Adoption Failure: A Social Work Postmortem

Abstract

Adoption follow-up research has genercess-failure. If at the end of one's year's ally involved reassessing the adoptive famadoptive experience, parents found sufficient ily's functioning five or more years after satisfaction in the placement to formalize placement. The significance of such rethe relationship by the irretrievable step of search for practice is that it permits relegally adopting the child and if the agency searchers to check the validity of placement was willing to support the parents in their decisions and the factors used in determinpetition for adoption, the authors regarded ing them. Because of the many intervening this as a successful placement. Such an out variables between the placement decision come justified the worker's placement deci and family functioning five or more years sion. after placement, it might be more helpful to Although this might be regarded as a practice if a more proximate period of time gross measure of success, it might be well were selected than has usually been the case, to remember that most of the available sta This article is concerned with adoption tistics regarding the operation of social in success and failure during the year immedistitutions are in terms of such gross, dichoto ately following placement—the period bemous, clearly objectifiable measures. The tween adoptive placement and actual legal failure of marriage is generally measured in adoption. Failure of the adoptive placement terms of the divorce rate. Yet many mar is defined in clear, objective terms—the reriages that do not end in divorce are only turn of the child to the agency at any time, moderately successful. We talk of broken for any reason, following placement and homes as distinguished from intact homes before legal adoption. This ignores, it is while recognizing that many intact families recognized, the subtle graded range of sueare more or less broken.