Sharon Roszia - Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing In Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction

Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency

A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing in Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction

Sharon Kaplan Roszia and Allison Davis Maxon

Foreword by Deborah N. Silverstein, MSW

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

Contents

Foreword

Deborah N. Silverstein, MSW

Sometimes, maybe only once in a lifetime, we are lucky enough to meet someone who changes our world for the better. I call this a miracle, and it happened for me in 1978 when I heard Sharon (Kaplan) Roszia speak at an adoptive parent meeting. She said all the things I had been experiencing as a parent to three special needs children. At the same time, my husband, Stan, and I had been approached about adopting a 14-year-old boy. No social worker would consider that possibility since he would be older than all of our children. I approached Sharon. She would not only consider us, she was enthusiastic. That was it! The rest, as they say, really is history. As we learned to parent a troubled teen, Sharon and I developed a friendship, then camaraderie, and finally a partnership. What a ride it has been!

We began to advance our ideas about the core issues in 1980, giving voice to both our personal and professional experiences. I remember so well our first joint presentation at the North American Conference on Adoptable Children (NACAC) in Texas. I spoke in the role of the adoptive parent, and Sharon, the social worker. The audience response was immediate. We had struck a chord. Then, we sat at her dining table many days and nights honing the concept. Suddenly, we came to understand that what adoptive parents experienced, so did birth parents (and their families), adopted persons (young and old), and all others touched by adoption. Thus was born the concept of the Seven Core Issues in Adoption.

Sharon and I worked together in the subsequent years, discussing, refining, presenting our concept. We had some wild adventures traveling the country, meeting wonderful members of the constellation who shared their experiences, wisdom and courage. In the late 1990s, we were joined in our work by Allison Davis Maxon, who had been working in a nearby residential treatment facility. She brought a new perspective and her valuable experience. We taught families and professionals separately and together. We joined forces to work with a cadre of highly skilled clinicians to open a mental health center, utilizing the core issues as the framework for clinical interventions. Allison is a brilliant teacher who can make complex material accessible. She also knows how to have a really good time.

Regrettably, Sharon and I never sat down to engage in the toil of writing out the material. I retired, but Sharon and Allison have taken up the task and produced this glorious book, encapsulating almost 40 years of work. It has been my great joy to read their materials, to smile as I recognize some of the people in the vignettes, and to remember again why I loved this work so much.

Disclaimers

The authors acknowledge the following in relation to the content of the book:

Constellation members have strong opinions about the language, words and phrases used to describe their role in adoption and permanency. It is impossible to use all the specific words that would please every individual.

In the pursuit of acknowledging racial, ethnic and cultural communities we asked other contributors representing those communities to speak about the Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency from those unique perspectives.

Every individuals experience with adoption and permanency carries with it their own specific point of view. The authors have depended on their years of experience in working with thousands of constellation members to determine the most often expressed themes, challenges and deeply held thoughts and feelings. It is impossible to encompass every individuals unique perspective.

Preface

It is crisis and/or trauma that create the circumstances that lead to adoption and permanency. For a long time, there has been an undoing and redoing of family systems and family trees. The crises of an unplanned pregnancy, rape, incest, poverty, addiction, divorce, mental illness, war or a countrys crisis that results in refugees, natural disasters, epidemics and cultural biases leads to the displacement of children.

The Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency, which include loss, rejection, shame/guilt, grief, identity, intimacy and mastery/control, are created through the disassembling and recreating of new families. Until humanity has addressed the larger issues generated by the oppression of poverty, prejudice towards the mentally ill, the impact of war and its creation of refugees, human trafficking and the diseases of addiction, these core issues will be experienced by the individuals touched by adoption and permanency. This book underscores that all alternative forms of family building begin with a crisis. In almost all cases, the individual in distress did not create the circumstances under which new families were formed. The addressing of these crisis issues and the impact they have on the lives of individuals and families intergenerationally begins with an examination of societal biases about what constitutes a family. The language in adoption and permanency has often been divisive, separating and shaming. Adoption and permanency language can be both negative and positive and has evolved. Language has the power to wound, separate, connect, label, define, shame and heal.

The authors propose that any time a person is parenting a child not genetically related to them or to whom they did not give birth, the Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency are present. Adoption and some forms of permanency, such as guardianship, are both legal terms and descriptions of relationships. These connections may be formalized by law or through chosen, informal commitments. This would include kinship or guardianship parents who may not legally adopt; foster parents who are an arm of the child welfare system or others who are informally caring for a youth; placement of an infant or older child where parental ties have been severed and a legal connection to a new family is then put into place by the courts; step-parent adoption; and third-party reproduction such as donor insemination, egg donation and surrogacy. These are all different forms of permanency.

The professional and community response to the disassembling and re-assembling of families may create additional problems. The building of families related to peoples desire to parent because of infertility and/or some moral imperative, as well as a childs need for a family, has led to a practice that focuses on solving an immediate problem and often ignores the long-term impact on the individuals involved. No matter how the public may view adoption, foster care, kinship care, families of divorce, step-parenting or third-party reproduction, some type of crisis triggered the formation of the new family system. The long-term issues generated by these crises have been poorly understood and addressed. Historically, the professionals and other helpers have proceeded to assist with solutions without drawing on the wisdom of the people they were serving or the wisdom from those who were served in the past. An inclusive term for all of those individuals touched by adoption and permanency is constellation member. Constellation members experiences underscore how often their input about major life decisions was not solicited or was given and ignored. The lesson is: when you do something for me, without me, youre doing something to me.