In Foster Care: How to Fix This Corrupted System, author Janet Solander presents stories of how Child Protective Services (CPS), Department of Family Services (DFS), and the foster system have failed the very children they are mandated to protect and hold safe. Solander shares heartbreaking incidents taken from the daily news as well as her own firsthand experiences as a foster parent. Only through public awareness is there any chance that the children in the system have any hope ...

The story that captivated a nation?how a horribly neglected little girl was rescued by her loving adoptive parentsIn July 2005, a six-year-old girl named Danielle was removed from her Florida home after authorities found her living in bug-ridden squalor, subjected to horrific neglect and so damaged by her own mother that recovery seemed hopeless. But hope was waiting for Dani?and help. In October 2007, Bernie and Diane Lierow, a hard-working couple with five boys o...

From Adoptive Families magazine, the country’s leading resource on adoption, this warm, authoritative book is full of practical, realistic advice from leading attorneys, doctors, social workers, and psychologists, as well as honest, intimate stories from real parents and children. You Can Adopt answers every question–even the ones you’re afraid to ask:• When should I shift from fertility treatment to adoption?• How do I talk to my spouse about adopt...

This gripping memoir details an ordinary American woman's quest to adopt a baby girl from Guatemala in the face of overwhelming adversity. At only 32 years old, Jessica O'Dwyer experiences early menopause, seemingly ending her chances of becoming a mother. Years later, married but childless, she comes across a photo of a two-month-old girl on a Guatemalan adoption website, and feels an instant connection.From the get-go, Jessica and her husband face numerous and maddening obstacles...

Twelve years into her marriage, Darlene realized that she wanted a child. At age forty, things weren't going to be that easy. In this humorous, warm and poignant book, Darlene decides that the most sensible option left to her is adoption. Through narrativ

Numerous reasons cause adopted teenagers to reconnect with their birth family via Facebook, creating new challenges for adoption today and tomorrow. Incorporating theory, practice, anecdotes, metaphors, diagrams, models and case studies, this accessible book, written by an experienced adopter, clearly explains these complex issues. It maps connections between trauma, child development, grief, adolescence, contact, truth telling and parenting styles; offering fresh perspectives and strategi...

Who is guest, and who is host? Adoption, Antigone, zombies, clones, and minotaurs—all building blocks, forming and reforming our ideas.Poetry as essay, as a way of hovering over the uncanny, sci-fi orientalism, Antigone, cyborgs, Borges, disobedience.Sun Yung Shin moves ideas around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be guest, to be host. How to be at home.

When Pat McMahon risks the love of the mother who raised him by seeking out the mother who gave him away, he transforms from a mild-mannered engineer into a frenetic detective. After he overcomes the challenges of existential angst, bureaucratic roadblocks, and unemployment, the phone call to his first mother releases a torrent of long-buried feelings. During a sometimes turbulent long-distance unfolding, he absorbs her shocking revelations and comes out as gay once again. Their eventual r...

Les Cummings was three when he was sent to the Children's Cottage Homes in Portsmouth. A traumatised little boy, he dreamed his mother would come back for him. She never did. Instead he fell victim to the worst abusers and a system that didn't care.Conditions at the home were harsh, the children poorly fed and hungry, dressed in stained second-hand clothes. But worse than that was the violence from some of the staff - Les was frequently punched, kicked and locked in the cellar as p...

Positive and practical, this guide is designed to offer a route to recovery from grief and loss after adoption or long-term foster care.Children growing up in adoptive families or foster care often have complicated feelings about the loss of their birth parents - feelings which become all the more complex as they gain independence and become young adults, and which can endure throughout their lives. Common life events such as entering new relationships, building a family or losing ...

This richly layered novel is about secrets, conflicts, discovery, friendship, nostalgia, history and culture woven around family and complex legal issues involving business acquisitions, insider trading, tax evasion and fraudulent transactions. Come and experience Montréal in the 1960s as law students George Roberts of Montréal, Jacques Simard from Québec and Costas Pappas of Athens, Greece, become close friends while studying at McGill University. Dubbed the Holy Trinity, they revel in the j...

"Includes research on adoption documents rarely open to historians . . . an important addition to the literature on adoption."---Choice"Sheds new light on the roots of this complex and fascinating institution."---Library Journal"Well-written and accessible . . . showcases the wide-ranging scholarship underway on the history of adoption."---Adoptive Families"[T]his volume is a significant contribution to the literature ...