Context: Adoption can provide a lifetime of benefits for children. Some adoptions however, experience severe challenges resulting in disruption, with children leaving home prematurely. Method: This qualitative study in Northern Ireland used interviews with parents from thirteen families whose adoptions had disrupted, to explore their perspective…

Many children who enter the care system and are subsequently adopted have had exposure to a range of potentially traumatising experiences including domestic violence, abuse, neglect and loss of key caregivers. There are also an increasingly high number of adopted children presenting with the impact of intrauterine exposure to alcohol, drugs and…

This qualitative and interpretive inquiry explores the information behavior of birthmothers surrounding the processes of decision-making, coping, and living with the act of child relinquishment to adoption. An interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology is used to reveal the phenomenon as experienced by eight birthmothers, women who…

This reflective, autoethnographic qualitative case study at focus in this article is based on broader research on the experiences of Black teachers working at predominantly white and affluent private schools in the United States. It was motivated by the author/researcher's own experiences of personal, academic, and professional racial identity…

Children who are adopted at an older age through foster care and those adopted from overseas orphanages are at high risk for behavioral and emotional distress. This important manual presents a structured, evidence-based protocol for providing mental health treatment to families adopting vulnerable children. Drawing on their extensive clinical…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to provide an initial validation of a revision of the Transracial Adoption Parenting Scale-Revised (TAPS-R) with international transracial adoptive parents. Method: This study employed a cross-sectional, online survey design to recruit transracial adoptive parents from a parent support group, "Families…

Children experience grief and loss from death, divorce, parental incarceration, and similar situations of being placed in foster care or adoption. These youths may be challenged in recovery due to lacking the necessary life experience and coping skills. They may also lack the appropriate support networks to work through their grief as their…

Many of the >339,000 international adoptees arriving in the USA during the last 25 years are now teenagers and young adults (YA). Information about their long-term social integration, school performance, and self-esteem is incomplete. Moreover, the relation of these outcomes to facets of family function is incompletely understood. We…

Working with children and adolescents in the foster care system whose biological parents' parental rights have been, or are soon to be, terminated can present numerous challenges for counselors. Children in these situations often struggle with identification of conflicting feelings, grief resulting from the absence of the parent/parents, and…

Racial socialization protects minority adolescents from stress associated with racial discrimination. The process of racial socialization, however, may be challenging in transracial adoptive families. White parents may struggle with preparing their children for discrimination and fostering the development of racial pride. Thus, transracially…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how multiracial people of African descent experience racism in schools and to understand how their parents or guardians prepare them to cope with incidents of racism in school. Through qualitative in-depth interviews with multiracial and transracially adopted adults of African descent, this study seeks…

The purpose of this article is to explore the application of filial therapy as a means of strengthening relationships between foster parents and adolescent foster children. Adolescents in foster care experience a number of placement disruptions and while a number of therapeutic interventions are implemented to assist adolescents in foster care,…

Research on children who have been internationally adopted provides many strong examples of resilience. This paper discusses what counts as resilience in intercountry adoption and includes new data from the first study in this area conducted in Ireland. As with studies conducted in other jurisdictions, the Irish data indicate a remarkable capacity…

The exit of approximately 2,000 Vietnamese orphans in April 1975 through Operation Babylift is a key part of Vietnam War debates. The Babylift volunteers, American women who aided with the children's evacuation, published autobiographies of their involvement and publicly commemorated the history. This article uses pedagogy, collective memory, and…

Objectives: This study describes the development and initial validation of the 15-item Ethnic and Racial Socialization of Transracial Adoptee Scale (ERSTAS). Method: Using the model of Boykin and Tom on Black family socialization, the items were developed and validated using two different Asian adoptee samples. Results: Two subscales, ethnic…