Reports from the Ethics and accountability in Adoption Conference 10/15-16/2007

Day One: First a note: These are my impressions seen through my lens. If you want a more objective, detailed report of the conference, go to http://fleasbiting.blogspot.com. It's the best report short of buying  all the audio CDs of the conference for yourself that you'll find. I met so many people. My fellow PEAR founders, Elizabeth Case, Desiree and David Smolin (with young Rachel), Barbara McArtney, and Gina Pollack were there. Those of us who were there Sunday night were treated to wonderful Thai dinner together by Elizabeth Case. I stayed at Trish Maskew's apartment with her two wonderful boys Connor and Patrick, and got to meet Ethica members Linh Song, Usha Smerdon, Melissa Griebel, and Virginia VanWyck. I wish I had gotten to meet Heather Lowe as she was the one who first opened my eyes to the birthmother view. I met Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy, Mirah Riben, Bernadette Wright, and Suz Bernard from Origins USA. Fellow blogger Jennifer Hemsley (Vintage Uterus) was there as was Jae Ran Kim. Met Lucy Armistead from Kentucky Adoption Services. I enjoyed meeting Sheryl Miller and her son. I also met Marley Greiner from Bastard Nation. Elizabeth Larsen who had a terrific article in Mother Jones Magazine was there. I also met Joyce Pavao, with whom I never managed to get a formal interview. I did not get to meet David Brodznisky, who I was also scheduled to interview. The infamous Jeannene Smith was seen wandering around, much like a stray dog. She reminds me of the monster in horror movies. Just when you think she's gone and can't hurt anyone anymore, she's back for a sequel. There were so many others who I forget at the moment. The Day One workshops didn't go over anything I didn't already know, but it was good to hear some different perspectives. PEAR  (Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform) made a big debut and garnered support from many quarters. Even the birthmothers present liked PEAR and alliances were formed between PEAR and Origins USA and Bastard Nation. One really good thing is that just about everything was recorded on CD, so no one had to miss anything and the public has access to the entire conference. I'm listening to some of them now as I write this. Links are on the conference site and Ethica site for ordering CD's. Morning: The opening session was a lot of the typical opening session stuff. A lot of stuff about the last conference, held eight years ago and what direction to go and how this conference was just a beginning was presented. Panelists were Adam Pertman, Linh Song, and Madelyn Freundlich. At least Adam Pertman didn't hurt himself with too much self-congratulation. I was struck by how the Evan B. Donaldson people didn't seem to be all that cordial and welcoming of the bloggers, the first mothers and the adult adoptees. I was excited to be seated next to members of the press. It was pretty obvious that Evan B. would have preferred a professional symposium where alleged best practices were shared. Too bad the self proclaimed adoption "professionals" have none of the professional standards and other trappings of any other true profession. More on that later. Nevertheless, both Evan B. and Ethica are to be commended and thanked for bringing so many voices together. The next Panel was for everyone and was entitled, Accountability to Families of Origin. Trish Maskew moderated and UNICEF's Alexandra Yuster was up first. She presented the UNICEF position on adoption as a last resort and talked about how countries need to establish social support systems to keep families intact. The well-known UNICEF disconnect between sound ideals and harsh reality was apparent. Next, Brenda Romanchik, a birthmother and therapist, gave a brilliant presentation on informed consent. Her commnets on language, particularly the use of the term birthmother, should be required listening for anyone involved in adoption.  Jini Roby also touched on informed consent and spoke eloquently about low cost programs to keep families intact. She also spoke about how the Western adoption system exploits cultural differences regarding adoption. Last, Oronde Miller, a child welfare specialist and adoptee spoke about his personal experiences, especially when it came to placing siblings in the same adoptive family. At the end, questions were presented. Alexandra said that there were no such countires where there was no social welfare available other than adoption. The Guatemalan contingent wasn't buying that. Orande also said that the obligation of the professional community was to keep families intact and to seek either temporary or long term care within extended families before placement for adoption. Jini Roby also talked about the coercive effect for adoption placement of money offered by baby finders in the Marshall Islands, a culture that doesn't fathom the concept of permanent placement for adoption where non-biological parents are given the legal status of parenthood over a child born to another. I then attended the morning workshop on Before Adoption: Protecting the Rights of Vulnerable Families of Origin. Lynn Franklin from Evan B's board moderated a panel made up of Sonia Metzger, Tesi Kohlenberg, and Annette Appell. Sonia spoke first about inadequate legal representation of birthparents and how we should all be morally outraged about it. Too bad she didn't touch on the fact that the child gets no independent legal respresentation in a legal procedings that purports to serve the best interest of the child. She rightfully pointed out that in the US, we have a system that terminates parental rights with the hope for adoption by the child, making an unfair and often unkept promise to both the child and family as 130,000 children with terminated parental rights in the US foster care system go unadopted every year. She held out hope for cases where the child can petition to have parental rights reinstated. Tesi was as terrific as her posts on Guatemala-adopt always are. Her main point was that race, culture and class are behind the problems with ethical issues in adoptions. She spoke about the powerlessness members of the less favored class and race in sending countries and how orphanages are ofen seen as places of temporary care. Lack of access and a lack of rights was a theme of hers, especially in terms of different cultural contexts.  Powerlessness and cultural disconnect play big roles in ethical considerations in adoption. She spoke at length about Guatemala's crisis. The questions and comments section was interesting. A first mother (Claud) commented that expenses for expectant mothers should be taken out of the equation rather than come from agencies as it was coercive. It needs to come from other sources. Lucy Armistead challenged Tesi on the payments to finders, pointing out that the finder may have to work with as many as 20 birthmothers before one relinquishes. Tesi handled the challenge well. If the finder gets $6000-8000 per child relinquished, even if it's 2-4 times per year, that's an enormous income in Guatemala. I brought up the lack of uniform federal regulation and asked why the adoption community could not benchmark those state regulations that are right and get behind them as a goal for federal regulation. Someone (Joan Hollinger) said that the federal government doesn't want to pass such legislation. I replied that in the post Masha Allen hearing atmosphere, the federal government may be more inclined to pass such legislation and regulation. Kevin Kreutner did not think that payments of prenatal care costs from adoptive parenst is wrong as it benefits women needing prenatal care. Tesi responded that the problem is if such payments serve to incentivize a transaction. Desiree Smolin was the last to comment and she said that there's no one protecting the vulnerable birthfamilies, especially in light of the money involved. She said that there's no one watching and no one enforcing the existing laws and regulations. Simultaneous with the above workshop was another one that I wished I could attend, entitled Ensuring Ethical Relinquishing Practices. So, unable to be in two places at once, I did the next best thing and purchased and listened to the CD. The panel was moderated by Melissa Griebel and included Fred Greenman (my favorite Evan B. person there), Jini Roby and Susan Livingston Smith. This workshop focused on the rights of families of origin, informed and voluntary consent. It was an extension of the Accountability to Families of Origin session. Jini Roby and Fred  both urged that adoption counseling be independent of the placement agency and again, like in the workshop I attended, payments of birthparent expenses should not come from the adoptive families or the placement agencies. Below is Jini Roby's material from the conference syllabus CD: ETHICS REGARDING BIRTH FAMILIES: BEFORE ADOPTION Discussion Points with Focus on International Adoptions Jini L. Roby, JD, MSW, MS Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 jiniroby@byu.edu 1. Elements of options counseling: • Obviously there are the tangible factors such as language and cultural compatibility between the birth parent(s) and the one who is providing the counseling. In some cultures same gender counseling is paramount. • We need to look at expanding options. For example, in many cultures the extended family must be considered as a placement option. In some countries meetings similar to family group conferences, where both sides of the extended family come together to discuss the needs of the parents and child(ren), is culturally appropriate and useful. Often the extended family is able to assist until the crisis passes, or even permanently absorb the child, or take turns caring for the child. One might fear that this does not provide true permanency, but in many cultures, children are often cared for by multiple relatives, at multiple locations. • Another way to expand options is to provide the necessary resources for children to remain with their parents. In the developing countries where I have worked, I would say that at least 90% make the adoption decision due to extreme poverty. Sometimes even when resources are available, birth families are not aware of them or how to access them. It is important to explore the resources can be made available to the family, through the extended family, local NGO or government resources. 2. Rights of relinquishing mothers and fathers (these can be before, during and after adoption): • To be provided true options counseling (as discussed in above question) • To receive the assistance in order to parent the child (if they so choose) • To receive independent legal representation • To have legal implications explained in terms that they can comprehend: in some cultures the concept of terminating parental rights or losing all of one’s rights to the child has never been developed. It is difficult for them to understand that a judge can legitimize such a drastic fiction. • To be able to discuss the issue as a parental team (if preferred), rather than being pitted against one another • To not have carrots (e.g. on-going contact and gifts) dangled in front of them as incentives for relinquishment when such cannot be enforced either by operation of law or function of limited legal resources • To not be defrauded i. By offer of money ii. By promises of open adoption iii. By promises that child will return wealthy, etc. • To not be required to commit fraud against each other, or to the authorities • To be recognized as a parent for a life time, and not just a genetic service provider • To be recognized for the pain and loss and to receive free counseling after placement as well as before. • To live openly with the history of having placed…and not to feel shame 3. Time for consent: Internationally, consent should be signed after options counseling and at least 30 days prior to the finalization of the adoption in the sending country’s court. This provides a time in which the birthparents can revoke their consent for good cause. The Hague requires that there be no contact between the birth and adoptive parents prior to the giving of the consent. When the adoption is finalized in the receiving country, consent should be signed after options counseling and remain revocable until the departure of the child. In some cases, if fraud or coercion can be shown, the consent should be revocable at any time upon good cause. Under the Hague the central authorities may coordinate these efforts between sending and receiving countries. 4. How informed consent can be assured? As mentioned in #2, they need very good, supportive but objective options counseling. They need legal counseling, to understand the permanent implications of adoption. There should be no fraud, force, threat, inducements or coercion. They should be given time to decide, then they should be given a second chance to change their minds. (After all, it is their children!). Also birth parents can be easily intimidated by authorities or professionals. In addition, those working in international contexts should be especially wary of having birth parents meet with foreign representatives of agencies due to this factor. 5. Protecting the rights of relinquishing parents: It is important to prevent adoption where possible. Most importantly, if they choose to parent, birth parents should receive assistance so that family preservation is the priority. If the decision is made to place, the sending country should deal only with carefully screened adoption agencies who have demonstrated general concern for the welfare of the children in the country, with limited adoption services. The adoption agency should follow clear protocols as to the recruitment and ‘processing’ of birth parents. Typically there should be no advertisements allowed, including media ads, door to door solicitations, offering inducements or using coercive tactics (“think of how much better your child’s life will be…”). There should be competent and culturally-appropriate options counseling (including extended families where applicable). They should have independent legal representation. Bernadette Wright asked about time after birth before relinquishment, including a minimum time rather than allowing coercive relinquishements after birth. Jennifer Hemsley spoke about how she felt things were very anti-adoptive parent and talked about how in developing countries, implementation of reforms and supports for families of origin are impossible. Jini Roby pointed out that the first thing needed was a will to create the services. Marley Greiner brought up other coercive practices like PAP's becoming friends with the expectant parents and being present in the delivery room. Gary Gamer from Holt suggested that relinquishements should be given to trained social workers who are working in the best interest of the child. Sheryl Miller put the onus on PAPs and APs to not support corrupt practices and corrupt practitioners. She stated that PAPs and APs should not support practitioners who do not give back to the community. What I began to see emerging here was a theme that went against most of what my experience has shown me the adoption industry to be. Here we had panels and people urging members of the adoption industry and adoption community to work to protect the rights of birthfamilies and work to keep families intact. I fail to see how asking an industry to do things that would curtail its income flow and its reason d'etre would work. White, western families want to adopt children. They create the demand and have the money to pay whoever can satisfy that demand by means that can be either ethical or unethical. Take away the money as a way to satisfy the demand and the system will be forced to change. Afternoon: I had a pleasant lunch on day one with Kevin Kreutner from FOA/Guatadopt, Maggie Jones, the reporter from the NY Times Magazine (her story appeared Octiober 28, 2007) Elizabeth Groot and Tesi Kohlenberg. At another table, Lucy Armistead and Jeannene Smith were sitting with the women from Origins USA, Mirah Riben, Suz Bernard and Claudia Corrigan. Boy, would I have liked to have been a fly buzzing around that table. By sheer coincidence, my wife called because she met someone who was having a problem with his Guatemalan adoption and agency. I told her to have him call me as I had all the best advisors at my fingertips. Together, we were able to give him encouraging news, although the poor communication, misinformation and outright lies he was getting from his agency were quite troubling. I kind of bounced around the afternoon sessions, after talking to Tesi about several issues. I attended most of the workshop entitled, "Marketing" Children for Adoption - Ethical Considerations in Recruiting and Matching. It was hosted by Usha Smerdon, filling in for Barbara Raymond, and Usha made reference in her presentation to the page on this site entitled, Ethical Photolistings. Sarah Gerstenzang and Dr. Jeri Jenista were the other panelists. Usha talked about Barbara's Book, The Baby Thieves, about Georgia Tann. The claim is that Georgia Tann invented modern adoption by commercializing it by advertising children and charging large fees. Usha went on to speak about how agencies placing children from India routinely violate India's own adoption rules and laws. Usha started with a historical overview of the marketing of children for adoption and it is amazing how much has stayed the same over the years. The biggest difference now is the reach of the Internet and how advertising children available for adoption along with the photolistings reaches so many more people nowadays. She discussed bait and switch and other unethical tactics and how the Hague regulations address photolistings and marketing of children available for adoption. She discussed the marketing, with examples, of the perpetuation of the adoption myth. Sarah Gerstenzang (see www.uskids.org) spoke about the adoption of foster kids and the negative stereotyping of children available for adoption from the US foster care system. She spoke of good photolisting practices and how much should be disclosed in a foster kid photolistings. I disagreed with some of what she said. While I understood that photolistings of foster children available for adoption should not paint too negative a picture as to make it more difficult for the child to be placed, I think non-disclosure of serious issues is deceptive and sets up prospective adoptive parents and the children for disappointment and difficulties. I did like the idea of getting the children involved in their own photolistings. Sarah also spoke about how the Cherokee Nation photolists the familes instead of the children and suggested that perhaps that was a better way. I liked her comparison of photolistings with resumes. Dr. Jenista talked about hard truths. She hammered on adoption as a business and the marketing involved. She insiisted that children are not clients and are treated as a commodity and used the differential fee structure chaged to adopt different types of children. She spoke about how the concept of, "in the best interests of the child," is really part of the industry created adoption myth. She spoke of varying amounts of disclosure at various steps in the process and how children are not presented with choices.  She touched on the paucity of medical counselors and lamented the lack of instituting best practices across the board. Privacy concerns were the common theme in this workshop. One questioner brought up the misleading nature of non-disclosure and how that puts kids in communities that lack the necessary resources to help them. Barb Holtan used the term, "placement induced hearing impairment," to refer to the fog prospective parents go into when they get close to getting a placement and how it's the placement worker's job to cut through the fog. There was a discussion about giving older children an informed choice in their placement. I heard on the CD that it is okay to to use fear of loss on these kids and that these kids are developmentally unable to fully realize what they are saying yes and no to. I disagreed with this. While children should not have the final say, thay should have a seat at the table and their input must be listened to and assigned a value. This brings me back to my contention that the child must have independent legal representation in all the legal parts of adoption proceedings. My fellow blogger Claudia commented on the marketing of pregnant women for the adoption iondustry and the presence of recruiters looking for babies for adoption. Summer camp programs also came under criticism. This brings me to the atrocious July 2007 NCFA conference that was more about harvesting of children for adoption. I say it was atrocious because some of the same players at this conference, such as JCICS, COA and DOS were at that conference, making me think that perhaps I was listening to people who speak with forked tongues, that is, two faced. Tom DiFilipo and Richard Klarberg, are you listening? If you are being two faced, you will be exposed. I listened to the CD of the workshop entitled, Protecting Racial, Cuktural, Ethnic Ties in Transracial/Transcultural Adoption. Limh Song hosted this one and the panelists were Laura Romano, a twin adopted from Colombia who spoke of her experiences, Leslie Hollingsworth and Chris Winston. This workshopp was interesting, but I decided that I'm not going to go into detail on every workshop here, especially the ones that I did not attend. This workshop did talk about current laws and practices as well as the model the Hague sets up on this topic. Too bad that I feel Hague implementation in the US will rubber stamp the desires and status quo of the US adoption industry. I feel that the necessary ethical adoption reforms will only come about if teh adoption industry is dismantled and replaced with a system that is truly child centered, where adoption is a last choice on a menu of social services available for children in need. The money must be taken out of the system. The sense of entitlement to children by adopters must be removed and the role of adoption agemcies, if they would even still be necessary, must change drastically and dramatically. This workshop is why I gave Linh a copy of a paper I wrote in 2005 that was titled, Survival of Cultures, Ethniciy and Traditions in Trans-Racial, Cross-Cuktural and Inter-Country Adoptees in the United States. This workshop and my paper turmed out to have less in common than I thought. It was good to listen to different perspectives on similar topics. Anoher CD I listened to was of the workshop entitled, Alternative Routes to Permanency - Is Adoption Always the Best Choice? Jeanne Howard of the Donaldson Institute facilitated the discussion and the panelists included James Gleeson, Mark Testa and Mirah Riben. James Gleeson spoke about informal kinship care and why it should be supported as a way of supporting family continuity and preventing children from coming into the child welfare system. Mark Testa spoke of legal guardianship as another solution to permanency. I don't think there are too many adoptive parents who were informed about and understood what legal guardianship entails. Guardianship does not terminate parental rights, rather it preserves them and therefore preserves the family of origin without creating a legal fiction of a replacement family the way adoption does. Guardianship transfers legal custody to the guardian who then has full legal authority to make decisions on the child's behalf. Many of us have wills that name a legal guardian for our children should the unforseen happen and we are not available to parent. Guardianship does the same when the parent is still available but unable to fully parent. They do retain a residual role in that they have the right to visit, consent to adoption, and are obligated in terms of child support. Additionally, the child rertains rights of visitation with siblings which is often lost with adoption or foster care. However, the way things are set up, adoption must be ruled out before guardianship can be considered. Mirah Riben questioned if current adoption practices are optimal in serving the best interests of children and families. She asked if current adoption practices meet the goals of  the UN Convention of the Rights of Children. (One thing that bothers me is that even though I have big disagreements with the Guatemalan adoption community, at least they are willing to question and challenge the UN/UNICEF when everyone else seems to accept UN/UNICEF statements as gospel. I have to admire and relate to those who are willing to question and challenge authority. Mirah does that in many other ways.) Mirah quoted Harriet Fricke, who in 1971 said, "False birth certificates, burying the biological past, violate the child's civil rights." Mirah asked, "Is there a better way? Can we provide a safe alternative, permanent care for children who need it, without taking away from them their identity and their familial ties?" Mirah then quoted Jean Payton and how she said that, "... a transition fron orphanage to guardianship would have spared our culture a great deal of human suffering and a lot of social confusion." She spoke in favor of guardianship and in favor of putting resouces into family presevation and used the decline in domestic adoptions in South Australia as an example of refoms that work. She spoke out against the adoption industry which is best served financially by preserving the current system. She spoke out about the money generated by an industry that treats children as commodoties to provide needy families with children rather than needy children with homes and families. She spoke out against the supply and demand of the adoption market place. She spoke about how adoption needs to be transformed into a social service where payments by adoptive parents play no part. She also spoke about how anyone can decide to work in adoption and label herself an adoption "professional."  She spoke about the myths involved with adoption and how one of them was that no one wanted to be a legal guardian because it would deny them total "ownership" over the child. I felt I was listening to much of what I have said over the years. Lucy Armistaed challenged Mirah about the qualifications of adoption professionals in many states. Lucy did not acknowledge that her roommate at the conference, Jeannene Smith, had no qualifications to be an adoption professional. She broke into tears about guardianship as in the case of her adoptions, that would have been a disastrous option because her children from Guatemala were abused both in their birthfamilies and in their orphanage. She said they offered to help the birthmother escape her abusive relationship, but she refused. (I wonder if efforts were made to establish support for abused women in Guatemala if the outcome would have been different. It does seem that no matter where it occurs, it is amazingly difficult for women to escape an abusive relationship.) Mark Testa responded that the way to go is to offer options. Mirah responded that there is a lack of professionalism and regulation on a national level that needs to be addressed. A woman from Origins USA (Bernadette?) spoke about how in 1990, she asked if she could place her child temporarily and have visitation until she was able to get on her feet financially and she was told no, her only option was to sever her parental rights. She cried that she never learned what became of her only son. Another question elicited a response that showed that guardianship can save the state money and that there are more ways than just adoption to achieve permanence. This was certainly a workshop that was worthwhile and one that I'm sorry I missed. Again, it was surprising to hear alternatives to the status quo being told to the entrenched members of the adoption industry. It remains to be seen if any of this has any effect. One outcome that I have already seen is that like minded reformers met each other and alliances were formed. The last workshop CD that I have from Day One is entitled, Supporting Adopted Persons - What Are Their Post Placement Needs. Dealing with the issues of my own  adopted daughter made me personally interested in this workshop and I stopped in at the end of it and asked a question. Ethica's Carrie Kent facilitated this one and began with a summary of what voices were represented at the conference. She stressed the significance of the experiential narrative, stating that, "...research must always be informed by the power of our stories." Debbie Riley, whose work has focused on adoption and adolescent mental health spoke first. Australia's Indigo Willing was the second speaker, who has developed the Adopted Vietnamese International Community Network. Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, one of my own heroes of adoption and author of, The Family of Adoption, was the final speaker. Debbie Riley spoke of the post-placement needs of adoptees as part of their lifelong journey needing specialized support along the way. She said, "I believe that the most important need of adopted persons is the funding, the availability and the accessibility of quality adoption competetnt mental health services," and backed that statement up remarking how currently these services are available on only a limited and inconsitent basis. She followed with, "It is the ethical and legal obligation of our field to ensure children and families from all adoptive experiences have access to adoption competent mental health services." The key to her presentation was that the lack of adoption competent professionals in the mental health field creates a moral and ethical imperative to provide more of them because the profession is accountable to adopted children and their families. Families have reported going through a string of thearpists and counselors, all of whom have to be educated on adoption issues by the adoptee and the adoptive family and Debbie's point was this should not be happening. Indigo Willing shared insight from the Australian perspective and the searching conducted by war orphans of the Vietnam War. She has been looking into the identity construction of adoptive parents as part of her doctoral thesis and she spoke of the current adoption reform movement in Australia and the need for the adult adoptees to be represented and heard in order for institutions, agencies, governments etc, to allow them to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the practice of adoption. Her second point was that certain administartive functions need to be included in the process and the fees for recording keeping, searching and counseling support. In other words, fee increases need to be committed to post adoption resources. Third, was transnational planning for providing guidance and services for adoptees who return to their countries of origin and search for their birth parents. Fourth was cultural strategies to help prevent cultural collisions (as seen in Daughter from Danang) at reunion. Last, was to ensure emotional and psychological capital, which echoed what Debbie Riley said. Dr. Joyce Pavao focused on what adoption is and is not. Her point was that pathologizing leads to pathology and that is what happens in regards to adoption and she questioned the ethics of that. In contrast to the workshop that focused so much on legal guardianship, Joyce compared adoption to marriage in that both take someone into the clan or family. She stated that unless you take care of the adults with post-adoption needs, the child won't be taken care of. She pointed out that post adoption services do not consider the birth parents when they should and she spent some time focusing on this. This was certainly evident by the members of Origins USA who were at the conference and Joyce even addressed the needs of birth fathers. She said that birth parents who are abusive, imprisoned and institutionalized have needs for support and services that are not being met. She then turned to developmenatl issues of the kids. She said that anger was normal and that under the anger lies sadness and fear. (This was particularly interesting in that I attended an Heather Forbes run, Beyond Consequences Live, training session where the model is that dysregulated behaviors in children ,particularly adopted children, stem from stress induced fear rooted in past trauma.) She said that we are not doing enough with teachers and schools who diagnose learning disabilities when they frequently suffer from teaching disabilities. Joyce then went on to the medical and health professionals. She lambasted the trend to medicate and medicate more along with crazy attachment therapies as being unethical. She said too much of this is more harmful than helpful. Questions tended to come around to looking at the long term, big picture, rather than any given snapshot in time. The meet the bloggers session was fun. The boggers all had their brief says as they were introduced individually by Linh. I announced that everyone should be careful around the hummus dip because I saw Adam Pertman double dipping, I thanked Ethica and Evan B. for inviting us and I said it was a pleasure to meet both friends and foes. Most of the bloggers felt ignored as people stuffed their faces and downed their drinks, but that did not stop Jen from cornering Sue Hedberg while Kevin stood by in case any intervention was needed and reading her the riot act. Jen wrote a scathing report of this encounter on her blog, so you should go to http://chew.typepad.com/ and read, Finally, Let Me Introduce: The Turd. Of course, I thought Sue bore more of resemblance to the Travelocity Troll. Evening: The Future of Guatemalan Adoptions: A Discussion with UNICEF, session ran long but was relatively calm. Mark Agraff moderated after Linh Song set the ground rules. Mark set a calm tone and gave a capsule summary of the situation and put it inthe larger context of intercountry adoptions as a whole and related the situtaion to Cambodia. (Since I'm writing this on Jan.1, 2008 and the conference was back in Oct. 2007, much of what was discussed at this session is now a moot point as the Ortega Law was passed, pipeline cases will be completed and both the US and Guatemala should be operational Hague countries by April.) Elizabeth Larsen spoke first and she was eloquent, sensible and was probably the one person most worth listening to on the panel as her views were those of fairness, balance and inquisitiveness, which would make sense since she is a journalist. UNICEF's Dr. Manuel Manrique was next, talking up all the good UNICEF does and trying unsuccessfully to convince those present from the Guatemalan adoption community that UNICEF was anti-adoption but that they were pro-family presevation first. He was equipped with numbers relating to poverty and malnutrition. Tom DiFilipo of the JCICS was next and he basically gave the agency and Focus on Adoption viewpoint. He struck me as a weasel and reinforced that impression the next day. Then UNICEF's Kelly Bunkers spoke, lending support to Dr. Manrique's position and pointing out that UINICEF was for family presrvation first, followed by kinship care and placement second, then domestic adoption and finallyinternational adoption as a last resort. She spoke of the hurdles to domestic adoption inj Guatemala that must be overcome. Again, it seemed that much of what she said fell on deaf ears in he Guatemalan adoption community. Too many people had closed their minds to UNICEF and viewed them as an obstacle to bringing their children home and as an organization that was bent on the destruction of all ythat was good about Guatemalan adoptions, despiet Elizabeth Larsen's attempt at getting people to listen with an open mind. The question and answer session followed. Kevin Kreutner challenged UNICEF on the Ortega Law, calling it a cookie cutter law similar  to laws implemented in other Latin American countries. He questioned as to why UNICEF measures the success of such laws with statistics that show the reduction  of intercountry adoptions, without citing accompanying statistics about domestic adoptions and family unification. He told UNICEF that he felt their plans had a sizeable gap between ideals and reality. He told an anecdotal story about meeting a woman fromn El Salvador who volunteered in an orphanage there and who told him that since the passage of a similar law there, conditions in teh orphanage had gone to hell because teh funding stream had dried up. Agreeing that Guatemalan adoptions need reform, he asked if enacting such a law in that countrym which has no social servoces system set up, would be detrimental to children when instaed, all the parties involved could get together and come up with a plan that keeps adoptions open as a viable option for the children while realistic reforms are enacted. Dr. Manrique ireplied that UNICEF deals in the real world and spoke about teh amendment process to teh Ortega law.He spoke of the financial weakness of the Guatemalan government and the need for the US and international community to finance the new adoption system. Kelly Bunkers also refuted the image of UNICEF living in a glass castle and not being in touch with reality on the ground in Guatemala. She also made the distinctinction that UNICEF is not out to end adoptions and that it was teh Gautemalan Congress that passed the Ortega Law, not UNICEF. She did admit that hard stistics as to teh effects of similar laws in Hinduras, El Salvador, Chile and elsewher were lacking and admitted that UNICEF and the Hague Bureau need to be better about that. Tom DiFilipo cahlened the UNICDEF reply questioning their accounatbility and how much of their budget was for policy vs. provision of services. He said that they influenced the government in Guatemala (and elsewhere) yet deny accountability for he passage of the Ortega Law because it was the congress, not UNICEF that cast the vote. Dr. Manrique said that UNICEF is accountable for what they do and that when it comes to making laws in Guatemala, they give opinions, but the final decision is up to the congress. This started to make my head hurt. Lee Walser an adoptive parent of a son from Guatemala and frequent adversary of mine on Guatemala-adpopt, asked about the importance of birth culture vs. permancy, love and family. (Sidebar to Lee and others: Children are born into their families. Adoption severs that bond and breaks apart that family. See www.Origins-usa.org.)  Dr, Manrique said UNICEF wants those things for the children of Guatemala. Lee mentioned an issue with a quote from Dr, Manrique in an NPR interview and Elizabeth asked about the context and editing that produced that quote. Dr. Manrique questioned the amount of money it atkes to make the adoption happen. He talked about the competition Guatemalan families face who want to adopt a child with the big money Americans are willing to spend to do so. Mark Agraff asked about the effects of Hague implementation and Dr, Manrique said he hoped it would bring transparency and end the practice of baby finders on commission. Jen Helmsley and Amy Haggerty held up regular size photos of the kids and implored the panel to let them bring "their" kids home. They wanted to know about the pending cases, including theirs. (I'm sorry, but while I fully understand this sentiment, it's hard for me to get behind it. Losing two referrals made me learn that the kid isn't "mine" until she's safely home.) Events since the conference indicated that as long as the pipeline cases had no illegalalities of irregularities, they would be completed. Nathan Birch of Casa Alianza/Convenant House was next. He spoke about not closing Guatemalan adoptions for the sake of the children. He spoke about keeping the attention on the children of Guatemala and not UNCEF while agreeing with the UNICEF priorities in terms of the best interest of the children. Bernadette Wright of Origins USA thanked UNICEF for their efforts at family preservation and asked about the US ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Carol Rauschenberger made her appearance and made a near tearful comment comparing Cambodia to Guatemala and relayed a bit of her experience. Sue Hedberg asked about the children currently in foster care who had not yet been referred to a family but whose mothers wanted them placed and she cried about the 25 older kids, aged 4-14 she had available in orphanages and asked what was she to tell them and do with them?  The UNICEF people welcomed the input and pointed out that he private orphanegs had to be identified and the  children in them had to be identified so that the numbers would be known in  order to prepare the new system to handle them. Dr, Manrique asked that Guatemalan attorneys declare their income and pay taxes in Gautemala on it as part of a transparent process. The next three questioners wee grouped together. I expressed my disappointment that UNICEF was being put in the position of answering for the US government and Guatemalan government and asked where the DOS was (They had people ther who were scheduled to be workshop panelist the next day) and why they were not on the panel and where the represenattives of the Guatemalan government were (I suspecdted they were present as well). Lucy Armistaed pointed out the differences between US adoptions and domestic Guatemalan adoptions in terms of treatment of the child in some cases. She pointed to issues and potential problems withthe amended Ortega Law as she saw them and asked why proposal 3635 which could be easily modified to be Hague compliant was not supported. My sense was that Lucy was asking why a law that served to maintain the status quo, including the relatively good private foster care system, was not supported and my guess is that it mainatined too many of the questionable practices that comprise the status quo. Dr. Manrique confirmed my sense of this. Mirah Riben asked who is caring about and speaking for the more than 100,000 kids in the US in need of homes when everyone was so concerned about all these children in Guatemala, Barbara McArtney made some good points especially to Tom DiFilipo when she asked why can't some of the money spent now on adoption fees be earmarked for social services to the impoverished families there. This is somehing I've advocated for years. DiFilipo spoke about the JCICS proposal to redistribute attorney fees. Marco, a Guatemalan attorney, pointed out that UNICEF exerts a considerable amount of influence and pressure on the Guatemalan governement despite their efforts to minimize that at this session. He asked if it would not be better for the children who are waiting now, to have a transition period rather than to suddenly implement a law where there has been no preparation for its implementation (a transition period has come to pass). After being loudly booed by Elizabeth Case, Jeannene Smith, as a representative of Focus on Adoption, asked UNICEF that they consider concurrent planning without considering cultural barriers so that children are left to languish unecessarily in institutions. Considering the source, I translated that to mean that children should be placed quickly to maintain the cash flow of the adoption industry. She also addressed Mirah's comments by stating that all the kids in the world are equally deserving of help. Kelly answered by stating that UNICEF is working on training social workers and working on concurrent planning. Carol, a reporter and adoptive mother asked what the Hague will do to address teh issue of buscadoras (baby finders) and coercion. Dr. Manrique said that Hague implementation will separate the buscadoras from the mothers and DiFilipo said that social workers instaed of buscadoras or attorneys will be the point of contact for mothers. (What in the world makes them think that social workers won't be corrupted and act coercively towards mothers to get them to relinquish? It happens all the time here. Just ask the members of Origins USA.)  At the end, my comment flushed out the DOS people who I knew were in attendence and it came up that their higher ups didn't want them on the panel, but that they'd be available tomnorrow to talk to anyone. They spoke to me the next day. Sidebar: Why Jeannene Smith should be banned from having anything to do with adoption and children. I remained silent when Jeannne Smith was handed a microphone and introduced herself and then asked a question at the Guatemala session. Only Elizabeth Case was brave enough to loudly boo her. I like to think I remained silent out of courtesy to our hosts. Also, I've tried to disengage from direct dialog with Jeannene for some time now and think I did an admirable job of exercising self-restraint when she introduced herself to me at lunch on day two. I refrained from throwing food at her and from throwing up on her. The fact that Jeannene had the audacity to attend this conference indicates that she is either stupid, insane or both. To me, Jeannene Smith personifies everything wrong with the adopton industry. For most of a decade I've had to read her condescending, self-righteous, self-congratulatory posts on multiple internet adoption groups that typically start with a, "Folks...," and proceed to manage to include somethig about the ethical way her agency operated. I'm surprised her back isn't all bruised up from all the patting she's given herself over the years. I've always said that she is so busy sticking her head up in the clouds with her own self-professed sense of ethics that she doesn't see the sh*t she steps in. And exactly what qualifications did Jeannene possess to enable her to call herself an adoption professional? Like too many other agency amateurs, she had completed a successful adoption. The mentality of, "Adoption is great and I was able to complete one so now I'm qualified to help others complete theirs," has to be eliminated from the adoption industry now. As time went on, I learned that I was being too kind to Jeannene. The reality is far worse than what I had thought. I believe that Jeannne Smith wouldn't know an ethical adoption if it came up and bit her on the ass. Let's look at some facts. She started her agency after Families Through International Adoption fired her and pulled out of NJ. One of her very first placements, if not her first, was the completion of the placement of the Russian orphan, Masha, with the pedophile Mancuso, before she even received her NJ license as Reaching Out Thru [sic] International Adoption. Back to that in a few minutes. She's opened programs or been involved in programs in a great many countries that have shut down or had moratoria due to unethical and corrupt practices. Vietnam, Azerbijian, Cambodia and Nepal come to mind as examples. In Cambodia, she supported Serey Puth, a man who ICE agent Richard Cross called a child trafficker from his investigations into the Lauryn Galindo prosecution. I know at least one parent who holds Jeannene responsible for the shutdown of Cambodia. In Guatemala, she supported disreputable facilitator and orphanage director, Guillermo Bosque, despite multiple complaints about him. Don't forget Lora Cullipher's horrendous story elsehwere on this site. Hers is the one of several that I've heard, and the one that I had permision to share here. Then we come to the inept web of lies and deceit involved in the placement of Masha with Mancuso. Don't forget, Mancuso was arrested and Masha went public after five years of abuse at his hands. The child porn photos her took of her and sold on the internet will forever float in cyberspace. Two congressional subcommitte hearings were held and Jeannene shamefully dodged and lied. The testimony is public record and readily available to anyone who looks for it. She has consistentlhy claimed that because the placement was n PA, she was unable to do any kind of follow up with Mancuso and Masha. Yet, I have in my possession, a copy of the Reaching Out Thru International Adoption newsletter from several months after Masha was placed, featuring an article and picture entitled (get ready to puke), Daddy's Little Girl, written by the monster pedophile himself, Mancuso. How can such an article appear in the newsletter of an agency that claims to have had no contact with Mancuso and Masha since placement? Finally, I also have a copy of the administrative complaint against Jeannene and ROTIA that led to her resignantion and the changing of the name of her agency, which has since closed its doors. In that document, a copy of which is in the files section of the Yahoo group, Adoption_Agency_Research, the NJ authorities state that Jeannene lied and destroyed documents to conceal things. This same woman told me at lunch on day two that she was at the conference because she still wanted to advocate for children. No wonder I had no appetite for lunch that day. Here we had a disgraced, former agency director, attending a conference on ethcics and accountability in adoption, when she clearly had neither of those attributes. In my opinion, Jeannene Smith belonged behind bars rather than at this conference.   Day Two: I found the presentations and the workshops much better and more interesting on the second day, probably because they covered topics with which I'm more involved. Morning: Prior to the opening session, while I was sitting at the bloggers table eating breakfast, Gerry Fuller of the Intercountry Adoptions unit of the Dept. of State, came over and introduced himself an gave me his card with his contact information. It looked to me like my comments the previous night got the attention of the DOS. I guess this website has garnered enough fame and notoriety after all these years that I am able to get attention and bring attention to certain things. It was nice to feel some rewards for my efforts. Minutes later, Richard Klarberg, the head of the Council of Accreditation, and tool of th adoption industry in my opinion, also came over and introduced himself. He was in a hurry, promised to try to meet up with me later, which never happened. Later, he did manage to hook up with Gina Pollack and attempted to placate her about the rift he created by giving us the cold shoulder months earlier when I had contacted him on behalf of the group the eventually became PEAR with our concerns about the way the COA was going about accrediting aganeice for to be Hague compliant. None of his promised follow-up happened. Considering that Hague accreditation was supposed to protect children and provide assurances to adopting families, this unresponsiveness to a group of parents standing for ethical adoption reform while bowing to the adoption industry interests both from outside the COA and on the COA's list of board members and contributors. Richard, if you're reading this, the COA and DOS needed the support of adoptive and prospective adoptive families for Hague inmplementation in the US to mean anything. The COA, DOS and Hague process have probably lost more of that support than it can recover. Many of us see you folks as paying lip service to positive change while maintaining the status quo desired by the adoption industry. The opening session was entitled, Accountability to Prospective & Current Adoptive Families. Panelists were  Jared Rolsky, Cynthia Mabry and Colleen M. Quinn. Adam Pertman moderated and slips of paper were collected for audience questions. I don't have the CD of this session, but I have some of the materials that were passed out. This session proved to be very upsetting for many of the adoptive parents in the audience and downright angered the representatives of the families of origin there.  Here were lawyers, adoption agency directors and members of the JCICS telling us in what ways they thought they should be accountable. Much of the discussion had to do with the legality and ethics of dual representation, that is where the birth mother and adoptive family are represented by the same attorney in what anyone with common sense would say that has to be a conflict of interest. Cynthia Mabry made the most sense. Colleen Quinn, with her materials that were unbashed self-promotion, offended the most. She seemed to think that if a practice was legal, and she was obviously an expert on the legalities, then that meant it was ethical. The audience made it clear that they disagreed with that sentiment. This session illustrated why there is urgent need for adoption reform. Most of the morning workshops looked interesting, so I attended one and got the CD for that and three of the others, passing on two of them. Bruce Boyer facilitated the workshop I have on CD, entitled, Information Sharing Prior to Adoptive Placement - What is required and what is ethical? Panelists were Dr. Dana Johnson, Johanna Oreskovic and Nora O'Farrell. Dr Johnson started off by describing the Indiana Baby Doe case in which a handicapped newborn was allowed by its parents to starve to death based on the families choice of following bad information given by their obstetrician instead of godd information given by their pediatrician. He superimposed what was learned from that tragic case to what we believe about teh child, adoptive parents an ethical obligations of the agency when it comes to adoption. He added to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child that the child has a right to grow up in a permanent family where their needs are met. He said the adoptive parents have a moral obligation to make a decision and the agency has the obligation to advocate for the child. He said that decisions have to be made that are child centered, that is, truly in the best interests of the child as opposed to the interests of the agency or adoptive parents. He said that adoptive families need accurate information on which to base their decision on whether or not they can parent an available child and that the agency should advocate for the child by obtaining the necessary information and giving it to the adoptive family in understandable form and then providing the family sufficeingt time to make their decision. He said that giving parents 24 hours to accept a referral or the child will go to another family is unethical. He then said that agencies can't, as the advocate for the child they've taken on, can't abandon those children they find difficult to place. Interestingly, he said that health issues at time of placement, whcih is a major concern of most adoptive families are relatively minor but that behaviorla issues 5-10 years post-placement are not. He then talked about what are and what are not good predictors at the time of referral. He cited an MN study that showed that pre-adoption medical evaluations led to better outcomes for the child and adoptive family in terms of expectations and behavioral issues. Nora was next up. She said that prospective adoptive parents need to be thinking about the needs of the child ahead of their need to parent, all befeor eteh child arrives on their doorstep. She said that PAPs have a right to know everything there is to know about the child. She focused on domestic adoptions and homestudies. She thinks professionals should match kids with parents rather than parents choosing from a parade of kids of expectring mothers choose from a parade of PAPs, yet still give the PAP and expecting mother a fianl say. She spoke against unmatched PAPs looking at pictures. She said that the information given to PAPs shoudl be non-identifying until a match is made and accepted. She spoke about the ethical obligation to supply lifelong, comprehensive services and support to the triad members after legalization of the adoption. Then it was Johanna's turn. Her focus was on information sharing in international adoption. She agreed with Dr. Johnson and stated that PAPs have a right to make an informed decision about their ability and desire to parent an available child based on available medical and social information. She spoke about balancing and contours of the rights of all parties involved in adoption especially in terms of the differing cultures, mores, norms and economics of the various countries involved. This means that the agency is obligated to disclose to PAPs realistic expectations about the information that will be available from the various countries from which they can choose to adopt and the consequences in regard to parenting a child from any given country based on the lack of available information. She then spoke about how the current immigration law definition of an orphan serves to incentivize the anonymous abandonment of children and how having no information available at all facilitates and expedites the process. She said that it was the agency that was in the best position to obtain, interpret and share the available information and that the agency should also work to expand the realm of available information via the foreign professionals wih whom they work. She spoke about how the current system is contract based rather than statute based. She then gave examples of the extremely broad exculpatory language in contracts that absolved agencies from all kinds of responsibility, including the responsibilityto obtain and share accurate inforamation. In such a contractual atmosphere, PAPs have no power. Bruce asked about the falsification of information and Johanna responded about requiring agencies through their in-country personal to do due diligence. Nora responded that in the domestic context the job falls on the social worker to get the truth from the expectimg family. With older kids, there needs to be consistency and evaluation as well as maintenance and sharing of records. Dawn,. the director of an agency that does domestic infant placements in VT amd NY pointed out how lies mand omissions do a disservice to the child. In response to another question, Nora pointed out that Medicare doesn't pay for psychological/trauma evaluations of children placed in foster care when they should since there has to be trauma involved if a child is being placed outside his family. Dr. David Brodzinky pointed out the difference between sharing information and interpreting it in a way that is useful for the PAP. Nora then commented on how it is the agency's responsibility to fully inform the PAP about what services they may need in the future and why. David said that pre-natal exposure to drugs and alcohol are the two big issues he sees. Dr. Johnson remarked on how difficult it is for PAPs to understand the medical issues that early deprivation, institutionalization and malnutrition can create. He said that expectations were the key issue and that expectations minus reality equals disappointment. (I learned the same in my sales career about customer satisfaction, that it,  you need to set expectations that can be met or exceeded, not ones that are so high that they cannot be met.) Dana went on to talk about wrongful adoption suits where the AP's had the information in their hands but did not go to get it interpreted. He reiterated what David said about behavioral and emotional issues that relate to alcohol and drugs. He said that PAPs are obligated to accept and hear some of the information about the negative consequences of the child's early background so that they are best prepared for these possibilities. David said that it is the ethical responsibility of the agency to refer the PAP to the appropriate professional for interpretation of information. Heidi, who runs a domestic placemnet agency in MD, said that the effectsw of alcohol have been proven much more devastating than other substances, but because it;s legal, people don't often see it that way. She said that when she gets reports of alcohol use, she assumes it's being under-reported. Mirah Riben brought up the issue of tracking biological parental medical history post-birth and post-placement as there can be conditions that come up later in life for the biological parents that negatively impact the adoptee. She also spoke of the adoptee who exhibits a genetic disorder yet the biological family is not informed. What great points. Bruce responed that there are no laws as yet that would mandate or enforce this and Dana spoke of advancements in genetics an predicting genetic disorders and wondered if we might not make a move toward collecting DNA samples and archiving them for analysis over time as technology continues to improve in order to predict genetic disorders. Nora responded to Mirah that open adoption may eliminate much of the issue she brought up but that secrecy and closed records certainly create that problem. Jennifer, the last person who commented and who is with a domestic agency in TX, spoke about contracting with a cord blood bank for future medical references. I think folks can see here why I've been trying to make a case opposing anonymous sperm and egg donation. One genetic disorder can unknowingly be passed on to dozens of kids. There must be a tracking system so that when a child of a gamete donor exhibits a genetic disorder, the donor and all recipient families must be informed and the gametes must be removed from the donor pool. Anything less is unethical. It's been several months since I've worked on this report. It's now mid-July, 2008, but I feel obligated to complete this, so here goes: The next workshop for which I have the CD is, Supporting Adoptive Families for the Long Haul: Post Adoption Services. This was moderated by Carrie Kent, a member of the Ethica Board and an adoptive parent. Ellen Singer of CASE, Margie Perscheid, an AP and co-founder of Korean Focus, host of the Thrid Mom blog, Dr. Jeanne Howard of the Donaldson Institute and expert on disruption in adoption were presenters. Ellen commented that it was impossible to separate meeting the needs of the families from meeting the needs of the adopted persons and reference the last workshop of teh preceding day that addressed this. She spoke of the need to create adoption competent parents who attain that status because they have access to adoption compettent professionals and resources. She said she could not address post adoption services without discussing the pre-adoption experiences. She used her personal adoption story and other stories to state that we have to look at everyone's needs involved in adoption, including those who are dealing with the lifelong pain of infertility and how adoptive parenting has different emotional pasts than biological parenting. She talked about the professional obligation of adoption workers to provide a lifetime of support for adoptive families in a variety of ways. She talked about addressing the sense of isolation and difference that adoptive families have; the sense that they have of always being in the minority and being disconnected. She then spoke about the impact of extended families, both adoptive and birth, and how they have to be part of the education and therapeutic process for adoptive families. She spoke of the necessity of not only having support services available to families, but of the necessity of having them financially accessible to them. Margie also shared her personal battle with infertility that led her to adoption and she recounted her son's homecoming from S. Korea in 1989 and her feelings about the birthmother that must be missing him. She spoke about the entitlement she sometimes perceives on the part of adoptive parents when it comes to support. The, "I paid $35,000 for my adoption, now what are you going to do for me," mindset. She then spoke about the obligations she see for adoptive parents to prepare their children to live in society as members of their own racial, ethnic, cultural and religious group.  She urged adoptive parents to listen to adult adoptees as they are the experts. She urged adoptive parents to make the contacts in the local community for the child's cultural, ethnic, racial and religious ties. And, she urged adoptive parents to never forget the mothers their children have in another country. Jeanne Howard gave the numbers behind the stories as a researcher, particularly when it comes to children adopted from foster care. She pointed out that people come to foster care adoption from infertility as they do to intercountry adoption. She then spoke about a study they did of 1300 families who had adopted from foster care 7-8 years post adoption in a myriad of areas used in the book, After Adoption. 40% of the kids suffered ongoing behavioral problems, which is twice what it is in the general population. Yhe nature and severity of these problems did not diminish over time. 15% of these kids got considerably worse as the families aged and the kids developed. She statistically debunked the myth that adoption is the end of the story that begins the, "happily ever after." She said that they can now predict what families may be headed for trouble and proposed early intervention instead of waiting for the crisis to emerge. Risk factors included white kids, sexually abused kids and prenatal drug and alchohol exposed kids. School struggles were dominant with 40% of the kids in the study in special education, vs. 14% in the general population. 54% received teacher complaints and 33% were on medications. Children adopted by kin fared significantly better than non-kin adoptees, especially for African-American adoptees. Kin adopters more frequently adopted siblings and were in lower income groups. Subsidies that foster parents receive need to be continued for adoptive families. Families said that they needed full and complete information about the child's history (Hello international adoption agencies! Are you listening?). They also needed to be informed about the ramifications of the child's background. Access and availability for subsidized providers and adoption competent service providers and advocates. The need for respite was mentioned along with access to residential care. Generally speaking, big issues are access to information and resources.  Questions were raised about what prospective adoptive parents should disclose to birth parents and how infertility has to be put behind people before considering adoption. Pre-adoption knowledge of all the losses of adoption were mentioned as one of the best post-adoption support strategies. The other best resources mentioned were peer support groups that include all members of the triad. Finally, the need to support for families who disrupt was brought up. The next CD I have is of a workshop I attended. It was, Protection Against Exploitation: Bribery, Fraud, Unqualified Practicioners and Truth in Advertising. Madelyn Freundlich of Evan B. Donaldson moderated. Vicki Peterson, a social workerspoke about cultural differences and the best interests of children in other countries. She spoke about treating all members of the triad with respect and care. She spoke about making sure the birth family fully understood what adoption means and that they don't expect a relinquished child to return after growing up abroad. She emphasized that there must not be any payment for a child. She talked bout how allowing the payment of living, medical and prenatal expenses in private US domestic adoptions raises the question of why it is wrong to do that in foreign adoptions. She spoke about how these payments would raise the questions of coercion of bribery to birth parents. She spoke about the lack of post-adoption birth parent counseling in sending countries. She spoke about how adoption service providers (ASPs)need to provide support for programs that provide services in other countries. She spoke of the increasing difficulty of international adoptions and how ethical ASPs need to put the needs of the triad ahead of business quotas and budgets. She stressed that ethical ASPs need to be upfront with PAPs about everything. She said that adoption professionals should be paid a reasonable salary for their work, but that no one should be getting rich doing adoption work. Finally, she said that humanitarian services should be provided by ASPs for those left behind and for family preservation. Writer/publisher/educator Pat Johnston was next and she said she was speaking as a child advocate. She started with the definition of an adoption professional from her new book. She focused on licensing, accreditation and how licensing by states is not licensing among states and that adoption professionals should be members of professional organizations so as to provide a path of complaints that may or may not work (Huh?). She spoke about not-for-profit vs. for-profit providers and how slick and misleading web sites can be. She spoke about agencies providing minimum standards of pre-adoption education and post-adoption services. She spoke about limiting the number of providers in the chain of adoption in order to limit the problems. She said that the rise of the internet has helped create an increase in adoption fraud. She then gave a littany of ways to avoid adoption fraud, some complementing and some taken from my checklist on this site. The brilliant David Smolin was up next. He spoke about, "Child Laundering," child trafficking and exploitation. He said that we need to look at adoption systems as a whole in any particular sending country to se if they are ethical. He spoke about Galindo, Seattle International Adoptions and the Cambodian adoption scandal and the systemic unethical and illegal practices involved in all their cases. He pointed out that the very cases that Galindo pled guilty to on the criminal side, were passed through and carried to completion on the orphan visa side.  He pointed out that the system was set up to "launder" bought, kidnapped or stolen children into paper orphans. He then moved on to India. He pointed to the fact that every agency willingly paid more into the orphanages to obtain children then required, which resulted in an incentive to obtain children by hook or crook and how no one in authority nor any professional organization did anything about it. He spoke about the disproportionately large number of children being placed from a small area of India. He said that PAPs have to look at how clean a system has historically existed in any given country in order to stay out of trouble. He echoed my long term sentiment of following the money. He pointed out how Tom DiFilipo at the Guatemala session the prevoius night, said that agencies in Guatemala could not account for where the money went and what happened at relinquishment which I found to be very telling. David stated that no matter how accredited one is, he did not think that was a system one should participate in at all. Questions came next. Elizabeth Case was first. She pointed out that PAPs and APs have helped create the corruption in adoption that has made it legalized child buying by not asking where the money goes. The next question concerned the flack given to whistleblowers on internet chat groups. Then Cynthia Peck, who personally came down on me a bit for participating in a chat group attack on Merriley Ripley for her promotion of her racist Golliwog doll collection, made some very valid points. She pointed to where adoption switches from becoming a service that fimds families for children in need to a competitive business that is demand driven and sees rising prices due to high demand and short supply. She spoke of how the longing for a child causes one to suspend ethics and good judgment (what I call, "not being able to see the forest for the trees."). She then pointed out how the internet makes it easy for unethical providers to look big, ethical and professional. She talked about how when fees and corruption and accusations get out of control, the adoption industry will not get together and say stop. This was all very interesting coming from Cynthia, because she sat on the board of  A Child's Promise, formerly Jeannene Smith's Reaching Out Thru International Adoption and was on teh Adoption Agency Research Yahoo group in violation fo their "no agency people" rule.  Yes, she said there was an elephant in the room that everyone was stepping around instaed of naming it, claiming it and being able to do something about it. The next questioner raised the extremely important points about the similarities of reproductive technology and the children that result to adoption and adoptees. He said that similar frauds and scams occur in that realm as well. A professor of social work spoke about how the business model of the adoption industry runs counter to its professional obligations. The Hague was brought up and David Smolin pointed to how US implementation doe snot control the money. Next an adoptee pointed out that we need to look at the big picture of systemic abuses and involving the perspective of adult adoptees. I was next and asked why the child never has independent legal representation in adoption proceedings but is instaed represented by those climing to have the best interests of the child in mind as they re[resent other parties?  I then responded to Vicki's statement about not knowing if payments to birth mothers are right or wrong by telling her that they are wrong, both in the US and abroad. I questioned her as to when International adoptions were easy and predictable and I got to say my piece about salaries and the inaction of teh JCICS against members whi generate significant complaints. Finally I got to also say my piece about how agencies need to do their due diligence in selecting their foreign partners and to take responsibility and accountability for the work of the people they do select. A social worker from Mexico pointed out how confusing the whole process is for beginners and how they don't even know whee to start. She also spoke about efforts to stop predatory adoption advertising. Vicki, tried to blame the internet for predatory advertising. Oh, please! Fred Greenman, someone I really liked, legal advisor to the American Adoption Congress finished off with a statement about the need for a cop on the beat in terms of regulation and using a comsumer protection model instead of the collegiial model of accreditation of self-regulation that does not work. The next CD I have is from the workshop, Professional Challenges in Ethical Intercountry Adoption Practices,hosted by a nemesis of mine, Richard Klarberg, head honcho of the Council on Accreditation (COA), charged by the Departmentr of State (DOS) as the main accrediting entity for accrediting adoption agencies, like our own scummy Adoption Choice, for performing Hague compliant adoptions. Dick made some perfunctory and quiet enagagingly humorous remarks. Elena Langrill, an AP and employed by the MD Attorney General and someone I know well from internet groups introduced herself first. She was focused on state regulation of both domestic and international adoption. She said taht current regulations have allowed unscrupulous agencies to operate, which not only hurts their victims, but hurts ethcial agencies and that stricter state regulations would ultimately help the ethical agencies because of a weeding out that would occur.  My good friend, adoptee, adoptive parent, attorney, director of Graham's Gift and fellow board member of PEAR, Barbara McArtney introduced herself next. She said she was there to talk about where she encountered corruption in her travels around the world in an attempt to set up model, low-cost, ethical adoption programs abroad. Part of her program was that for each child adopted, one older, unadopted orphan would be put through trade school or college. She said she failed and withdrew from international adoptions. She said she would focus on hotspots of corruption in inter-country adoption and was excited about Hague implementation (she's much less excited about now that she sees it's early effects). Gary Gamer was introduced next and presented first. He's an adoptive parent and teh CEO of the most famous agency in ICA, Holt. He said that he believed the biggest threat to ICA today is financial improprieties. He said that these issues have put ICA in a crisis mode for several years now and he sees the current situation as an inconvenient truth. He spoke about how he beleived in ICA and how there are thousands of children in closed countries like Bulgaria and Romania that need foreign families. He incorrectly attributed the closure in those two countries to anti-adoption voices, (which he incorrectly separated from the voices of child centered adoption  reformers), combined with governments who could not mitigate against financial improprieties. He failed to see that any anti-adoption voices would lose their strength and not be able to influence closures had there been no financial improprieties in the first place. Once again an adoption industry insider tried to point the finger elsewhere as the cause of closures. Then he tried to blame the US orphan visa process for not being able to distinguish and ferret out the financial improprieties that resulted in Cambodia's closing. Wow, was this a load of crap. Let me get this straight. Gary tried to tell the members of this workshop that Cambodia closed because the DOS and USCIS could not catch the financial improprieties engaged in by members of his own agency. Gary tried to tell the workshop that it's law enforcement's fault that cirme occurs because law enforcement is unable to always catch the criminals (shades of Jeannene Smith-like convoluted reasoning). Gary went on to discuss areas where there are and have been slow downs and moratoria, like Latin America, eastern Europe, Central Asia and Nepal, also due to financial improprieties (a convenient and gentler phrase than unethical, unscrupulous profiteering). He spoke of concerns about the future in what he termed the new frontier for ICA, Africa and  how there have already been problems with scandals related to financial improprieties in Liberia. He spoke of countries where ICA is done right like Korea (I guess he hasn't spoken with the adult Korean adoptees I know who can tell you how corrupt their adoptions were), and the cleanliness of systems in the Phillipines, Colombia and China (this was pre-Brian Stuy and the revelation about corrupt child trafficking, er, I mean financial improprieties in China). He did say that child trafficking that was not related to ICA was an issue in China that was effecting the number of children available for ICA. Gary was all about the bad guys ruining it for the good guys and hurting the children who need foreign homes. The need for programs of family preservation or services for birth mothers never entered his way of thinking. For someone representing himself and his agency as being child centered, he was awfully focused on maintaining the supply to fill the demand. He did get into the three areas of financial improprieties that negatively impact ICA. They were trafficking, i.e. payments for relinquishments, profiteering, i.e. improper financial gain (a quick visit to www.guidestar.org reveals that in 2006, Holt took in almost $20.5 million and spent almost $19.5 million with Gary Gamer's compensation package totaling more than $150,000 that year-interesting that Holt spends $1 million a year on lobbying) and finally undocumented payments, i.e. grease. Gary claimed that these things have spurred the growth of an industry that places finances and personal gain ahead of children. Again he blamed teh sending countries for the way agencies behaved there. He spoke about the difficulty proving payments for a child for trafficking and how US law doesn't define and penalize child trafficking for adoption. He then moved on to talking about best practices. He said agencies need to know their overseas service providers and possibly hire them as their own staff for absolute control, otherwise they need to make sure their agreemenst with their overseas partners are airtight and address these issues. He said that agencies must require transparency in all financial detail and that they must support comprehensive services to children and that is not the sole responsibility of the sending country. He suggested that the JCICS and NCFA need to come up withan ethical operating framework and to hold agencies accountable. He said agencies have to work with teh COA and DOS. He then recited his suggestions for reforms mostly geared toward adoption industry driven enactment of best practices. He both pissed me off and said a few good things. Barbara was next and described what she went through to set up her model programs. In all but Lithuania, she was unable to succeed and when her lawyers in Lithuania doubled their fees, she dropped that program. Other than that, she found that child buying and corruption were the norm, not the exception where she went. She detailed her two year fight against corruption in Azerbaijan. There was a lack  of law and authority for enforcement and was stopped cold for refusing to pay grease. She spoke about forced umbrellaing in other countries and cutthroat activities of agencies. She spoke about corrupt practices in Nepal. She said reform must come from here as most sending countries do not have the resources for reform. She called child trafficking for adoption, "soft trafficking," which she sees as non-exploitive compared to trafficking for sex or labor. She went over red flags for corruption which are on a conference CD and her handout. She plugged PEAR in her request to give parents a seat at the table as stakeholders. She recited her hopes for Hague implementation. Elena spoke of the inadequacy of state regulation. She summarized the history of adoptions and state regulations. She said states regulate PAPs in order to safegaurd the welfare of the children. She spoke about the way states regulate birth parents, including payments, while agencies are not regulated in terms of payments charged. She spoke about state licensing requirements. She spoke about the lack of consumer protection compared with all other transactions between consumers and providers of most all other types of goods and services. She spoke about the lack of enforcement powers of the state. She spoke about the negative effects in terms of consumers of gag clauses, arbitration  and liability waiver clauses in adoption agency contracts. She used my analogies about builders being responsible and liable for the work of their subcontractors. She suggested national regulations modeled on the Uniform Commericial Code and enforcement provisions that actually afford a measure or real consumer protection. Now that I've heard her, I wish I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Elena face to face. Dick was last and said that teh COA was up to its eyeballs and beyond with the Hague process. He gave some numbers and pointed to the needs in this country for adoption by children in the foster care system. He detailed the work on accreditation the COA was doing and lamented how overworked and overwhelmed they were.  He complained that the accreditation process has been diluted due to DOS arbitrary deadlines putting the process on the fast track. He admitted that adoption was a business but incorrectly said it was a "good guy" business. He said he was committed to making it a process that includes all the stakeholders, but that it wasn't going to happen right away. Of course, he said all this nine months ago (I'm writing this on 8/9/2008) and I have yet to see any viable communication betweem the COA and PEAR which he mentioned, so I can only imagine teh COA's communication with the other stakelholders Dick had in mind. He spoke of the goal of weeding out the bad guys bithe here and abroad since the Hague has provisions for enforcement built into it. Sorry Dick, but while the COA has denied accreditation to some bad guys, they have also granted it to some bad guys as well, such as Adoption Choice. He spoke about the need to protect families here and the rights of the children and their biological families and how that is the promise of the Hague. He welcomed communication, but I wonder if that was lip service. Mary McNeill asked about payment and refund policies and Gary responded that fees should be set to actual services rendered and that a refund schedule should be made clear. My friend Carol Rauschenberger asked about Holt working in countries taht Gary said were not so clean and Gary answered that they did it by following the best practices he outlined in his talk. Carol followed by asking if all of Holt's fees were transparent to which Gary replied, "Yes." Carol then said she hadn't hear that to which Dick said, "Oooh." UNICEF's man in Guatemala, Manuel Enrique, suggested to Dick that US agencies in Guatemala should make the names of the attorneys with which they work in Guatemala public. This may be moot given the current situation in Guatemala where attorneys may no longer be involved in adoptions under Guatemala's Hague compliant system, whenever that may be implemented. Manuel spoke about how the lawyers do not ay taxes and how Guatemala has the lowest tax base in Latin America, meaning it's further hampered in being able to provide services to children. Dick hinted that the future adoption process in Guatemala may not be limited to attorneys, but might also include qualified social workers. The next questioner and respondent did not use the microphone and were not heard. Someone else complained about Guatemalan adoption attorneys being criminalized in the Guatemalan press. Lisa Lopez from the USCIS (we knew they were there but this was the first they were revealed that I know) clarified some hings about privacy and revealing attorneys names. A woman named Patty, who was from a new, small agency that was about to be accredited asked for help in the form of a mentor. Dick said that is why the idea of agencies being in competition with each oher must be broken down. PEAR's Gina Pollock asked that the voices of adoptive parents be included in any uniform code, policy making with JCICS, anything with COA, and DOS. She said we live with our adoption day to day and we need a voice. Dick mentioned my correspondence with him and Gary reminded everyone that teh voice of teh adult adoptees trumped all. Dick asked for an adoptive parents bill of rights and I think he might be surprised when PEAR hands him one very soon. Lunch was next. I was wired up and not into the food nor was I into the important presentation about the Elizabeth Bennett case that took place during lunch. I do support Elizabeth Bennett, but was not ready to sit through this. I grabbed a quick bite, wandered around, made some calls and looked over the book selling area. I returned for dessert where I had my encounter with Jeannene Smith. I've recounted it in detail to friends, but niw that it's nine montsh later, I'm fuzzy as to the exact wording. I did not want to lose mhy cool and cause a scene in front of the whole conference eating lunch in a hotel ballroom, so I basically turned on the cold shoulder. It went something like this: JS: Excuse me, but you must be David K, I'm Jeannene Smith. Me: I know (we were all wearing name tags). JS. It's nice to put a face to the name after all this time. Me: Uh huh. (Someone later told me they thought she had great legs) JS: I'm no longer working in adoptions. Me: I know. JS: But I'm here because I still want to advocate for the children. Me: Well, good luck. And that was pretty much it. I will let my readers here know that as of right now, Jeannene's hubby, Don, is listed as running World Child's Nepal program. Nepal was one of Jeannene' pet programs in her latter ROTIA days and I can only wonder if she's working in the shadows behind Don.