Academic literature on the topic 'Special needs adoption Adoptive parents Adopted children Family assessment'

Often, youth in the foster care system have traumatic experiences associated with abuse and separation from their biological family. These experiences may lead to emotional, psychological, and behavioral problems that challenge the new adoptive family dynamic. This article introduces the Respite and Recreation (R & R) program in a Midwestern area. R & R combines faculty, staff, and graduate students from a local University, local community resources, and staff from a local adoption agency to provide recreation, respite, and professional support services for children with special needs and their adoptive parents. The R & R program provides the adopted children with structured recreation programs for their growth, the parents with a break from stress, and volunteer students with opportunities to incorporate their academic learning into real life situations. Service learning programs such as the R & R also provide university faculty with excellent opportunities to conduct action research.

Increasingly, intercountry adopted children have special needs similar to children adopted from foster care in the United States. Out-of-home placement may be necessary when less restrictive services have not adequately addressed an adopted child's needs. The experiences of 19 adoptive parents who chose to place their intercountry adopted child in out-of-home care due to their child's disability were explored through qualitative interviews and family ecomaps. Themes emerging from interviews relate to adoptive parent definitions of adoption and disability, challenges identifying and accessing services, and the effects of placement on their family, within an ecological systems perspective. Findings show the need for service providers to better understand the impact of an intercountry adopted child's disability and preadoption history on family adjustment, as well as to support parents through the out-of-home placement process.

Introduction The modern national child welfare system assisting children deprived of parental care aims at changing priorities in favor of family placement. However, this process is complicated by the lack of socio-psychological mutual selection of potential adoptive parents and orphans or children deprived of parental care. It is not taken into account that future parents will have to interact with children whose behavior is affected by maternal deprivation. At the same time, the cases of returning children back to orphanages make it especially important to study the factors that affect the quality of an adoptive family, i. e. its psychological health or its dysfunction.
 Purpose To determine the socio-psychological criteria for the mutual selection of adoptive parents and orphans or children deprived of parental care.
 Methodology The study was conducted in the period of 2017–2020. For the purpose of studying the socio-psychological factors that affect psychological health of an adoptive family, a semi-structured interview was used. It was conducted at the premises of the Kyiv City Orphanage in Vorzel and included observation (81 hours) in a psychotherapeutic group for adoptive parents at the premises of the personal development center "Fermata", Kyiv. The study involved 50 people aged from 27 to 50.
 Results and Discussion The results of our study showed that there are a number of features inherent to expectant parents who usually have difficulties in raising adopted children. Thus, parental image characteristics of adoptive parents are correlated with the severity of their psychopathological symptoms, which affects the behavior and development of the adopted child in a family. Adoptive parents whose parents had conflicting relationships showed high rates of interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, and intensity of experienced distress. Unconscious parental prohibitions and mini-scenarios of adoptive parents (Berne, 1964) were usually directed at adopted children, which led to disorders or deterioration of their behavior. Very often adopted children experience psychological traumas identical to those their adoptive mother or father is not aware of and represses. This leads to an aggravation of conflict in the child-parent relationship because the child begins to act as a kind of trigger for the repressed trauma of the adult. Therefore, the first criterion for mutual selection can be determined as the presence/absence of unconscious psychological trauma of the adoptive parents and the intrapsychic scenario of conflict-ridden relations within the parental couple.
 The results of our study proved that harmonious relationships of a married couple become a resource for adoptive parents in difficult periods of interaction with children, and in a dysfunctional family the emergence of difficulties only exacerbates the negative psychological state of parents, thus, children's behavior deteriorates. Therefore, the process of adapting and re-living the traumatic experience of the child in the family depends on how constructive marital relationships are. Thus, the second socio-psychological criterion of mutual selection is the type of marital relationship of a married couple – harmonious or disharmonious.
 Analysis of our work with adoptive parents has shown that the specific nature of the couple’s motivation to adopt a child plays an important role in whether an orphan or a child deprived of parental care can re-live their psychological trauma and eliminate it. Thus, the unconstructive motivation of adoptive parents can include (according to Melnychuk T. I. and Bevz G. M. (2016)): abatement of emotional pain caused by the loss of a blood child, preservation of poor marital relations, psychological pressure of relatives on the couple about adopting a child to the family, desire to avoid lonely aging. These motivations are aimed at solving their own psychological problems and needs, not at helping the child. Therefore, often the children of such parents are stuck in their worries and emotions, which is manifested in behavioral disorders as well as formation or increase of neurotic manifestations. Almost all adoptive parents with unconstructive motivation were not ready for psychological work in a mutual support group and left it. Thus, the third criterion of mutual selection can be determined as motivation of future parents to adopt a child.
 The experience of work with adoptive parents who have already adopted children has shown that the indicator of successful adaptation of a child in the family is played by future parents’ personality traits: level of anxiety, stress, emotional stability (Malkhazov, 2017), disposition. During the process of mutual selection, it is important to take into account and evaluate the personality traits of both adoptive parents and children, as they will further affect the psychological health of the family and how adoptive parents will overcome the difficulties that arise in the process of adaptation and development of the child. Parents with high levels of anxiety and low levels of distress tolerance, as a rule, have more problems in raising children, especially those who have experienced family life and are keeping some memories or children who have been abused. Thus, the fourth criterion of mutual selection is the adopters’ individual psychological characteristics.
 Psychological traumas that children received as a result of maternal deprivation or abuse in their biological family, negatively affect the formation of their attitudes, which is manifested primarily in emotional and behavioral disorders. Analysis of the child's life story and observation of their behavior in an orphanage or foster family makes it possible to predict their adaptation in a new family and give appropriate recommendations to adoptive parents. Therefore, a child's life story can be determined as the fifth socio-psychological criterion of mutual selection. This includes a child’s age, degree of emotional attachment to blood parents, circumstances that led to parental care deprivation, analysis of the child's psychological experience in the biological family, number of previous psychological, social etc. losses, time spent in an orphanage).
 As the sixth criterion of mutual selection, we determine the assessment of a child’s cognitive development. Its results will show whether the child has been pedagogically neglected or has organic disorders and the psychologist and psychiatrist will provide recommendations for the child’s upbringing and make a forecast of further development. This information will help to place the child in a family that has the resources and will be ready to raise it, understanding what difficulties it may face in the future.
 As the seventh criterion of mutual selection, we determine a child’s individual characteristics (temperament, emotional and volitional development, level of anxiety, and sense of security). Assessment of a child’s individual characteristics makes it possible to predict possible behavioral disorders and provide recommendations for their solution, as well as to select those adoptive parents who have the resources to meet the needs of the child.
 The results of the socio-psychological assessment based on the criteria defined above will allow potential adopters to realize their strengths and weaknesses, and to decide on adoption more consciously or to refuse adoption until the family or one of the spouses solves their psychological problems.
 Socio-psychological mutual selection will help to place a child in the family that can provide necessary conditions for the healthy development and resolving traumatic experience. Of course, this does not guarantee that adoptive parents will not have difficulty interacting with children, but will increase the family's willingness to address them in child’s favor.
 Conclusions. The main cause of adoptive family disorders is the unresolved and repressed psychological problems of potential parents, which they had long before the adoption and their lack of balanced assessment of their own weaknesses and strengths as caregivers of an orphan or a child deprived of parental care. Therefore, socio-psychological mutual selection of adoptive parents and orphans or children deprived of parental care will play a significant role in preventing adoptive parents from returning children back to orphanages and in guaranteeing the psychological health of their family)

Abstract:Knowing the families in its multiple aspects is an intrinsic task of nursing care. It is essential listen to parents and define the changes to be implemented from what is felt by them as a complaint or restlessness. The concern for their children manifests itself usually through a complaint or concerns about the child. Adoptive parenthood is a different way to access parenting and being a mother or adoptive father brings other challenges and some more specific problems. This study aims to identify the parental concerns of adoptive parents and to identify which characteristics of these parents and adoption process can be associated with it. A descriptive cross-sectional study was developed. Data were collected from a snowball sample comprised of 18 adoptive families: 2 single adoptions and 16 joint adoptions or per couple, through a questionnaire that was sent by e - mail, which the Parental Concerns Scale (Algarvio and Leal, 2004), was part of. Based on the data found that the greatest concern of these parents are situated at the level of school problems and family concern , expressed on the concern if the child has what’s need in school and if the teacher understands the child. These concerns are observed with parents aged between 35 and 39 years old, who had adopted children who are currently in school age and without special needs. It is allied to these features that the adoption has been motivated by the desire to increase family integrated into a life project.Key-words: Adoption, adoptive parents, parental concerns. Resumo:Conhecer as famílias nas suas múltiplas vertentes é uma tarefa intrínseca à prestação de cuidados de enfermagem. É fundamental ouvir os pais e definir as mudanças a implementar a partir daquilo que é sentido pelos mesmos como queixa ou inquietação. Esta preocupação relativamente aos seus filhos manifesta-se, habitualmente, através de uma queixa ou inquietação a respeito da criança. Sendo a parentalidade adotiva uma forma diferente de aceder à parentalidade, ser mãe ou pai adotivo traz outros desafios e alguns problemas mais específicos. Este estudo pretende identificar as preocupações parentais dos pais adotivos e identificar quais as características desses pais e do processo de adoção que se lhe associa. Foi desenvolvido um estudo descritivo e transversal. Os dados foram colhidos junto de uma amostra em bola de neve composta por 18 famílias adotivas: 2 adoções singulares e 16 adoções conjuntas ou por casal, através de um questionário enviado por e-mail, do qual fazia parte a escala de preocupações parentais de Algarvio e Leal (2004). Com base nos dados obtidos verificámos que a maior preocupação destes pais se situa ao nível das preocupações escolares e problemas familiares, manifestada na preocupação se a criança tem o que precisa na escola e se a professora entende a criança. A estas preocupações observam-se em pais com idades entre os 35 e os 39 anos, que adotaram crianças que estão atualmente em idade escolar e sem necessidades especiais. Alia-se a estas características o facto de a adoção ter sido motivada pelo desejo de aumentar a família integrado num projeto de vida.Palavras-chave: adoção, pais adotivos, preocupações parentais.

The purpose of this study was to look at the factors that lead to disruption in the adoption of special needs children. Families that adopt special needs children may or may not be aware that they need post adoption services and may be reluctant to ask for them even when they are experiencing difficulty.