Michigan wants to improve support for families after adoption
When parents sign adoption papers, they are expected to give their child a permanent home. They usually do—less than 2% of adoptions in Michigan are reversed. But not all families are happy. Some children have been irreparably damaged or hardened by the trauma they experienced. Some parents realize too late how much of a strain bringing a child home can put on their time, finances, relationships and lifestyle.
Most of these parents are struggling through these unforeseen hardships, turning to online communities and support groups for help and connection — and therapists, if they can afford one. But even those who have worked with difficult and traumatized children before adoption said the state could do a better job of preparing families for what it really means to adopt from foster care and making it easier to get help before problems become crises.
“There are many avenues for support,” says Melissa Jenovai, president and CEO of Spaulding for Children, a Southfield-based nonprofit children’s charity. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy and straightforward. The system isn’t perfect.”
Michigan is trying to improve the preparation and support it provides to families adopting from the child welfare system – while also attracting more prospective parents to open their hearts and homes to some of the state’s most vulnerable children.
Updated training offers parents honest preparation
Adoptive parents — and the experts and specialists who advise them — say having a clearer picture of what adoption from foster care looks like is the first step to preventing heartache and speeding healing.
“If I could tell parents in advance what to expect, it wouldn’t be such a shock,” says Kim Seidel, a therapist and author who trains foster and adoptive parents across the state. “It wouldn’t be so devastating for them. … There wouldn’t be so many failed placements and tears.”
Amanda Zimmerman remembers giggling at the training videos she watched nearly 10 years ago before she became licensed as a foster parent, when the curriculum was different. She thought the videos were silly—over-the-top and the concepts just too foreign.
That training wasn’t effective for her. After years of trial and error, Zimmerman learned most of what she knows today about being an adoptive mother to a daughter with special needs by Googling and reading books like Seidel’s. Until a year ago, she didn’t even know about the Post Adoption Resource Centers – one of the most important government support agencies for adoptive parents.
“Unfortunately, that’s the reason why many children run away from home because their parents throw up their hands in despair,” said Zimmerman. “They don’t know where to find help and support.”
Zimmerman, who now works as a foster care navigator for the state of Michigan, said the state’s two-year-old GROW training does a much better job of helping prospective parents connect with people who have been in their situation and have practical insight.
The curriculum places a greater emphasis on early childhood trauma and its impact on development, provides numerous videos and links, and allows for group discussions with people who have had the relevant experiences.
The previous training “didn’t work, and families felt like they didn’t have everything they needed when they started fostering or adopting children,” Jenovai said. “The fact that Michigan decided to … develop a curriculum that is specifically tailored to our state speaks to their commitment.”
Seidel agreed that the training included really good information about trauma. However, she said it lacks some of the guidance that parents of traumatized children may need. For example: What do I do if my house is destroyed?
She constantly sees excited potential foster parents posting online and is eager to offer them a free coaching session. “I really wish we would dedicate more time to adoptive parents and foster parents so they know what to expect,” Seidel said. “It would prevent so much disruption and multiple placements.”
Wendy’s wonderful children
One way the state is trying to increase successful placements is through a partnership with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which runs a child-focused placement program called Wendy’s Wonderful Kids. The program currently helps Spaulding for Children pay for professional adoption facilitators dedicated to finding permanent families for foster children, with a special focus on teenagers, sibling groups and others who are having the most difficulty finding permanent homes.
Through the program, adoption agents like Danelle Stiffler do extensive research to find relatives and get to know the 12 to 15 children she cares for. She goes to their football games, makes scrapbooks with them, plays basketball after school and sits in the audience at their dance performances.
Once they trust her, they can tell her their hopes, fears and dreams. Instead of helping a family find a child, she gets to know the child and then finds a suitable family.
Wendy’s Wonderful Kids’ first recruiter in Michigan started in 2005. Another was added in 2006, and two more the following year. But in 2020, 27 recruiters joined, and today there are 37 adoption recruiters working in partnership with the organization and the state.
A five-year national evaluation found that children placed in the program were three times more likely to be adopted. And recruiters are committed to finding permanent placements – especially since a third of the children placed through the program have already had a failed adoption, said Rita Soronen, the foundation’s president and CEO.
“The family was not prepared, did not understand, or perhaps did not know what they were getting into,” said Soronen. “And for us that would be the biggest scandal: that we did not prepare the family sufficiently.”
A $20 million opportunity
Michigan recognizes the difficulties that adoptive parents face, especially when it comes to serious mental health issues.
“We really feel for our parents,” said Demetrius Starling, deputy director of the Children’s Services Administration of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. “Our department has worked tirelessly over the last few years to meet this urgent and increased need for specialized therapeutic behavioral therapy for our children, including adopted children and children in foster care who are really, really struggling.”
Starling said there has been an influx of funding to hire child mental health professionals and the state hopes to expand infant and toddler programs to support families with young children involved in child welfare.
Michigan continues to review the training of foster care and adoption caseworkers. Pre-employment training currently lasts nine weeks.
More: Pilot projects are intended to help stop the bridging of reports of children of color to the youth welfare office
More: Michigan’s child welfare system makes progress toward replacing federal oversight
The state has put out contracts to increase the number of respite care providers, said Lara Bouse, president and director of Fostering Forward Michigan. “It will take a lot of pressure off them and make things a little easier for them if they are able to provide some of the necessary natural breaks that some families never get,” she said.
And with the announcement that Spaulding for Children recently received a $20 million cooperative agreement to create the National Center for Enhanced Post-Adoption Support, a state that is slowly offering ever-improving support could soon serve as a national example.
The center will help build evidence-based post-divorce services in 25 jurisdictions across the U.S. It will help bridge the gap between what child welfare agencies provide and what families need, Jenovai said.
If Michigan becomes a project site, the state will benefit from intensive in-person technical assistance with the goal of having a comprehensive post-implementation support system, including a training program now used in over 15 other states.
“Parents say it has dramatically improved their understanding and sense of preparedness before fostering or adopting a child,” Jenovai said.
Whether Michigan participates or not, leaders of the child welfare system there say they are committed to continually improving the experiences of families who take their children out of the system and make them their own.
“Many of us have started working really hard to make sure that these adoptive parents have access to more than adoptive parents have had before,” Bouse said. “Are we doing this really quickly? No. Some of these things are not really easy to implement and make happen. But is there growth and expansion? Yes.”
This is the last of three stories about parents adopting a child from Michigan’s child welfare system. Read the others: Parents who adopt from foster care lose support and services. Could Michigan do better? and: Adoptive parents often learn the hard way: It takes more than love to overcome trauma.
Jennifer Brookland covers child protection for the Detroit Free Press. This story was created with support from The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.
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