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Adoptive families often encounter numerous challenges once the adoption is complete, particularly when adopting children from the child welfare system. Existing studies suggest that adoptive families would benefit from the availability of post-adoption support services, however, there is a lack of research in this area. This exploratory study focused on experiences with adoption support services among caregivers who adopted or were in the process of adoption a child from the child welfare system. The adoption support services described in this study were delivered by an adoption peer supporter and two clinicians. Qualitative analyses of focus group and interview data revealed a number of beneficial supports, driven by a peer-to-peer ideology and relevant skill-based learning. Participants described the support they received as multidimensional, including social, emotional, informational, and clinical. The study delineated characteristics of a successful adoption peer supporter as well as provided suggestions for strengthening adoption support services. Implications for social work practice around adoptions within the child welfare system and beyond are discussed.
Repeatedly, adoptive families struggle when they must begin to handle the dynamics of their new family largely on their own once the adoption is complete, particularly when adopting children from the child welfare system. However, little attention has been devoted to the challenges associated with adoption (McDonald, Propp, & Murphy, 2001). Existing studies demonstrate that adoptive families would benefit from the availability of post-adoption support services (Bryan, Flaherty & Saunders, 2010). Nonetheless, there is limited published research describing the challenges and needs of adoptive caregivers, the types of post-adoption support services they might benefit from, and their effectiveness (Barth & Miller, 2000; Lee, Battalen, Brodzinsky, & Goldberg, 2020; Lee, Kobulsky, Brodzinsky, & Barth, 2018).
Adoption-related Challenges
Although each individual adoption is unique and many are quite successful, several themes pertaining to the challenges faced by adoptive foster parents have emerged in the literature. Wind, Brooks, and Barth (2007) bifurcate these challenges into environmental and bio-behavioral factors. The environmental factors relate, for example, to agency-related challenges such as the level of support provided to caregivers by adoptive agencies. Bio-behavioral factors allude to behaviors intrinsic to a child such as the presence of any externalizing behavior or special needs as well as "influences outside the child" like a child's age at the...