Clinical and Practice Issues in Adoption

Experts representing practitioners, researchers, advocates, and triad members, explore the similarities and differences between adoptees placed as infants and as older children. The book promotes better integration of theory, practice, policy, and research in working with clients who are members of the adoption triad: adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families. For the first time, the separate practice areas are bridged, pointing out the significant overlap between the two populations and the similar interventions that can be used when working with adoptees regardless of their age at placement.

Developed as a resource text for practitioners, researchers, students, and adoptive triad members, the first chapter provides an overview of the clinical and practice issues. Next the work presents issues surrounding infertility, and explores identity development with a following chapter on search and reunion issues. The fifth chapter discusses adoption support, both historically and with current developments and issues. The work then examines ethics and offers a model for ethical adoption practice. The final chapter explores treatment issues from a family systems perspective.

VICTOR GROZA is Professor of the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. He is the coauthor of Special-Needs Adoption: A Study of Intact Families (Praeger, 1992) and more recently wrote Successful Adoptive Families: A Longitudinal Study of Special Needs Adoption (Praeger, 1996).

KAREN F. ROSENBERG is a clinical social worker who has been in practice for twenty-three years. In addition to her clinical work, Ms Rosenberg is a consultant for private and public mental health and adoption agencies. She has contributed numerous articles on adoption to professional journals.