On Thursday, Feb 24, 2022, Our group: Child Welfare, Foster Care, and Adoption, interviewed April Dinwoodie (JuneinApril) about her experience in being adopted, and the issues in the foster care system today. April Dinwoodie was born to Helen June and put into temporary foster care immediately after. Helen already had 3 children and did not know if she would be able to care for another. April was adopted soon after by the Dinwoodies, who badly wanted a daughter. Her parents requested any child no matter the race, they would gladly take her in. April lived with her adopted family on a little farm in New England. She was the only biracial kid in her town. She was the only one with brown skin and thick curly hair. She spent her early days playing with her siblings outside and running around. Her difference never bothered her, that is until she had to go to school. She was treated differently, as an outsider. She would get lots of microaggressions and hurtful comments. Sometimes it was implicit, other times not. Most people didn’t notice, not even her parents. Her parents treated her the same as all her other siblings, but sometimes April felt that she wanted to be treated differently, like braiding her hair instead of trying to brush it out. Her blackness was being erased. It’s not widely understood that foster children often need different things than non-adoptive/foster children.
April began the search for her birth mother in her 20s. This was a very emotional experience because her mother did not want to be in contact with her. It felt like a double rejection. To be pushed away for a second time. April decided that she didn’t want anyone else to be as sad as she was, so she started a program. Her first program focused on getting mentors for foster children whom they could relate to. The mentors all had been involved in the foster care system as a child in some way. April also talked to us about many current problems. Yearly, there are over 400,000 in the foster care system. 25% of those children are currently waiting to be adopted, the others have the option of going back to their families. Most families only want babies, as they are easier to manage. Older children are more likely to have experienced and remembered some kind of trauma. This can be very daunting for parents. There is currently also a lack of available parents. Data strongly shows that black and brown children are involved and affected astronomically by the foster care system. Black children make up 23% out of 436,000 children in the foster care system currently. African Americans only make up 14% of the U.S. population. Black and brown children are also three times less likely to be adopted than their white counterparts.
April said that in her opinion, the biggest thing that isn’t working in the foster care system is listening. Adults do not listen to kids, especially teenagers. Professionals need to listen to the children’s needs because they are aware of their emotions. They have the right to say what they want their futures to look like. It is so common for adults to tell children and adolescents that they don’t really know what they want. The foster care also moves children around too much. This causes a lot of stress on children. When children do not feel that they are in a comfortable and stable home, it increases their feelings of rejection and low self worth. Children need to be valued more. Most foster children aren’t told that they are wanted, and that they have worth. It literally is not in the social security worker’s pay grade. Social security workers are overworked and do not get paid nearly enough. They don’t have the time, training, or energy to really commit to cases, and keep in mind the feelings of the children they are trying to help.
The foster care system is something that is really untalked about. It’s also something that is shamed. “We think we cant have more than one family.” What April is saying is that it’s considered shameful to be a foster kid. All of them are made to think that they aren’t wanted or that their parents don’t want them by society. More focus needs to be put on children’s well-being, to try and reduce and heal the trauma that affects all of them.

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On Thursday, February 10th, our group interviewed Jenny Kevin Samuelson. We talked about their adoption process, and their experiences adopting. They currently live in New York City with their two children. When they adopted their first child, they were living in Georgia. The foster laws there vary from those of New York. They had to go through a process to become certified to adopt. They had frequent home assessments and studies with a social worker. They also had to be thoroughly background checked for any criminal acts of any kind. Jenny and Kevin became licensed after three months of working fervently. They worked with a private organization that required the samuelson’s to put together a profile for birth parents to look at and decide if they wanted to send their child with them. The Samuelsons adopted their first child immediately from birth. Foster parents must have a certification to adopt babies born in a different state called the interstate compact. It must get approved before the parents can take their baby home. After the compact is approved, adoption can proceed. This however takes months. Social workers continue with monthly checkups until the child is officially adopted. When an adoption is approved, the parents receive the birth certificate and have full rights to their child. Until then, they are still legally bound to their parents or the organization. Private agencies tend to have a quicker adoption process than state agencies, taking only up to three months. Certain agencies can supply parents with emergency supplies like a car seat, or diapers.
Jenny and Kevin shared some more personal experiences and opinions on their experience. They talked about how babies are considered quite valuable. CPS and private organizations have all these processes in place to protect babies and children from being trafficked. The agencies always look for the safest outcome for a child even if it is not the quickest or easiest, although they are trying to do it as best they can. Fraud can happen, which is why there are always so many home visits and check-ins. Until the child is adopted, there is a lot of stress on the foster parents because there is no guarantee the baby is staying for good. The birth parents still have rights to their child, and can receive full custody again if they choose. Jenny noted that the social workers do a very thorough job with their check-ins. She sometimes felt under scrutiny by them, but she knew that they just had the child’s best interests in mind. Their agency did an organized job, however, with private organizations they can be a bit ruthless. They want to make adoptions final because that is the way they make their money. Jenny felt like at times she needed to be protective of her child’s birth mother because she was under a lot of pressure, and the agencies did not do much to comfort her.
Jenny and Kevin also talked about how there have been times when they have felt shame when their kids were babies. When they had to fly their first child back on the plane, after picking them up, they felt judged by the other people for bringing a newborn, but the other people didn’t understand the situation. There are also a lot of stereotypes about how a baby should be raised. It was sometimes hard having to feed their kids with formula instead of breast milk, and dealing with the judgments. They also faced judgments on the relationships they have with their kids. There is still a big stereotype about how families are supposed to look today. Real families around the world come in all shapes and sizes. Normal should no longer be thought of in one way. “Families go in different ways.” awareness needs to be raised about adopted families, and it needs to be normalized. We should stop treating it like a taboo. This may even encourage other families to adopt if we get rid of the stereotypes.

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On Wednesday, February 9th, We met with Alessandra Brunialti, and Paul Yager, who are LREI parents at the school. We had an in-depth conversation on their experience in fostering and adopting. They adopted their children from Sheltering Arms; Child and Family Services. They currently live in New York with their two children. They entered the system’s process almost a decade and a half ago.

It was no surprise to learn that fostering and adopting is no easy task. There are many ways that a person can adopt or foster. You can adopt kids through the state, or privately through a non-governmental organization. Alessandra and Paul adopted both their children through the state of New york. To first become a foster parent, one must register for a license, which process takes around nine months. Background checks, fingerprinting, and criminal records all need to be collected during the process, and home and family inspections also occur. This also must be completed to renew the license granted annually. While taking care of a child, home inspections happen once a month, and search the house to make sure the house is clean, there are working fire alarms, there is food in the refrigerator, and proper rooms.

Agencies prepare families to become immediate foster parents. They must be ready to take in a child who was taken into foster care as quickly as possible. When a child gets removed from their home, the city looks at lists of available foster homes and calls them. Not much information is given except for sex, religion, and disability. The day after the phone call the agency comes and delivers the baby to them. Frequent checkups must be done with the agency.

The main focus of CPS and many other organizations is to reunite them with their birth families. These matters are taken to court and a judge decides if the birth parents are stable enough to be reunited. The baby, mother, and other parents get attorneys to represent them, but foster parents do not. Birth families only have 15 months to prove that they can create a safe and supportive home for their children. If not with their parents, CPS often tries to seek out family members who can take them in. During and after the child is being fostered, the birth parents have visitation rights which both they, and the foster parents need to uphold. This is a parental requirement if they want to obtain full custody again. Other requirements are: obtaining a stable source of income, receiving help and getting clean for any addictions or mental illnesses, and attending prenatal classes. The parents can terminate parental rights if they cannot meet the requirements for full custody. All of these requirements are valid in the state of New York, but many states have very different requirements.

Alessandra and Paul also shared a lot of very valuable facts and insight on their opinions on the way the foster care and adoption process and the system work; they note that poverty and extreme living conditions really hit the system the hardest. It is far less common for abuse to be the reason for removal and is most commonly because of neglect and the inability to support a child. They also talked about how the three reasons a child will go into the system are: abuse (rare), neglect (more common), and abandonment (in some states it is legal to leave your child in front of a police station, fire station, or hospital and abandon your child). Another thing that we talked about were the parenting classes and techniques learned before becoming a foster parent. Alessandera mentioned how she and Paul learned some very important parenting skills, like how to do CPR and other important things. She said that she thinks every parent should take these classes.
“anyone can become a parent.”
We agreed that parenting classes should be more available and encouraged for new parents. This would be a major step in preventing the problem, rather than just patching the cracks of the foster care system.

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Our Group Met with The New Alternatives For Children (NAC). We interviewed 4 people: Arlene Goldsmith (Executive Director), Carla Riccobono (Director of Foster care and Adoption), Bobbi Nathanson (Director of Volunteers, Student Internships & Community Relations), and Paris Robbins (Foster Parent Recruitment Supervisor). This organization is partnered with ACS and is working incredibly hard to be there for every child in need throughout the boroughs. Their organization was started over 40 years ago by Arlene herself after spending 25 years in social work, to focus on children living in hospitals for longer than they needed to because of disabilities they had. their parents were unprepared to take care of them themselves or didn’t know what needed to be done. We learned a lot of interesting facts, for example, we know that children cannot be removed from their family’s household until taking the case to family court. Removal must be deemed necessary by a judge. We also learned that the children that are hardest to place are teens. the program mostly focuses on kids with disabilities, and they noted that it is definitely a challenge to get children with more challenging disabilities with more special needs and attention adopted. because of this, it is also harder to keep siblings all together if there is a big family, or multiple or all of the kids have special needs. Housing can also affect this because it can be hard to find people who own a big enough space to take in many kids.
NAC works extremely hard to get children back with their birth parents as soon as possible, preferring to put foster children with Kinship parents. It is shown that children staying with relatives makes visiting their parents easier, and they generally have a better time with someone who is related. of course, not all children have relatives available to foster them. Non-kinship foster parents go through an extensive training process. Many of them already have pre-existing experience with medical or mental care.
I definitely learned a lot through this interview. there was one quote that I left with that really stuck with me: “statistically parents who pertain optimism succeed the most when fostering.” They don’t succeed because they think it is the right thing to do, or if it has anything to do with their religion. The foster parents that usually succeed are the ones that truly believe they can make a difference in their foster child’s life, and are willing to put in time and effort for their success and well-being.

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Last week in school, my group presented our social justice presentation 101. this was our first attempt at sharing initial research with our peers. I was a little nervous because our slideshow was so long, and we did not want the other students to get annoyed because it was so long. I have a great team, nonetheless, and we put in a lot of work. I think child welfare is a problem that isn’t talked about enough, especially the discrimination in the system. More people need to speak out about this problem. I feel like researching this has been a challenge because all I have found are statistics and not individual experiences. Our group has recently received an email from the organization: New Alternatives for Children. I am very excited and we are able to speak to the executive director!

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