Foster Care Adoptees Call for Greater Access to Birth Records, Post-Adoption Services

May 16

According to a new report and survey from the National Council for Adoption, most adults who have been adopted from foster care express satisfaction with their adoptions but still see a need for significant systemic reform.

The report, Profiles in Adoption: Adult Adoptee Experiences, and the accompanying survey results were released in April. The report is based on a 2023 survey of over 1200 adults aged 18 and older who had been previously adopted as children. The results were broken out by adoption type (adoption from foster care, domestic private adoptions, and intercountry adoptions). Although only a small portion of those surveyed were adopted from foster care (154), the results were interesting.

Highlights include:

Whose Interests are Served by Adoption: When asked, most adoptees from foster care said that adoption can work in the best interest of adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees. But they were more likely to say that such adoptions worked in the best interests of adoptive parents (83.1%) than birth parents (56.5%) or adoptees (60.4%). The answers of foster care adoptees were similar to those who had experienced a private domestic adoption, but different from those who had experienced an intercountry adoption. The latter group were more likely to say (79.7%) that the adoptions were in the best interest of the adopted child.
Birth Family Knowledge: Most adoptees from foster care (82.5%) had knowledge of their birth families, about the same percentage as those adopted through a private domestic adoption (83.5%) but higher than those adopted through an intercountry adoption (25.5%). Most adoptees from foster care (56.6%) said their adoptive parents supported their relationships with their birth families. However, most also said they had minimal or no knowledge of their birth family's medical history (56.5%). Many foster care adoptees (68.8%) had done genetic testing, often to uncover health-related information.
Post-Adoption Services: Most adoptees from foster care (63%) reported receiving post-adoption services, a rate higher than those adopted through private domestic adoption (56.6%) or intercountry adoption (49.4%). Therapy and counseling were the most commonly reported services used. However, they were also the most common services they needed but were unable to access. This suggests that while the supply of such services has been significant, it still falls short of meeting the need.

In open-ended comments, some foster care adoptees emphasized that the child’s best interests should guide placement decisions and suggested that children be included in the decision-making process. For example, one adoptee wrote, “One of the most important things we can do is have the child more involved in the decision process of where they will be placed. It is so important for them to be placed somewhere ‘they chose’ rather than just being placed with a family the agency chooses. What an agency thinks is a good fit may not be what a child feels is a good fit for them."

They also called for:

Ongoing check-ins and monitoring after the adoption to ensure the suitability of placements over time.
Increased training for adoptive parents on trauma, birth family openness, and parenting a child of a different race.
Increased adoptee access to birth family information, birth certificates, and medical histories. Many argued that the sealing of such records should be banned.

NCFA’s report is the latest in a series on adoption-related experiences. Other reports in the series have covered birth parent experiences and adoptive parent experiences.