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Adoptive Parent Perspectives on Placing an Intercountry Adopted Child with Disabilities in Out

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Adoptive Parent Perspectives on Placing an Intercountry Adopted Child with Disabilities in Out Adoptive Parent Perspectives on Placing an Intercountry Adopted Child with Disabilities in Out of Home Care A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Kendra JaeRan Kim IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. C. David Hollister, Advisor May 2015 © Kendra Jae Ran Kim 2015 Acknowledgments This dissertation was possible because of the many individuals who supported and encouraged me along the way. First, I am so grateful to the 19 adoptive parents that so graciously agreed to share their stories with me. This dissertation would not have been possible without them. Their generosity and vulnerability in allowing me to document their experiences – both the joys and the sorrows – have informed and inspired me and will make a difference to the thousands of other adoptive families. Thank you so much for your participation and I promise to pay it forward. When I began my doctoral studies, I was the fortunate recipient of the Hollister Fellowship, and I owe a huge thanks to Dave and Georgiana Hollister for their generosity. Their fellowship enabled me to concentrate on my studies and still be a parent in those early years of the doctoral course work. I also thank Dave for stepping in as my third advisor after having lost two previous advisors when they moved – thank you for jumping in mid-stream and for providing much-needed advice and support these past two years. I would also like to thank my other committee members. Ron Rooney, Priscilla Gibson, Traci LaLiberte and Amy Hewitt each provided me with individually unique and supportive mentorship and guidance over the years. I thank everyone in the Leadership and Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) Fellowship program for inspiring my research interest in disabilities. I also want to acknowledge and thank the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) who supported me financially through the Title IV-E Doctoral Fellowship, and to my wonderful colleagues at CASCW. I will miss the staff meeting food competitions, Harriet the Chicken, and the incredible opportunities and emotional and intellectual support I have received. I have benefitted from being part of a cohort of doctoral students that have provided intellectual and emotional support. We spent many hours in the doctoral student lounge studying, discussing, supporting, complaining, eating and laughing. I’ve learned so much from each of you i and I look forward to the many years ahead of us as colleagues. Thank you Ericka, Jay, Shweta, Sue, Kofi, Seok Won, Annette, Juliana, Mary, Shawyn and Rob. I also want to thank two other groups that provided both support and feedback: the members of the PhD support group led by Dr. Rooney and the Adoption Lab members led by Dr. Richard Lee. To all of my friends and colleagues in the adoption community, I wish I could name each of you individually. You inspired this dissertation study and I am thankful for all of you who took the time to share your thoughts and provide feedback on my ideas. In particular I am grateful for a cohort of adoptee scholars and researchers who over the past six years have challenged, inspired and supported me, in particular Kim Park Nelson, Liz Raleigh, Oh Myo Kim, Kimberly McKee, Susan Branco Alvarado, Kripa Cooper-Lewter, Subini Annamma, Kit Myers, John Raible, Indigo Willing, and Amanda Baden. Thank you also to Heewon Lee, Sun Yung Shin, and Hei Kyong Kim for your emotional and intellectual companionship, for encouraging me to pursue a doctoral degree and who knew me way long before I even considered becoming a social worker. Thank you to my Team Potluck family for sustaining me each Sunday with amazing food and conversation. To my family – I can’t even begin to express my appreciation and gratitude for putting up with me these past several years when my studies took time away from family time. In particular, Lucie and Tate, thank you for enduring less than ideal dinners, keeping me company by doing homework together at the dining room table, enduring too many closed office doors and for encouraging me to keep going. John, during those times when I questioned if I had the stamina to keep going I thought back to your wise words – you don’t have to be the biggest or the strongest or the fastest, you just have to keep your feet moving. We did it! ii This dissertation is dedicated to the more than 400,000 (and growing) intercountry adoptees that survived the journey to families in the United States. You have not been forgotten. iii Abstract In the past seven decades over 400,000 children born outside the U.S. have been adopted to U.S. citizens through intercountry adoption (U.S. State Department 2014, Evan B. Donaldson, 2002). Many of these children experienced trauma, malnutrition, abuse, neglect, prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, and institutionalization and nearly eight percent of intercountry adopted children under 18 in 2010 had at least one intellectual, developmental or mental health disability as according to the U.S. Census (Kreider, 2014). Some adoptive parents choose to place their child in out of home placement including residential treatment center, foster care, group home, or even another adoptive home as a result of their child’s disability. Research on the decision-making process of adoptive parents that placed their intercountry child either temporarily or permanently in out of home care does not exist in the current literature. Using a qualitative, constructivist grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006) perspectives of adoptive parents who placed an intercountry adopted child in out of home placement due to the child’s disability were explored. Nineteen parents representing 16 families living in West Coast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states participated in this study. Findings reveal that adoptive parents begin the intercountry adoption process with specific constructions about disability and intercountry adoption that impact the choices the parents make regarding the reasons they adopt, the services they choose (including out of home placements), and whether or not they consider dissolving their adoption. Additionally, adoptive parents experienced financial, social, relational and personal costs related to the choices they made in parenting their children and respond by making behavioral or emotional changes in their approach to parenting, leading them to re-define their concept of disability and adoption. These findings from this study highlight the importance of developing training programs for both adoption agency staff as well as prospective adoptive parents on adopting children with intellectual, developmental and mental health disabilities. Policy recommendations include iv requiring an increased minimum standard of training for adoption agency staff and prospective adoptive parents on disability content, better data collection on intercountry adoptive families, as well as a shift toward child welfare as the standard focus of intercountry adoption policy. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................i Dedication........................................................................................................................................iii Abstract............................................................................................................................................iv List of Tables.................................................................................................................................viii List of Figures..................................................................................................................................ix Chapter 1: Introduction.....................................................................................................................1 Chapter Overview ........................................................................................................................1 Brief Study Description................................................................................................................3 Definition of terms ............................................................................................................5 Study Background........................................................................................................................7 Problem Statement .....................................................................................................................10 Problems Related to Data...........................................................................................................11 Research Questions ....................................................................................................................15 Historical Context of Adoption in the United States .................................................................16 Historical Context of “Special Needs” Adoption in the United States ......................................19 Historical Context of Intercountry Adoption .............................................................................24 Outline of Remaining Chapters..................................................................................................28 Chapter 2: Conceptual Frameworks ...............................................................................................30 Chapter Overview
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