Review
“Adoption is one of several child welfare services that have undergone major policy and practice reforms in the past 20 years. The resulting emergence of special-needs adoption as a new social welfare program is best represented by the shift in focus from finding children for childless couples to finding families for children who need them. Special-needs adoption places older children, children of color, those who have physical or mental disabilities, and children in sibling groups with many different types of families. In this highly readable book, which reports on their study of 799 adoptive families, Rosenthal and Groze make an important contribution to understanding the families' experiences in adopting children who would formerly have been considered unadoptable. Their work confirms practice wisdom about the high rates of success and family satisfaction in special-needs adoption and underscores the need for highly specialized recruitment, preparation, and post-placement supports for adoptive families.”–Choice
“Rosenthal and Groze provide a valuable service by documenting, with richness and breadth, the outcomes of adoption and how they relate to the characteristics of adoptive parents and adopted children. By providing added insight into the relationship of the makeup of adoptive families and their outcomes, they are both able to raise further questions for researchers in this area as well as offer practice recommendations for practitioners in the area....It is important reading for anyone researching or practicing in this area.”–Children and Youth Services Review
“Rosenthal and Groze provide a valuable service by documenting, with richness and breadth, the outcomes of adoption and how they relate to the characteristics of adoptive parents and adopted children. By providing added insight into the relationship of the makeup of adoptive families and their outcomes, they are both able to raise further questions for researchers in this area as well as offer practice recommendations for practitioners in the area....It is important reading for anyone researching or practicing in this area.”–
Product Description
This volume reports the results of a large-scale survey of families who adopted children with "special needs": older children, minority children, handicapped children, or sibling groups. It assesses perceptions of social work services, parent-child relationships, family functioning, child behavior, school performance, and other aspects of adoptive family life. Rosenthal and Groze compare outcomes for different types of adoptions, including adoptions of children of different ages, adoptions by minority families, transracial adoptions, single-parent adoptions, adoptions by less educated and less wealthy families, adoptions by foster parents, adoptions of children with handicaps, and sibling group adoptions.
