Comments on: November is National Adoption Month https://www.socialworkblog.org/public-education-campaign/2016/11/november-is-national-adoption-month/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=november-is-national-adoption-month Social work updates from NASW Mon, 21 Aug 2023 20:56:33 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.5 By: Doris Bertocci, LCSW https://www.socialworkblog.org/public-education-campaign/2016/11/november-is-national-adoption-month/#comment-2053477 Thu, 10 Nov 2016 20:42:36 +0000 http://www.socialworkblog.org/?p=7980#comment-2053477 We cannot attend to the needs of children languishing in foster care without actively addressing the legal obstacles at the state level. An important solution for many of these children is to define the criteria, and to lobby, for the court to mandate that the child be placed in open adoption, preferably within a year. This severs the birthmother’s current “right,” according to the law, to leave her child in an extended period of limbo, often in neglectful circumstances. The law currently views the birthparents has having greater rights (to hold onto the child) than the child has to a loving permanent family.

Unfortunately the field of social work is partly responsible for the travesty of foster care because, like the law, it insists that it is almost always in the child’s best interest to eventually return to the birthmother. It isn’t. This is very naive when there is an option of open adoption by which the birthmother can maintain some kind of contact, or have information, while the child is growing up in the security of a loving family. The social work field has a great deal of work to do in this area, including legislative lobbies on behalf of the children.

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