Another awful "rehoming" story

[Captain Serious]

www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/arkansas-horror-story-republican-lawmaker-gave-up-adopted-6-year-old-to-man-who-then-raped-her/

[Captain Serious]

This couple is clearly evil and not with the ground they stand on, but stories of the rehoming of children who were adopted always bring to light the serious lack of training before adoptions take place, lack of support to adoptive families after, and the way families are often inappropriately green-lighted in foster care homestudies because of the desperate need for more available foster families.

Adopting older children or from foster care means taking a traumatized child into your family, and it often means inviting emotional difficulties and acting-out behaviors into your home. Families need to be as prepared as possible, supported after the he adoption especially during the transition (first two years, on average after the adoption), and be properly vetted to screen out families that might not be stable enough to weather the storms. Too often one, if not more, of these elements is missing. Of course rehoming should be criminalized, but that won't solve the problem.

Too many of the families who choose to adopt feel that love will cure everything or that it will all just work out, because they feel "called" to adopt by God. I believe they need to be faced with the reality, and families that refuse to accept that reality need to be screened out during the home study process.

ETA: I should be clear that I don't think it's a bad thing to adopt because you feel called to it. I think I did that, too, in a way. I think the problem stems from families who refuse to give serious consideration to the possible difficulties and take onore than their family can reasonably expect to effectively parent. I'm talking about families who adopt older, traumatized children and refuse to learn about hurt children, how best to parent them, or how to insulate their families from the effects of the trauma. I'm talking about families who refuse to look for help or go to family counseling with someone experienced in older child adoption. The families I'm talking about are, in my mind, neglectful of addressing some of the most predictable outcomes of their adoptions, because they feel that prayer and love will cure all their children's hurt.

[pinkie]

Captain Serious - if a family adopts an older child and (after exhausting all options) still finds they are in over their heads, is there a path for them to find a new home for the child through social services? This story is terrible .

[Captain Serious]

It varies by state, but they can contact social services and seek help. There are also homes/retreats that families can send their children to, where they specialize in working through the trauma and helping the child get to a place where they can return to life within their family.