Welcome to Adoption

I have officially joined the adoption world. Not as an adoptive parent, or even a prospective one at this point, but as an Adoption Social Worker (or as my official title says, Adoption Placement Specialist). I’ve developed a strong understanding of adoption through my volunteer work, my family and friends who have/are adopting, and from my undergraduate thesis on international adoption. However, joining the ranks as adoption professional is very different than what I am familiar with and is proving to be quite challenging.

I am quickly learning that my understanding of adoption is actually quite limited to international adoptions, especially those using a small, private agency. I also have a greater understanding of how adoption impacts the family adopting – the process they undergo, challenges experienced, and the overall attitude of families choosing to adopt. Now I am on the other side, a side that I am so completely unfamiliar with I am left wondering how I even ended up with this job in the first place. My primary focus it the child – is adoption the best permanence plan for them? What will life be like for them because of adoption? What family fits their needs best? My priorities and thought-process needs to shift from thinking about adoption through the lense of a parent to thinking about it through the eyes of a child.

In the past few days, I’ve been exposed to my new world of adoption. I have quickly learned to change my frame of reference from that of a someday adoptive parent of a child in Africa to that of a Social Worker who will be specializing in domestic adoptions of children within the Wisconsin foster care system. Even more specifically, adoptions of teenagers and those older children who have been waiting for years or potentially their entire lives for a family. This week I’ve been exposed to the realities of adopting from the foster care system and how different the process and outcome is from most international adoptions. I have become especially aware of the realities of my job – witnessing the termination of a parent’s rights, trying to understanding why a teenager is telling me they do not want to be adopted, looking a child the face and telling them they have to move for the 6th time.

I keep reminding myself that no matter how hard or difficult the job may get for me, life will always be harder for the child whose best interest and future I am advocating for. While I certainly won’t be able to share specifics of my experiences as an adoption social worker on this blog for confidentiality reasons, I do hope to be able to continue to share lessons I learn, realities of adopting older children, and my growing heart and appreciation for the foster care system. And I will apologize in advance for the lack of blogging I’ll be doing in the next few months – between an intense training period and the exhaustion of this pregnancy, my free time is usually spent napping. I do promise I won’t disappear completely :)