2010 Post Adoption Survey Results

By Ruth Stillman, Web Project Manager

Earlier this year, the Post Adopt Support and Education team conducted a survey that was completed by 1,272 families who adopted children through Wide Horizons For Children. The focus of this survey was to find out what issues adoptive parents may be facing and what resources have been or might be helpful. The majority of the respondents (70%) have adopted one child through WHFC, with an additional 26% adopting two children. As shown in the chart below, most of the adoptions have occurred within the past 3 years.

		How old are your adopted children now?
		0-3 years old	4-7 years old	7-12 years old	13-18 years old	> 18 years old	TOTAL
When did your adoption take place?	0-3 years ago	457	288	69	17	2	833
	4-7 years ago	0	357	136	20	1	508
	> 7 years ago	0	0	197	92	35	324

Dear Ann Landers - Where Parents Look for Advice

Respondents were asked where they have received helpful advice about parenting. The results indicate use of many different sources. Among the most commonly used are other parents (adoptive as well as biological), family members, home study social worker, and local therapist or other specialist. Many respondents reported receiving helpful tidbits such as "Relax and go with the flow" and "Don't sweat the small stuff."

Counsel Me Please!

The recent news related to adoption has highlighted the need for adoptive families to seek out assistance for dealing with challenging situations. While families openly acknowledge facing issues related to attachment and bonding with their child(ren), only 14% of survey respondents indicated the need for family counseling services, while 18% have children who received individual counseling. Reasons for counseling included:

• Sibling jealousy
• Behavioral issues
• Marital difficulties
• Sleep disturbances
• Dealing with developmental needs

Of the families surveyed, 23% report that their child has an education plan in place. Most commonly, these plans address issues related to:

• Speech and language difficulties
• Social/ emotional issues
• Learning disability
• Behavior
• ADHD
• Autism spectrum disorder
• Motor skill delay

If I Had a Hammer (What's in Your Toolbox?)

It is important for any parent to feel prepared and have tools at their disposal when faced with any of a number of situations that may arise. When adoptive parents were asked to rate the helpfulness of a variety of tools and materials, 84% of respondents rated reading materials as Good or Excellent, followed by Cultural Events rated Good/Excellent by 58%. Other tools rated favorably include:

• Online forums (30%)
• Face-to-face counseling (30%)
• In-person support groups (28%)
• Web videos (27%)
• Online support groups (26%)

Respondents are also using other online tools such as email, Facebook (did you know that WHFC has a page? Find us now!), and Yahoo/Google Groups to connect with friends and other adoptive parents.

What Interests You?

As we work to address different topics in our e-newsletters and on our website, we asked survey respondents to indicate topics that were of most interest to them. The chart below reflects the topics rated highest by respondents.

Room for Improvement

Seventy-six percent of the survey respondents reported having received WHFC's Post Adoption e-newsletter. While the overall rating of the e-newsletter was favorable (72% giving it a score of Good or Excellent), we recognize that there are definitely ways we can work to better provide the information adoptive families are seeking. Among the recommendations we heard are:

• Make it more focused
• Provide more emphasis on older child adoptions and the associated challenges
• Address the difficult issues of adoption
• Provide information about adoptees as adults
• Emphasis on educating the children once they are home
• Provide information on common disorders and signs to look for
• Publish stories that reflect unexpected health and/or development issues

Service Please!

We recognize that we at WHFC have not done a good job in the past with informing families about the services at their disposal. In addition, our offices are located in the Northeastern United States, while our families are spread throughout the country. Nevertheless, families are utilizing the services we currently have in place, as shown in the chart below.

Families did offer some constructive ideas for additional services they would like to see offered. The most frequent suggestion was for increased personalized outreach from WHFC. Many respondents felt they received little or no individual follow up after their child came home. Additional suggestions include:

• Ways to connect with other families - both in-person as well as online
• Local events outside of the eastern Massachusetts area, as well as listings of events across the country
• More programs and information for families adopting Domestically as well as from Ethiopia
• More events for younger children
• More programs and information for teen adoptees

So Now What?

Gathering all of this information is one thing, now we need to determine what we're going to do with it! Be patient with us, this will take some time. We do have some ideas that we hope to be able to implement fairly easily. Among these are:

• Educating WHFC staff and partners as well as families about the services offered by the Post Adopt Support and Education team.
• Increase the access that post adoptive families have to information and advice
• Provide additional resource information in every edition of our e-newsletter
• Create topic-specific reading lists for families
• Find a way to share time information about webinars and conferences across the U.S., including those offered by other organizations
• Increase post adoptive families' access to each other for advice and support
• Create a list of topics for call-in sessions that can be offered to post adoptive families

Many thanks to everyone who took the time to complete our survey. We are always open to feedback and suggestions, so if you didn't get a chance to take the survey, or have thought of additional ideas you feel would be helpful to us, please contact us at postadopt@whfc.org.