The Attachment Center at Evergreen, Inc. has long been dedicated to educating others about attachment disorder. We feel that providing information to as many people as possible will increase understanding on the part of parents and professionals, and will enhance the likelihood of a positive outcome for children with attachment disorder. We have also advocated for full disclosure of records to potential adoptive parents. A commonly expressed concern, particularly from adoption workers and permanency planning units has ben that "full disclosure will reduce the numbers of adoptive parents willing to provide a permanent home for these children". Whether or not this is true remains to be seen. It is my belief that we must be responsible in this area. Potential adoptive parents must be treated as adults capable of deciding how they choose to spend the rest of their lives. These decisions must be made on the basis of all available information. Others should not decide for these potential parents by withholding information or presenting information in a misleading manner. Most of the adoptive parents I have spoken to say that they would have adopted their child anyway, even had they been provided with full disclosure about the child. Having the information would simply have made it easier to understand what was going on with the child and to get appropriate treatment for the child's problems much sooner.

One of the important roles of an adoption worker is to match a child who has special needs with a family who is able to meet those needs. It is necessary for the adoption worker to join with both the child AND with the potential adoptive family in this process. This should be a relationship based upon mutual trust, not one where one side withholds information out of fear that a child will not be accepted by a family. Families must be adequately prepared to meet the challenges of a special needs child. Families will need an on-going relationship with an adoption worker who is able to assist them in accessing and obtaining needed services for the child. Trust can be easily lost and this relationship destroyed if truth is not part of the process. The end result could be a family that disrupts in anger and frustration (resulting in the very thing the adoption had tried to avoid in the first place). A willing family is lost, and a child experiences yet another loss.

A much better system is one that recognizes the necessity of preparation and matching a child with the appropriate parents, the importance of trusting relationships between all of the adults involved in the adoption process, the rights of individuals to make decisions about their own lives, the goodness of the human spirit, the ability of people to love children who can seem unlovable, and the faith that, by working together, we can find the answers for children and for families.

© The Attachment Center at Evergreen

Credits: Paula Pickle, LCSW