The Hypocrisy and Cruelty of National Adoption Day
National Adoption Day is celebrated annually — on the Saturday before Thanksgiving — by thousands of child welfare agencies, judges, Gal’s/CASA’s, and other child welfare professionals across the country.
Well, it’s that time of year again and another National Adoption Day has come around — it is actually tomorrow though — and I have decided to celebrate the joyous and momentous occasion with this piece. But first, a little background, National Adoption Day was founded 19 years ago. The first National Adoption Day was held in 2000 by a coalition of national partners which included Children’s Action Network, The Alliance for Children’s Rights, Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, Freddie Mac Foundation, state foster care agencies, child advocates, law firms, and courts; all work together to complete adoptions for children in foster care. Since the creation of National Adoption Day, around 54,000 children were moved from foster care to forever families —per the thier website, Forever Family is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to assisting children in foster care find permanent “loving” homes which results in hundreds of adoptions and the creation of new foster families with the assistance of community volunteers.
In 2014, more than 400 cities across the nation, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, held events and participated in National Adoption Day. That said, enthusiastic proponents of National Adoption Day insist that it is a benevolent and loving event that merely focuses on “raising awareness” of children in foster care waiting to be adopted. However, the event is very clearly marked by and focused upon the speedy — and often times completely unnecessary — termination of the parental rights (TPR) of thousands of birth parents — overwhelmingly low-income and black — so that adoptions can be rushed through and finalized in time for and during the event — the adoptive parents being overwhelmingly white and middle-class. Moreover, these same proponents — that is, these same judges and child welfare professionals who gleefully celebrate National Adoption Day — swear up and down that adoption is the “last resort” and that their primary goal is to keep families together; and if children are removed — again, this is supposed to be the last resort — the goal is to reunify children with their birth parents as soon as possible.
So with that in mind, I would like to know why there isn’t a National Family Preservation Day? I would like to know where the National Keep Families Together Day is? Where is the National Together Again Day? I think you know what I am getting it. The blatant and utter hypocrisy of Nation Adoption Day and our entire child welfare system — including the judges, and the other child welfare professionals who created and participate in it every year — is both profound and striking, so much so, that — notable long-time social justice, child welfare reform and parental rights advocate, and Executive Director at National Coalition for Child Protection Reform — Richard Wexler has decided to refer to the event as National Child Welfare Hypocrisy Day and his done so every year for the last decade. I believe that Mr Wexler rather plainly and matter-of-factly sums up the hypocrisy of National Adoption Day when he writes the following:
If the true intent of child welfare systems is revealed by what they celebrate, then one of the most noble concepts in child welfare, giving children permanence, has been perverted into a synonym for adoption and only adoption. Reunification gets lip service until everyone in the system, from front-line workers, to agency chiefs to top judges can get what they really want: children taken from poor people and placed with middle class families; families like their own. The real agenda of most child welfare systems, and most of the people in them, is made apparent every year on National Adoption Day; or, as it should properly be called, National Child Welfare Hypocrisy Day.
When one factors in all of the systemic and institutionalized racism, cultural incompetence, biases, and discrimination within the child welfare system — which directly contributes to the gross over-representation and increased negative outcomes of black children and families — National Adoption Day begins to takes on a rather sinister aspect. After all, there are few if any comparable nationally held and/or observed events that celebrate reunification and/or family preservation, and as such, the system only elevates and promotes (and funds) adoptions above all else. And as Mr Wexler further points out, “It’s not just hypocritical, it’s also dangerous. When the only kind of “permanence” that receives any reward is adoption, the message to the front-line (DHS/CPS) workers is obvious: Don’t try to reunify, rush to terminate parental rights. And that’s exactly what happens.” Again, black families suffer and are targeted disproportionately and bare the brunt of these “quick-trigger adoptions” — wherein caseworkers rush to terminate parental rights in cases where children may have never needed to be removed in the first place.
Like so many other aspects of our child welfare system, things are rarely what they appear to be, and this event is but one example of this. National Adoption Day will forever be a day of mourning for me. I will mourn for my children — who were unjustly taken from me and several (the youngest) adopted out to a white middle-case couple — and indeed for all of the children and parents who have been wrongfully and permanently separated — resulting in thousands of “legal” and/or “paper” orphans, many of whom never end up being adopted. I will mourn while the hundreds of judges, CASAs, GALs, and agency caseworkers eagerly parade in front of the media cameras and tout the significant number of children that they have “saved” and/or “rescued” from those evil, pesky, good-for-nothing birth families. I will mourn while these same child welfare “professionals” cerebrate and give each other fist bumps — complete with balloons, cake, and ice cream — as they happily make sure that the ink is dry on the adoption paperwork.
A Call To Action…
I’m calling upon social justice and parental rights advocates, families/parents at-risk, and woke child welfare professionals everywhere — those who are really ready to make a positive difference and combat the cultural genocide of African American families, and indeed all families, all across the country — to call and write the appropriate committees and/or state legislators and tell them that you want a National Reunification or Family Preservation Day. Together, we must let the (child welfare) powers that be know that we want them to cerebrate, and diligently work towards, keeping families together and not ripping them apart.
#NAFPAorg #NationalAdoptionDay #AfricanAmericanChildWelfareAct #BlackFamilyMatters #BlackLoveMatters #BlackLivesMatter #BlackFamiliesBelongTogether #BlackHistory #BlackFamilyMatters #CASASoWhite #KeepBlackFamiliesTogether #AbolishCPS #RepealASFANow #AbolishFosterCare
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Latagia Copeland-Tyronce, MSW, CADAS, is a longtime parental rights and social justice advocate, child welfare reform activist, writer/blogger, and journalist whose work has been featured in BlackMattersUs and Rise Magazine. She is the founder, president, and executive director of the National African American Families First and Preservation Association (NAFPA) a groundbreaking 501c4 nonprofit origination, the first of its kind, devoted exclusively to the protection and preservation of the African American (Black) Family though policy and legislative advocacy.
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