Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys

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Category: Adoptees

Adoptees

Featured Youth From Raise the Future

This week we have two children waiting for adoptive homes.  These children include Kylie, age 17, from Utah, and Andy, age 16, from Nevada. You can find more information about Andy and Kylie by clicking on their names below.

Kylie(opens in new tab)

Andy(opens in new tab)

If you are interested in more information about adopting one of these chilren, contact your AAAA attorney and Sara Bennett at Raise The Future at sara.bennett@raisethefuture.org(opens in new tab) or 303-755-4756 (ext. 221) directly. Please do not contact AAAA directly as your attorney and Sara will be the contact persons in all matters regarding these children.

For more information on Raise The Future and its partnership with AAAA, click here(opens in new tab).

One Of My Best Adoption Experiences

A lot of people focus on adoption as involving infants or small children, but one of my most rewarding experiences was working with clients who adopted three young men who had aged out of foster care, never having had found their “forever families.” My clients were a married couple who worked in the financial sector. Through their work, they joined a company-wide effort to mentor young people who had aged out of foster care. They met three young men of different racial and cultural backgrounds from them. These young men and my clients bonded after months of working together to assist them with college and work goals. My clients adopted two of them first, each of them having had absolutely no contact with their birth families since they were young children. The third came about two years later after he and his birth mother, with whom he had some relationship, agreed that the adoption would be a formal recognition of his chosen family and would provide him with the security he had not known as a child. Adoption, for them, was about legal and societal recognition of family, no matter how it was formed or when it was formed. There were a lot of tears of love and joy on both of these adoption days.

— Deb Guston is the Adoption Director and a Fellow of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys practicing both adoption and ART law in New Jersey

A Child’s Right to Family

Hundreds of millions of children across the world are destined to grow up on the streets and in institutions.  One of the best solutions to this crisis is international adoption.  However, adoptions to the United States have dropped by 75 percent over the last 14 years and international adoptions worldwide have dropped by over half.  This downward trend is not slowing. Adoptions to the United States dropped by 13 percent from 2017 to 2018. As a result, every year tens of thousands of children are denied a family.

Unfortunately, the Department of State is implementing policies that will further reduce the number of international adoptions.  Another factor contributing to the accelerated decline is over regulation.  In 2004, when intercounty adoption peaked, it was reported that the Department of State employed 10 to 15 staff in the adoption division.  In November of 2018, despite a 75 percent decline since 2004, it was reported that the adoption division employed 21 staff.

The Harvard Law School Child Advocacy Program (CAP), directed by Elizabeth Bartholet, is taking a leading role in confronting this humanitarian crisis.  CAP is advancing legislation that “calls on the Department of State to report the deliberate denial of family life, including the refusal to place children in available adoptive homes, as a human rights violation in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.” You can find out more about this initiative and CAP at https://cap.law.harvard.edu/cap-law-reform-projects/.

You can also sign a petition showing your members of congress and governement that you support every child’s right to a family at https://caplawharvard.salsalabs.org/childsrighttofamily/index.html.

— Eric Freeby is the current Adoption Deputy Director of the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys

AAAA Opposes Permanent Placement of Migrant Children For Adoption Without Consent of Parent or Parents

The Board of Trustees of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys has remained concerned about migrant children since our announcement this summer that the Board voted to adopt a new Resolution opposing the separation of children from their parents by immigration officials. The Trustees of AAAA believe that no migrant child should be placed for adoption or permanent guardianship here in the United States without the express consent of his or her parent or parents.  We have encouraged licensed adoption agencies and our membership to respect the rights of parents whose children are being held by the United States government, either in government facilities or with contracted agencies, and not to consider these children abandoned until all efforts can be made to locate their parents and either return them to their parents or obtain voluntary consents for an adoption.

AAAA’s Resolution Concerning Migrant Children can be found at https://adoptionart.org/about-aaaa/publications/resolutions.

 

AAAA Adopts Resolution Regarding Migrant Children

The AAAA Board of Trustees voted at a recent meeting to adopt a new Resolution opposing the separation of children from their parents by immigration officials. This Resolution extends to opposing permanent placement of these children without their parent or parents’ consent or unless placement is with relatives. To read the complete text of the Resolution, click here.

DISCLAIMER: The Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA) website is designed for general information only. Nothing on this website establishes an attorney-client relationship with AAAA or any of its member-attorneys.  AAAA website content does not constitute legal advice from AAAA or its member-attorneys to any reader or to the general public.  The law constantly changes and varies across state and international borders.  Consult qualified legal counsel in your jurisdiction regarding your particular situation. Click here for the AAAA Attorney Directory. The names and contact information included on this site are for the purpose of searching for an attorney for a particular legal case. The contact information may not be used for commercial, promotional, or advertising purposes.

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