging out” of foster care without a family, countless parents are turned away or turned off by the process of adopting a child from foster care.

To better understand this problem, and develop ways to improve adoption services, researchers at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Urban Institute, conducted a national study to understand the adoption process from the perspective of people wanting to adopt a child from foster care. The report was released in conjunction with the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

The report, titled Listening to Parents is the most comprehensive study of its kind, using data analysis, case record reviews, surveys of child welfare agencies, interviews, and focus groups to document and understand the large attrition of prospective parents as they go from their initial information call to the adoption of a child. According to the research, in a given year 240,000 people called for information about adopting a child from foster care, but fewer than 10,000 actually did so.

Listening to Parents documented the many obstacles parents face in dealing with child welfare agencies. These include poor customer service, difficulty in reaching the right staff, disproportionate agency focus on screening out prospective parents, and bureaucratic delays.

In perhaps its most startling finding, the most important factors in determining whether prospective parents will be successful in their quest are not qualities of the parents (race, education, marital status, the type of child they seek to adopt). The critical factor is the location where they seek to adopt.

In some locations, the primary emphasis is on recruiting good candidates, with screening taking place later in the process. In other locations, the screening process begins immediately with questions designed to weed out those who cannot or should not adopt.

In the adoption system we studied that most emphasized recruitment, an individual prospective parent was 12 times more likely to actually adopt than in the system we found that was most focused on screening.

Read the Report

Listening to Parents: Overcoming Obstacles to Adoption from Foster Care was a collaboration of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Urban Institute and was disseminated through the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. The project was funded by a grant from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and was conceived and led by Jeff Katz, who was then a Fellow at the Kennedy School. Julie Wilson, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy was the Principal Investigator. Rob Geen, then of the Urban Institute conducted much of the research.

If you would like a copy of the report, click here


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