January 1997
Recommendations from the Final Report
The Development of Romanian Orphanage Children
Adopted to Canada
A study funded by The National Welfare Grants Program, Human
Resources Development, Canada
RECOMMENDATION 1: All adoptions of orphanage children should be considered by
both prospective parents and adoption officials to be special-needs adoptions.
Like other special-needs adoptions, e.g., those of physically or mentally
handicapped children, adoption of orphanage children must be acknowledged to
involve extra commitments of parents' time, energy, acquisition of expertise,
and willingness to work with helping agencies.
RECOMMENDATION 2: Because each month a child spends in orphanage contributes
to lower intellectual ability and more behavior problems in that child,
officials arranging international adoptions from orphanages should aim to place
the youngest children available whenever that is possible. When older children
are placed, parents must be made aware of the greater commitment and resources
that will be necessary to rear these children. No parent should ever adopt an
older child believing that because the child is past infancy, parenting will be
easier.
Comment: There are times that parents will want to or will be forced by
circumstances to adopt older children from orphanages. Some countries of origin
will not release young children. Some specify a maximum permissible age
difference between parents and child, so that older parents must adopt older
children. Some prospective parents are willing to, or prefer to, adopt a child
with severe problems. The intention of this Recommendation is not to deny
prospective parents the opportunity to adopt older children, but to make them
and the people arranging the adoption fully aware of the greater commitment
involved.
RECOMMENDATION 3: Agencies and individuals facilitating international
adoptions should be required to provide specialized pre-adoption preparation for
parents planning to adopt from orphanages.
RECOMMENDATION 3a: In addition to dealing with the customary concerns of
adoptive parents, such pre-adoption preparation should include detailed
information concerning the short-term and long-term characteristics of adopted
orphanage children and their distinctive problems.
RECOMMENDATION 3b: Pre-adoption preparation should stress the personal and
family resources necessary for parents to deal with the problems of orphanage
children, especially older children who have spent a long time in orphanage.
Parents should be cautioned that the time and energy necessary to meet an
orphanage child's needs are such that it is unwise to adopt more than one child
at a time, or to bring the child into a family that already has several young
children.
RECOMMENDATION 3c: Pre-adoption programs should provide opportunities for the
prospective adoptive parents to have contact with support groups or individual
parents who have already adopted children from an orphanage setting similar to
the one from which, they hope to adopt.
RECOMMENDATION 3d: Pre-adoption programs should involve both parents in
two-parent families, and should help parents to reach agreement concerning
whether family resources of energy, understanding, commitment, and time are or
are not sufficient to meet the needs of an orphanage child.
RECOMMENDATION 4: All internationally adopted children should receive a
thorough medical checkup upon arrival in Canada.
RECOMMENDATION 4a: Physician Guidelines for Medical Assessment of Children
Adopted from Foreign Countries should be prepared and publicized in each
province by relevant medical authorities.
Comment: The Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons has such a set of
guidelines.
RECOMMENDATION 4b: A brochure for parents to present to their physicians
should be prepared. The brochure would briefly suggest medical tests that should
be done on all international adoptees, and would further alert physicians to the
more detailed Guidelines (Recommendation 4a).
Comment: The B. C. Adoptive Parents Association has prepared a brochure for
parents to present to their physicians on the child's first visit.
RECOMMENDATION 5: All children adopted from orphanages should be entered into
infant development programs or specialized preschool programs for older
children, in order to assist their development. It is important that these
programs include parent participation in order to help parents provide extra
stimulation and guidance in the home. They should also be skilled in linking
families and children with other community resources that will be of benefit.
RECOMMENDATION 6: Agencies facilitating international adoptions 'Should be
required to provide post-adoption support for parents adopting from orphanages,
and all such parents should be encouraged to participate in the support program.
RECOMMENDATION 6a: Post-adoption support programs for parents of orphanage
children should include the following topics: the promotion of parent-child
attachment; teaching good social behavior; and constructive ways of dealing with
behavior problems such as attention-demanding behavior, distractibility,
hyperactivity, and indiscriminate friendliness,.
RECOMMENDATION 6b: Introduction to these topics could be provided either in a
series of group sessions or through a series of individual consultations. In
either case, counsellors skilled in the identified areas should be available to
families on an individual basis, and information should be provided concerning
community resources available to help parents on an ongoing basis, e.g.,
parenting courses, speech therapy, and special education.
Comment: The availability of specialized support groups is especially
important for parents of children from orphanages. Because of their children's
distinctive problems, they may not feel comfortable as part of a group that
includes parents who have adopted domestically. Trading arrangements for respite
care may be made within such specialized groups.
RECOMMENDATION 7: Longitudinal research should be undertaken on adoptees from
orphanages in other countries, as well as continued with the present sample, in
order to investigate the effects of orphanage variables that may help prevent
poor outcomes, for example, better education and training of caretakers, lower
child-to-caretaker ratio, low caretaker turnover, less age-segregation of
children, better nutritional and health standards, and the provision of play and
education programs for children.
Comment: Research on orphanages of varying quality in different places and
times has been remarkably consistent in showing similar adverse effects of
orphanage rearing. It is important to study how long-lasting these effects are.
Furthermore, because it is presently impossible for all children in the world to
be reared in family settings, there are both humanitarian and practical reasons
for learning which specific factors of orphanage life are most damaging and
could be remediated to provide orphanage-reared children with the best start
possible.
| 
