Hope for the children: a community-based approach to supporting families who adopt children with special needs.

This study explored the need for and use of support by preadoptive families of children with special needs in the Hope for the Children program. The families live in a community alongside other foster and adoptive parents, senior citizen volunteers, tutors, therapists, mentors, and family advocates, and receive extensive community supports. Descriptive results from the study provide a basis for recommendations about the use of coordinated service delivery systems to promote adoption success. Efforts by the states, combined with federal initiatives such as President Clinton's Adoption 2000 and the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, are resulting in an increased number of adoptions. Illinois has seen a spectacular increase in adoption during the past year alone as the number of children adopted from out-of-home care almost doubled from 2,229 in fiscal year 1997 to 4,293 in fiscal year 1998 [Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (IDCFS) 1998]. Although this historic increase in adoptions is laudable, it appears that insufficient attention is being devoted to ensuring that adoptions are sustained over time and that the quality of adoptive home environments are suitable to each child's long-term developmental needs [Howard & Smith 1997]. The benefits of placing a record number of children with special needs with families will be undermined if the rate of adoption disruption is high. Thus, it is important to understand the circumstances under which families are best able to sustain their commitment to a child with special needs. The successful adoption of children who have spent some portion of their lives in out-of-home care generally requires a great deal of planning, preparation, and ongoing support [Eheart & Power 1995; Groze & Gruenewald 1991; Rosenthal & Groze 1992]. Children who are removed from their parents' custody as a result of abuse or neglect typically have complex medical, emotional, developmental, and behavioral needs [Berry 1990; Berry & Barth 1990; Lakin 1992; Partridge et al.1986; Rosenthal & Groze 1992; Smith & Howard 1994]. When adoptive parents cannot meet these needs, the stability of the adoption may be threatened [Barth & Berry 1988 1991; Eheart & Power 1995]. The situation may be exacerbated if services designed to preserve the family (e.g., inhome services, respite care, parent education, parent support groups) are not initiated until after a family crisis has occurred [Smith & Howard 1994]. If services are provided on a preventive basis and as a matter of course, however, the stability of adoptive placements may be enhanced. The support that families with children with special needs receive is an important factor in the attainment of permanency [Barth & Berry 1988; Groze 1996; Nelson 1985; Partridge et al. 1986]. Winkler and associates [1988] suggest that involvement with supportive resources and mental health services should be considered a normative part of the adoptive family's experience. Given the multitude and diversity of problems that children with special needs and their families may experience, it is important to ascertain which types of supports and resources are most important, who should provide those resources, and how those resources should be provided. Kramer and Houston [1998] made some progress answering these questions through their study of 40 parents who were in the process of adopting children with special needs through a traditional service system, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (IDCFS). Their study revealed that families rely on a variety of formal and informal resources. Families used formal resources such as the adoption agency and professionals to help with health, medical, and educational problems, but they also reported turning to their indigenous support system of family members and friends for assistance with a wide range of adoption-related issues. Although these informal sources of support typically possessed little specific knowledge about the adoption process, parents sought their help with child behavior problems and family adjustment difficulties. …