Focus on Adoption winter 2017 (preview)

Volume 25 Winter 2017

adoption FOCUS ON

The Resource for Canada’s Adoption Community

Coming of age in two cultures: the Packer family

Immigration and adoption

Embryo adoption opens up

Five things every family needs to know, p. 11

Assisted reproduction and adoption share a lot, p. 21

Meet amazing, athletic Arden!

This wonderful boy wants a family he can call home, p . 15

FASD: it’s not just the brain

Filling in the blanks

Research reveals prenatal alcohol exposure hurts the whole body, p 19

Strategic storytelling can improve your child’s assessment, p. 23

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Contents Inside this issue: News and information

In focus

2 Editor’s letter 4 Education highlights 5 News & notes 13 Celebrations 26 Events 27 Resources

4 Wonderful webinars!

7 Opinion: Black lives matter in Canada, too 8 Adopted voice: If they could turn back time...

9 Help for the holidays 11 Immigration and international adoption 14 Kids’ corner 17 Everyone has a story: Meet the Packers 19 FASD: It’s not just the brain 21 Embryo adoption opens up 23 Gotta love ‘em!: Filling in the blanks

Books & media 25 Jen’s picks

BC’s Waiting Kids 15 Meet Arden!

Black lives matter, page 7

Help for the holidays, page 9

On our cover This beautiful photo of Guadelupe Packer is from her quinceañera, which is a traditional Mexican fifteenth birthday celebration. Read more about Guadelupe and her unique crosscultural family on page17.

Filling in the blanks, page 23

MCFD adoptions leap online

BY THE GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA The MCFD adoption proces is changing, but never fear–AFABC is here to help! In October, the BC government announced a new online adoption portal. The press release below explains more. Have questions? Need help navigating the process?

Contact AFABC at 1-877-ADOPT-07 for the latest information.

are given extra clearance to access pictures, video and audio of suitable adoptees. The site also allows families to post pictures and write about their interests and lifestyle, in their own words.

New online adoption process goes live

“I think the most exciting aspect of Adopt BC Kids is how it ensures adoptive parents know what stage their application is at, and exactly what they need to do next,” said Jen Hillman, adoptive parent and family support counsellor for Adoptive Families Association of BC.

British Columbians looking to adopt children and youth from care can now begin their journey online through Adopt BC Kids, announced Minister for Children and Family Development Stephanie Cadieux on October 31.

“The automatic system takes the guesswork out of matching parents with a waiting child and, as an adoptive parent to two great kids, now 31 and 25, I only wish this service had been available for me as it offers the support and information parents need to give a child a safe, loving home.”

“We’re moving adoption in B.C. into the 21st century,” said Cadieux. “We heard from adoptive parents that the old paper-driven, ministry officebased system was cumbersome and just too slow. Adopt BC Kids allows people to manage their application online and helps streamline matching functions for adoption workers, helping us find the right family match for waiting children, quicker.”

Adopt BC Kids is strengthened by the addition of new adoption service hub staff who will work with families to ensure all supporting documents, like criminal record and reference checks, are completed and included in the application package prior to it going to an adoption worker for review.

This enables adoption workers to focus on in-person parent interviews and home studies.

Adopt BC Kids is the first website of its kind in Canada — no other jurisdiction offers a personalized and user-friendly system that captures all the foster children available for adoption and the prospective families in one accessible database. Parents can track which of the required documents have been received by the ministry, where they are in the process and better understand next steps. The journey starts with obtaining an identification code from Service BC.

Adopt BC Kids is a secure site, and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner was included in all stages of its design. Only users who have completed a full criminal record check, home study and have been approved to adopt can access the site and browse adoptive children’s profiles. ●

Secure system streamlines process, removes red tape “Adopt BC Kids supports our belief that online and mobile technologies only improve adoption information, support and education,” said Karen Madeiros, executive director of the Adoptive Families Association of BC. “It provides improved access to all waiting parents, and allows applicants to check their application any time, in any location. Helping more adults through the adoption process helps the children waiting for families, and Adopt BC Kids is a big help.”

Prospective parents can narrow their search by different criteria, like the age range of kids they are interested in adopting, whether or not they can adopt a sibling group, and if they are willing to consider providing a permanent home to a child with special needs. Once approved, applicants

Learn more Families with questions about the new system can contact their AFABC Adoption Key Worker. We’re here to help!

Vancouver Island: Angie McMullen, amcmullen@bcadoption.com or 778-789-5183 Lower Mainland & Sunshine Coast: Sarah Reid, sreid@bcadoption.com or 604-320-7330 ext 105 Interior: Sarah Gibson, sgibson@bcadoption.com or 778-789-5713 North: Sherrie Jones, sjones@bcadoption.com or toll free 1-866-9025370 If you are interested in becoming an adoptive parent to a waiting child or youth, visit www.gov.bc.ca/adoptbckids or call 1-877-ADOPT-07.

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Wonderful webinars!

BY MARION CROOK When my children were small, I lived on a ranch surrounded by woods and wildlife. Other than the chickens and the kids, I had no one to talk to for days on end. I read everything I could find about raising adopted children but in those days there wasn’t much. I had to create my own education. I researched and wrote about teens who were adopted, and recently I wrote a book about modern adoptive parenting. Today there are many more books and education options for adoptive parents. I especially delight in learning through conferences, adoption magazines, one-on-one conversations with other parents, and webinars.

Webinars are wonderful. Organizers such as the Adoptive Families Association of BC sponsor well-known teachers and advocates to present information online. I can relax at my desk, drink coffee, make notes and ponder new ideas. If I’m available for the real-time broadcast I can click in and participate by submitting my questions and reading the questions of others as they appear on the right-hand side of my screen. If I’m busy and can’t join the group at the time of broadcast, I can access the recorded session whenever I do have time, even if it’s ten o’clock at night! It’s amazingly efficient.

Sometimes the speaker outlines concepts that I realize I used while raising my kids. It makes me feel that, even though I may not have known why I was doing it, I managed to do the right thing most of the time. Not always, though! I wish I’d had more educationin those days.

It can feel quite lonely as an adoptive parent when no one we know experiences the challenges we do. Perhaps we aren’t handling the difficulties well? Perhaps others have better ideas? Perhaps our child has drawn the short straw for a parent? The information available through webinars can validate our child rearing practices as well as give us ideas about how to act differently. They can help us parents deal with teachers and school boards, professionals such as doctors and specialists, and well-meaning relatives.

I don’t mean to imply that webinars are therapy sessions. They’re not.

They’re information sessions. However, engagement in learning with other parents under the direction of professionals can go a long way to help adoptive parents feel supported. Visit www.bcadoption.com/webinars for a list of all of AFABC’s online offerings. Perhaps I’ll meet you online at the next one. ●

Marion Crook is the author of Thicker Than Blood: Adoptive Parenting in the Modern World and The Face in the Mirror: Teenagers and Adoption (both from Arsenal Pulp Press).

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Education highlights Navigating your Family’s Cultural Ocean, Burnaby, January 28–29 If you are adopting a child of a different race or culture, or if you are already parenting transracially or cross-culturally, this advanced workshop series is a must!

Thriving and Surviving: The First Two Years of Placement, Chilliwack, February 17 This innovative, interactive new workshop prepares adoptive families to navigate the critical and often overwhelmingly challenging first two years of placement.

Adopting Teens and Tweens, Online course, begins January 12 This course offers a thorough introduction to the joys, challenges, and typical behaviours you’ll experience as the adoptive parent of a teen or tween, and will enable prospective adoptive parents to make realistic, well-informed adoption decisions.

Register and learn more at www.bcadoption.com/education.

On-demand webinars Our library of informative, educational webinars for every stage of your adoption journey makes it possible for you to learn any time, when it works for you! Check out all our courses and register today at www.bcadoption.com/demand-webinars.

New! Adoption Training for Community Partners Online, spring 2017 Do you know someone whose job puts them in contact with adoptive families? We’re looking for teachers, family support workers, community agency employees, and other front-line workers to test-drive this new online course.

Participants will learn key terms and concepts associated with adoption, and develop new approaches and strategies for working with adopted children and their families.

Interested? Contact the Adoption Permanency & Learning team at apl@bcadoption.com.

Adopted voice

If they could turn back time...

BY CATHERINE MOORE

What adoptees want parents to know

Watch your words

If we could go back in time and, with the wisdom of hindsight, ask our parents to do things differently, what would adopted people request? It’s a dream question, of course. What person wouldn’t want the chance to set their parents straight?

I’ve witnessed adult adoptees become visibly upset at the memory of common adoption phrases like “you are special” and “you were chosen.” For them, these well-intended messages felt like the equivalent of a slapping a Band-Aid on a gaping wound and confirmed that their parents either didn’t get it or, even worse, didn’t want to get it. There are many resources that can help adoptive parents support their children’s emotional development and teach them emotional self-regulation. Empathy—the willingness to acknowledge and sit with their child’s pain as well as their own—is at the foundation of this work.

To help me answer this question more objectively, I asked many of the adopted adults who belong to We are Adopted: The Adoptees Association to share their thoughts. I also reflected on the many stories I’ve heard from other adopted people over the years.

Until recently, most adoptions were closed or involved limited access to adoptees’ original families. It’s probably not surprising, then, that most adult adoptees wished they’d grown up without secrecy, and that their adoptive parents were up front with the truth about their biological origins.

Tell the truth I know that many adoptive parents worry about how the truth may impact their adopted children. But secrecy and avoidance confuses children. If the things their parents say to them contradict their lived experience, they learn that they cannot trust their own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and senses.

This is especially damaging for adoptive families, where the goal is to establish strong attachments based on trust.

When it comes to parents attempting to protect a child by keeping secrets, most of the adoptees I spoke to had the same response: “Don’t bother.” Adoptees will invariably learn the truth at some point, and they’ll feel betrayed. Almost everyone I spoke to wished that they’d grown up with families who were transparent about their adoption story. If you’re an adoptive parent who doesn’t feel confident or comfortable with that, please consult with an adoption counsellor.

Help them through hard feelings Many adult adopted people also wished their parents had more awareness and skills to help them navigate their difficult feelings about being adopted.

Many adopted children start life with the painful core belief that there is something fundamentally flawed or unworthy about them. Unless someone helps them make sense of their early experience of deep loss, they conclude that negative experiences in their life are their own fault. This belief can continue to exert a strong negative influence throughout their life unless it’s replaced with something more helpful.

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Identify your own issues The final wish I’ll share is one that adopted people mentioned many times, in many ways. They express their unfulfilled desire to meet the needs of their parents, to reassure them of their love, and to promise never to betray them for their original parents. This betrays a deep-seated sense of insecurity at the centre of their family.

More often than not, adopted children are identified as the source of problems in the family. There’s no doubt that adopted children often have special needs.

But it’s easy for parents to ignore the way their own beliefs, attitudes, and issues impact the child and the family too. From my point of view as a therapist, in a perfect world all parents would examine themselves carefully. They’d consider their motivations and desires as adoptive parents, reflect on patterns and dynamics within their childhood family, and gain insight about their expectations and beliefs. These tasks are particularly important for adoptive parents, who usually have to be more thick-skinned, resilient, smarter, and better informed than other parents.

Learn more, love better Parenting is a tough gig, filled with moments of insecurity, doubt, helplessness, and frustration. All of that is normal. As an adoptive parent, it’s even more important to consider what you bring to your family’s dynamic, as well as what your child brings. All children need to be wanted, to feel worthy of love, to feel connected, and to belong. Adopted people, who often go through life mistakenly believing that they have to earn those things, may feel them especially keenly. The more clarity and insight parents can develop, the more effectively they can do their job of meeting those fundamental needs. ●

Catherine Moore is both an adoptee and an adoptive mother, and is the co-founder of We Are Adopted: The Adoptees Association. Visit them at www.weareadopted.ca.

Help for the holidays

BY SIOBHAN ROWE Holiday seasons can be tricky for any family. Adoption often adds an additional layer of joy and complexity. Here’s our guide to making it through the season with a smile!

When holidays hurt As well as being a time of fun and family togetherness, celebrations can sometimes be difficult to navigate for adoptive families. Most parents who adopt children as infants report few holiday season issues. For some families who adopt older children who were removed from their birth family or have lived in foster care, celebrations can be associated with tremendous losses and upsetting memories. Here are a few tips to help you make your family’s holiday celebrations special and sensitive.

They said it!

Sarah Reid, adoptive mom and AFABC Adoption Key Worker shared this funny and festive conversation between her two kids Michaela: “Mommy Becky is my birth mommy!”

Noah: “Yes, Michaela, that’s right. You and I both have two mommies.”

Michaela: “I grew in Mommy Becky’s tummy AND in Mommy’s tummy, right?”

Noah: “NO. That’s impossible. It’s not a Christmas miracle. You were just adopted!”

Move slowly If you are close to having an older child placed in your family, resist the urge to rush to get them home for the holiday season. Instead, try to arrange a visit or celebration with the foster family in their home.

Go gently Don’t assume that your child views the holiday season positively. For some children, occasions like Christmas were particularly stressful and are associated with violence and abuse.

Prepare your child Well before the festive season, talk about how your family celebrates. This ensures that the new child is okay with the plans and keeps his or her expectations realistic.

Keep it simple Don’t try to make up for all those previous holiday celebrations by overdoing things. Some of the children have already had adults try to “buy” their affection or “make up” for disappointments with gifts.

Overdoing that first holiday season may also remind the children of what they have missed out on previously and produce very mixed feelings about the upcoming festivities.

Try to gauge the child’s expectations, ask about his or her experiences of the holiday season, and explain that it’s okay to have sad or mixed feelings.

Accept new traditions Ask the child what his or her favourite food is, what traditions he or she may have followed before, and try to include some of those in your celebrations.

To avoid resentment, include all the children in the family in any changes.

Fair’s fair!

Be meticulously fair with gifts: children, especially those who have had to do without, will notice variations in expenditure and will probably take them personally.

Include others If you have openness with birth family or foster family, try to plan a visit with them a couple of weeks before the event. This may mean that the child’s feelings about the visit (which could be mixed or negative) aren’t tied into their feelings about the holiday season.

If you are involving the birth family in your celebrations, be sensitive about gift giving; if the birth family is unable to meet your expectations, it will be upsetting for everyone, particularly your child.

If you don’t have openness, remember birth family in any prayers or ceremonies. If your openness is limited to annual letters and photograhs and you haven’t yet sent one, do it now! ● This article originally appeared in Focus on Adoption in December 2006.

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Kids’ Corner!

Theo Mogatas, age 7, drew this family portrait at school. His birth parents are on the right, his adoptive parents are on the left, and he’s right where he belongs: in the centre of everyone and everything!

Does your child have something to share?

Email it to editor@bcadoption.com!

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FASD: it’s not just the brain

BY DAVID GERRY New research reveals that prenatal alcohol exposure impacts the entire body, not just the brain.

A whole-body disorder For the past several decades, the widely held assumption in the field of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) research has been that a fetus’s brain is by far more vulnerable to the damaging effects of alcohol exposure than any other part of its developing body.

This assumption was strengthened by a study published in 2016 in The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Society. It found that people with FASD were 97 times more likely than the general population to have psychological disorders.

However, this study also investigated the connection between FASD and a wide range of other conditions. The findings are astonishing. It identified 428 comorbid (co-occurring) conditions in people with FASD.

Learn More The study “Comorbidity of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis” was published in The Lancet in 2016.

You can download the article at www.camh.ca/en/research/ news_and_publications/reports_and_books/Documents/ Popova_etal2016Lancet.pdf.

The study “Life Expectancy of People with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome” appeared in the Journal of Population Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology in 2016.

You can download the article at www.jptcp.com/articles/ life-expectancy-of-people-with-fetal-alcohol-syndrome.pdf.

These conditions affect the entire body, not just the brain. They include problems with the nervous system, chromosomal abnomalities, language disorders, serous otitis media (“glue ear”), heart problems, limb differences, and hundreds of other wide-ranging issues.

encourage them to do more to help families identify and access interventions and supports.

Research confirms caregivers’ experience

Interventions for adulthood

The take-away from the study is that FASD is a whole-body disorder, not just a brain-based one. The study’s findings confirm, for the first time, what caregivers and professionals have noticed and wondered about for years: the high rate of seemingly unrelated medical conditions in people with FASD. For example, two Toronto hospitals identified a little-known connection between seizures and FASD. They determined that if a child is seen for a seizure disorder, they should also be screened for FASD, and vice versa.

Since we have known about FASD for more than 40 years, why is it only now that we’re starting to realize it includes very significant physical health challenges, as well as the accepted cognitive and psychological ones?

Perhaps the simplest answer is that until recently, research and interventions have focused almost exclusively on children rather than adults.

It’s important to understand that the study’s findings don’t mean that FASD is the sole cause of these 428 conditions. Rather, it suggest the likelihood of a connection between them and prenatal alcohol exposure. It certainly highlights the need for more research.

The Lancet’s study is new, and most doctors probably don’t know about it yet. I strongly suggest that caregivers take a copy of it to their next appointment with their family doctor or pediatrician. You can print out a summary of the study for free, or purchase a PDF of the full text for $32.

This information will help doctors to better understand the complexity and potential long term health consequences of FASD, and will hopefully

A study published in March 2016, found that the average life expectancy for a person in Alberta with FASD is only 34 years. And Alberta has the best interventions and support services of all the provinces and territories.

What possible explanations can there be for someone with FASD to have a life expectancy that is only 38% as long as that of the general population, especially since we have a national system for universal health care? What can be done to address the problem?

A family doctor’s perspective Rod Densmore is a physician in the interior of BC. Rod and his wife Shannon have raised a daughter with FASD, he’s written a book about

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FASD, continued FASD, and he treats many patients with FASD at his family medical practice.

We examined the Alberta study together and brainstormed about possible reasons for the drastically shortened life expectancy it reported.

Below is an (anonymized) summary from a patient record that may provide some clues.

Last week in my clinic I was so surprised by my 41-year-old female patient who has FASD. She missed three very important tests/consultations I had arranged for her. I wrote to our clinic manager seeking ideas. Perhaps a patient advocate could assist her to attend rebooked appointments?

My patient had missed: 1) going to the hospital to have a lymph gland biopsied to rule out Hogkins lymphoma, 2) going to the diabetes specialist for her poorly controlled diabetes that was affecting her eyes, and 3) attending an appointment to rule out angina.

Each of these three conditions could be life threatening. She understood that, and she likes coming to our clinic and appreciates our interactions, but she still did not attent these critical appointments.

Maybe my patient’s situation is similar to others who have FASD. Her non-attendance at such important medical investigations could illustrate why, in part, health outcomes are so dismal.

Perhaps the reduced life expectancy is due to the inability of adults with FASD to consistently follow through on routine lab tests or specialist appointments which leads to otherwise avoidable health complications?

A lifetime of support The research suggests that 80% of those with FASD will require some level of direct support for their whole life. If that’s the case, where are the supportive families and caregivers who will help get these adults to their appointments?

When I asked the former executive director of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society Yukon (FASSY) about this, she said that only 10% of the adults their organization supports have healthy family connections. In the broader disability community, it’s 70%. The next logical question, then, is how did so many kids with FASD grow up to be so isolated or alienated from their families?

When my wife and I first became foster parents, we attended a monthly parent support group. After a while, we stopped participating because it seemed from those parents that the older their kids got, the more unbearably complicated and challenging their lives became. Naively, we presumed that we were stronger, smarter, and more capable. We wouldn’t go down that path.

Before the kids hit middle school, our kids’ thoughtfully prepared IEPs and curriculum modifications gave way to emergency meetings at school, suspensions, and, finally, dropping out of school. By then, we realized the value of parent support groups and the need for more and better FASD-informed services.

Hold on to hope One source of stamina is hope. Research has shown that the brains of people with ADHD slowly change and “normalize” through gradual increases in myelination and forebrain development. Similar research is now being undertaken in adults with FASD to see if they also experience delayed brain maturation. The bad news is that people with FASD may remain at the mercy of an impulsive “teenage” brain until their late twenties or early thirties. The good news is that their impulse control and ability to understand cause and effect may slowly improve as they mature.

Caregivers should also remember that the long term goal for a person with FASD is successful interdependence rather than unsuccessful independence. Your life planning should be based on this understanding of their likely need for long term interdependence. When we adjust our expectations, it’s easier to change our definitions of success.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint Another way to avoid caregiver burn-out is to recognize that this marathon parenting. Just as recuperation time is essential for long-distance runners, so it is with long-term marathon parenting.

Too often, parents are so absorbed with providing all the supports and resources required by their family member that they forget to put themselves on the to-do list. The inevitable result of that is burn-out.

Caring for kids or adults with FASD requires some the best and most innovative solutions we can muster. No one is capable of such demanding, out-of-the-box caregiving if their tank is empty.

In Alberta, they have realized the best way to avoid serial foster placement breakdowns is to prioritize support for the parents. Instead of spending 45 minutes of a 60-minute monthly meeting with the foster child, they’ll spend 45 minutes with the parent to see what they need to continue to effectively support the child.

To remain part of the 10% of adults who continue to effectively support their loved ones with FASD over the long term, caregivers must regularly do things to feed themselves. Walk on the beach. Play a sport. Draw. Sing in a choir. Spend time with friends. Talk about something other than FASD and parenting. Find what you love and make time for it. Do it for yourself—and for your loved one with FASD. ●

The same principle applies whether you are the foster, biological, or adoptive parent of a child with FASD. Successfully raising children with this perplexing and invisible condition into adulthood and beyond requires extra stamina and support.

David Gerry began his intensive applied learning in the field of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) as a direct result of becoming a foster parent to two children with FASD. In 2000, he co-founded a charity called The FASD Community Circle to develop programs and services for those with FASD.

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