America World Adoption News

National Council For Adoption Conference

The National Council for Adoption annual conference took place in Orlando, Florida last week. AWAA staff presented information at the conference on the topics of educating prospective adoptive parents about factors to consider when choosing an agency, and reviewing agency and client survey feedback ideas for best practices and areas of improvement  regarding prospective parent older child adoption training.  Ryan Hanlon, Executive Director of Programs, is pictured below in a session at the Conference.

AWAA was also one of the exhibitor booths at the prospective parent day so families could learn more about our adoption programs, mission trips and orphan care initiatives in addition to learning about our Florida social services office for the local families who attended the conference.

AWAA is a NCFA member organization and encourages families to view the NCFA website for resources and ways to get involved in the adoption advocacy community. Families are invited to contact NCFA directly with any questions on their work or how to become involved. 

National Reunion - Postponed

We regret to announce that the National Reunion, scheduled for July 20, has been postponed indefinitely. Those who registered have been emailed and will receive a full refund. Please keep up to date with other America World happenings here on the blog and on our events webpage, where several regional reunions are listed. Feel free to email us with any questions about this change or about other reunions happening near you. 

Adoptive Parent Survey for NCFA Conference

The National Council For Adoption is hosting its annual conference and one of the sessions is regarding older child adoptions and how agencies can better improve their services to clients.

For families who adopted a child age 4 years and older, we would appreciate if you would take a few minutes to complete the survey to share your insight into what agencies did well and what are some areas of improvements. Your name and America World’s name will not be shared. This survey is going to multiple agencies to capture the big picture of what agencies can do better. Even if you are still waiting to complete your adoption, some of the questions are relevant so we appreciate if you can view this and take some time to share your thoughts.

CLICK HERE >> Adoptive Parent Survey - Older Child Adoptions

Thank you for contributing to this very important project as agencies continue to seek ways to better serve their families.

Server Issues

You may experience a slow email response time today as we make changes to our server. Thank you for your patience. We hope to resolve these issues within 24 hours. 

Legislation Introduced to Make Adoption Tax Credit Refundable

On May 23, 2013, Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) joined with Congressman Bruce Braley (D-IA) to introduce the Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act of 2013. This important piece of legislation would make the Adoption Tax Credit refundable.

Earlier this year, Congress voted to make the adoption tax credit permanent, but not refundable, as part of a larger bill designed to avert the fiscal cliff. While this vote was a step in the right direction, refundability is key to ensuring that adoptive families have access to the resources they need to thrive. Speaking of the bill, Senator Casey said, “The Adoption Tax Credit has be a proven success in increasing families’ ability to offer permanent homes to adoptive children. Making the credit refundable will allow more families to experience its benefits.”  

As people who are passionate about the ministry of adoption, it is up to us to make sure our Representatives support this life-saving legislation. Will you take action on behalf of orphaned and vulnerable children by contacting your member of Congress to urge them to vote “YES” on the Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act of 2013?

Contact information for your member of the House of Representatives can be found HERE, and information for your Senators is available HERE. 

You can follow the progress of the bill HERE.

We will provide updates on the progress of the bill as it makes its way through Congress.

-Andrew C. Brown

Director of Corporate Governance

Memorial Day Closing

Our offices will be closed from Friday, May 24 at 1:00 pm ET through Monday, May 27. We'll be back the following Tuesday. Enjoy the long weekend!

Senate Hearing on U.S. Foreign Assistance for Children

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing yesterday for a Review of U.S. Foreign Assistance for Children in Adversity. Here is the recording of the hearing. It is long, but definitely very interesting. We appreciated Jedd Medefind of the Christian Alliance For Orphans and his report (toward the end of the hearing). We are also grateful that Senator Mary Landrieu asked questions of UNICEF regarding how they spend their money pertaining to seeking permanent families for children (beginning at about 1:33:00 in this hearing). Senator Landrieu has shown a commitment to finding ways for the U.S. government to work cooperatively with foreign countries to help reduce the number of parentless children.

On Ethical Adoptions

There is a popular blog whose Christian author recently posted about ethics in adoption. The author is an adoptive parent who adopted internationally. I will not name the blog or author, but it was impressive to see how wide-ranging her impact was – our agency was inundated with emails shortly after this blog was posted. There is something to rejoice in here: It’s a truly wonderful thing to know that so many families are concerned about the ethics of international adoption. The blog didn’t mention our agency or address us, but since so many families wrote to us following the blog post we thought it would be helpful to respond. 

First, there are a lot of things this blog post got right. The author was absolutely right in noting that adoption processes should not be about adoptive parents’ rights to a child.  She is absolutely right to grieve over the abuses, coercions and broken families that have resulted from fraud, lies and corruption. And she is absolutely right to say that adoption should not be motivated by a desire to provide children with a wealthier family. Although there are points on this blog post that we certainly didn’t agree with and wouldn’t endorse, on these issues she is right, and ought to be commended. 

At America World Adoption, we don’t believe our agency, our staff or the adoption systems we work in are perfect. We’re not naïve enough to believe that there are not children and families who have been very hurt by fraud, abuses or corruption. We know this has happened to some families and we grieve with you. If there are cases of adoption abuses, our agency stands with other adoption professionals asking for the abuses to be prosecuted. But we don’t want to paint a picture of international adoption as a system that is primarily composed of fraudulent cases. We don’t believe that. We also believe that most of the adoptive families we work with care first and foremost about children. We believe they deeply and compassionately care about those children’s birth families. We also believe that children living in orphanages should have an opportunity to grow up with parents: if birth parent reunification isn’t possible, kinship placements should be sought; if this isn’t possible, domestic adoption should be considered; when this isn’t a possibility, international adoption can be a great, appropriate and God-ordained way of ensuring that children grow up with families. Finally, we want to say, loud and clear, that we unapologetically don’t believe international adoption is a “last resort”.  Abusive families, orphanages, foster care, group homes, or growing up as a street child are worse options for a child.

The topic of corruption and fraud in international adoption truly is helpful and hopefully will result in more informed and prepared parents. We hope and pray that this “trendy topic” leads to true changes and doesn’t result in fewer children growing up with parents. It’s possible to continue to improve our imperfect systems and continue to serve children and families at the same time. That’s our commitment and we hope if you have feedback on this subject for how we can do this better that you’ll share it with us.

-Brian Luwis, founder and CEO

Response to Book on International Adoption

At America World Adoption, we generally use our blog as a means of updating families on news and updates about adoption programs, training opportunities or other resources. Today, however, I want to use this forum to address some of the misinformation we’ve heard recently about Christian adoption agencies and the movement over the last decade in which Christians around the country have responded to God’s call on their lives to provide a family for parentless children.

A recent book calls into question the commitment, practices and motivations of reputable Christian agencies and the commitment and motivation of Christian adoptive families. This book, which I will not name, and the author have exaggerated facts, and misquoted and quoted out of context Christian adoption professionals.

As a licensed, accredited adoption agency, America World Adoption maintains the highest standards of service throughout our work. America World Adoption is proud of our work in Ethiopia and other countries and have been recognized by the U.S. Consulate in Ethiopia, the Department of State’s Office of Children’s Issues as well as the Ethiopian government for our strong efforts to ensure our work in Ethiopia is ethical, transparent and prioritizes children’s best interests.

International adoption is not the only thing we do in Ethiopia. In fact, we serve hundreds more families and children in Ethiopia every year that are not part of our adoption services. Our agency offers (free of charge) domestic adoption services to Ethiopian families interested in adopting a child. We are proud that we (with the support of our donors and adoptive families) are able to work with the Ethiopian government to provide financial assistance to vulnerable families so that we can prevent their family from breaking apart. In addition, we support nutrition projects, child education sponsorships and many other important projects. In total, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to support vulnerable families and communities in Ethiopia that is not part of the adoption processes for the families we serve.

In the book I’m referring to, the author asserts that evangelical adoption agencies are trafficking children and willfully separating families at any cost for the sake of finding children for adoptive families. Unfortunately, we all know that many children and families are exploited in this world. However, I don’t think it’s fair to say that evangelical adoption agencies are fueling this problem. It may be true that some agencies have had poor practices or even blindly allowed poor practices to be part of their adoption services – but that is not characteristic of Ethiopian adoption or international adoption in general. We at America World Adoption find unethical and disreputable practices to be reprehensible.
It’s commendable that the author of the book attempts to raise awareness for unethical practices in international adoption; however, there should be recognition that these practices are not characteristic of international adoption as a whole. It’s inaccurate of her to broadly paint Christian agencies and Christian families as responsible for problems with international adoption. This book does not adequately recognize that many of the organizations that are at the forefront of combatting child trafficking, caring for the poor and supporting family services across the globe are Christian organizations. We thank God for organizations such as World Vision, International Justice Mission, Compassion International, hundreds of other groups and thousands of churches around the world.

There are tens of thousands of children around the world that desperately need families. At America World Adoption we continue to affirm our mission of building Christian families according to God’s plan of adoption. Our hope and prayer is a world where every child can grow up knowing they’re loved by their family and loved by God.

Ryan Hanlon
Executive Director of Programs

Brazil Program Update

We learned last week that the state where our agency works in Brazil has put a suspension in place for international adoptions. It is our hope and prayer that this will be quickly lifted and any changes made to the adoption process will be changes that help more children placed with or be reunited with permanent families. Until further information is available regarding this suspension we will not be accepting new clients into the Brazil Program.