Open Adoption in Foster Care....Pros vs Cons

I think open adoption is best when it can be managed. Do the children see a therapist? If not, perhaps you can visit one together to figure out what type (and frequency of) contact would be best for your family moving forward.

When DD moved in with us she was 4, adopted at 5. She will be 12 in a few weeks. We only had contact once or twice in the first 6 months after TPR. After that we followed her lead, and still do, really. When she asked about her past we answered her questions honestly and gave her any information we have. When DD wants to see her we set something up. There have been times when we have gotten together every few days and times when we have gone months without seeing each other. Over the years biomom and I have built our own relationship as well. She phones or texts me when she is stressed or has exciting news. I should mention biomom has the mentality of a young teenager and sees me as sort of a big sister...which has its own drama but thats another post. An added benefit is that DD is now old enough to see that her biomom is not capable of making adult decisions. Understanding that and accepting that biomom was just not capable of taking care of her (and seeing a therapist when needed) has helped her make alot of progress with getting past alot of her abandonment and anger issues. That may not have been possible otherwise. We try to make sure DD is in control of the relationship but she can always use me as an out if she needs to...Id love to do xxxx but my mom wont let me sort of thing. Our youngest son also came as a foster placement. His biomom was, ummmm, unavailable for visits until this past summer. Now that she is home we have seen her a at his request. We are slowly figuring out what our relationship is going to be. My thought is that if I allow my children to have a relationship with their biological families they will never fell like they have to choose between our families. It also gives them time to process their own feelings while still having the support of our family. My children know they can, and have, come to us and talk about their first families. Every family is different. For us, this works.

I think the children are old enough to tell you what they want. If the visits are hard, then I'd not subject them to it. I'd make no promises, but instead make offerings of pictures/updates via email, and then just play it by ear. In a best world situation, as much as you can get out of the system, you'd be able to work out so that they can see each other on a regular enough basis, but perhaps not as close. So, I mean, instead of being in a "visit" place, go somewhere the kids can be kids, and still see the bio mom, but be able to be "free" from obligation of entertaining her. I hope that makes sense. Then over time, let the children dictate how future visits go.

I think some openness, as long as safe and healthy, to the degree reasonable for the circumstances and the people involved, is a good thing. We are trying to figure this out ourselves. Kids are 3, 4, and 6. They haven't seen any birth family since February last year. We are thinking:*PO Box for first mom and dad to send whatever they wish to be given when we deem appropriately (late teens)*Letter/Pics yearly to first mom and dad - individual kid can choose not to be party to it.*Absolutely no direct contact between first parents and children while the children are children.*Letters, pics, visits, parties, etc with extended family as long as I am sure it will be and will remain safe and healthy. I absolutely have NO problem with cutting it off if I'm unconvinced. THis is something one particular family member is going to have to work to convince me of because I will not take a risk with my children's well-being.

Depends on what the situation. My 2 oldest had an open adoption from foster care. 2 oldest had an open adoption. Through actions of bmom, it became closed. 2 youngest came having been TPR'd. There was no contact with bmom. However, that hurt kids more. You can have an open adoption: phone calls and letters. The kids should let you know if they don't want contact. I send pics and give both bios and one bio dad updates.

There are so many different levels of "open adoption", it's hard to know what you mean. I'm speaking from the perspective of my kids coming to me as infant foster placements, so it's a bit different than adopting kids who know and have a bond with their birth parents. With my daughter, we send pics & update 1-2x/year. That's it. No visits. I am very careful about the pics I do send -- any other family members are cropped out, and I never send pics with a background that could identify where we live or what preschool she goes to, etc. With my son, we have a reasonably nice open adoption with his bios. We visited bd twice last year and bm once (she lives out of state). We exchange pics and updates regularly. Bios keep me updated on their lives. To my son (he's 2 1/2), these ppl are strangers. He cannot grasp the concept of bm, bd, etc. So visits have no effect on him. To him, it's just having lunch with some of Mommy's friends. That's it. I would talk to your kids about their feelings after the visitations. Unless there is a safety concern, I do think some sort of openness should be maintained, even if it's just exchanging some pictures. Good luck. It's a tough road to navigate, and a lot of people really push open adoption, even when it's not appropriate.

I want to add: P, my oldest, is having "issues" with his bio mom so I've had to limit contact. FWIW, if the bios are manipulative, you'll want to limit contact.

We adopted our DD, now, from foster care when she was 2. She was in foster care for almost a year at other homes before she came to us. By the time we adopted her, she had not had any contact with her father for almost a year and he had already signed over is rights. She came to us in Feb, by March, Mom signed her rights over to us, we had PMC and then did a private adoption. We agreed to 4 visits a year with Mom. We did not have a visit wit Mom until the first July when she turned 2. Mom couldn't even make a goodbye visit before that. We didn't see her again until over a year later. Meanwhile, I established contact with Dad and we had a visit right after she turned 2. My feeling is that it was good for our DD and us to not have visits for almost a year. It really gave her time to adjust to us and bond. She has issues even now. They slowly subside, but I think ,no, I know, she was one pissed off kid wen she came here. She needed the time to not be constantly reminded that she didn't live with her mother. She didn't have to watch her Mom walk away again, week after week. My theory is that in her mind all the women she had gotten attached to had left her, from mom, to grandma, foster family, aunt and then Mom again. She needed time to put down roots and have some understanding that this was her home, we were her parents and that no matter what, we weren't going to leave her or send her anywhere. Her parents have never been inappropriate at visits and our DD doesn't have issues after seeing them. She now looks forward to seeing them, talks about them and knows we all love er and that she is wanted and loved by all of us. Right now we see them about every 12 weeks or so. They come to our house and spend about 3 hours here. Don't feel horrible about wanting to stop visit especially when you know that the visits are not good for the kids. They have enough stuff to deal with and right now stopping visits is probably the best thing. They do need time to heal and bond. As far as explaining, it's a matter of making sure they know it isn't about them, it's just something that can't happen right now. Everyone still loves them. I suggest that you write out what type of contact you are comfortable with. Letters, pics(how oftern), any calls, if and when a visit migt take place, gifts they may send, etc. I would make the contact right now pretty closed with only letters for the time being, maybe pics, but if you do pics, you might want to decide how they can use them as many people end up seeing their kids pics posted on FB on the bio family's pages. By writing up a contract first and having them read and sign a copy, you allow the family to know what is expected of them and what they can expect from you so there are no misunderstandings.

I don't know whether a closed adoption makes a child feel rejected, but the behavior of the bparents that caused the child to go into foster care, and their continued behavior that prevents the children from going back, can certainly hurt the feelings of the children and make them question their own worth. I don't think the children would blame you for preventing contact that is not good for them. They are old enough to remember the bad times. I wish I knew what the answer is. I tried to keep my daughter's closed, but after a few years she kept initiating contact herself. It has settled down to a restraining order and outstanding warrant for arrest to stop the contact with the bparent that is dangerous, and continuing phone contact with the untrustworthy but not dangerous other bparent. It is so hard with children because they do still love parents even if the parents are unsafe. I think children need protection from contact while they are little, and a lot of therapy support when they reestablish contact when they are old enough to have better thinking skills (middle school?). I don't think it would be good to have no contact at all and then they turn 18 and experience an extremely emotional reunion, and maybe an unsafe situation, trying to establish contact all at once. I am hoping that my daughter (15 yrs old) will have Skype calls with her mom at the therapist's office in the next year or two while she still has plenty of support. Then it would be nice if she could have a visit(s) in person before she turns 18. I don't know about the bdad, she will likely run into him at family functions when she is grown up (currently she only visits family when absolutely sure he will not be there), so she will need to have a plan on how to handle the contact, and how to support her feelings afterwards. It is a hard subject, and one that I didn't realize I would need to worry about. I thought I could just close the adoption and not have to worry about it at all, at least until she was 18.

We have an unusual amount of openness. BD was just turned 19 when my AS was born. Baby was taken because Bmom's actions, not his. He was young, unstable and hadn't finished HS. He worked intermittently and spent time . . .um, elsewhere intermittently. My son was 3 weeks old when released from NICU to me. Throught the almost two years of FC, we were respectful of one another. He realized I was mom to his son and I mentored him at visits and otherwise when I had a chance. If baby was upset at a visit, he would often ask for me to be allowed in. I would settle him and leave even though BD was fine with me staying. I showed him what baby liked best and how he liked to be held and advised him that sometimes you needed to try a few things to get him to settle down, trial and error. Eventually he may have got his son back, but in the end he decided that he didn't want to disrupt his son's life and bring him into his unstable one. For these reasons we see him every couple months. His family has been invited to birthday parties and after 4 years, now know our address and are invited to see our home sometime soon. Recently I began allowing unsupervised visits and a couple weeks ago an overnight. Due to my son's difficult behavior issues(drug and alcohol exposures) It's a lot for me as a single mom to handle 24/7. Dad disciplined very appropriately and called me to let me know when there was a particular 'behavior crisis" and what he had done to handle it. All extremely appropriate(I was proud of Dad). He is settled now, engaged with a couple more small children that my son conisiders his brother and baby sister. In our situation it is made easier by not having a Dad in our home I'm sure. It kinda operates more like a break up between us, lol. AS is not old enough yet to questions the whys and wherefores. My nephews are confused, they tend to think we must have been a couple at some point, lol. My son knows he is adopted and we add to that story all the time, he doesn't get exactly what it means yet(he is 4) but we will continue to add. I signed a Post Adoption Agreement which is enforeceable in our state, but I agreed to the minimum, 2 visits a year. I stuck to that (more) or less the first year, but have opened it up considerable this year. Will this be the way it always is? I don't know. As long as Dad's behavior remains appropriate, then quite probably. I worry all the time that I am doing the right thing. My own mother doens't get it one bit and would prefer no contact, but it's not up to her. I believe I will do as pp's have said, let my son guide me and the contact in the future. I also put into our agreement(which I had to fight my own lawyer about) that AS's wishes would be taken into consideration once he reached 10, hopefully that wont come back to bite me, but it is what I felt was best. If I ever adopt again, I don't see it being exactly like this, these seem to have evolved into unique circumstances.

A lot of research shows that children who maintain contact with bio families do better when they're older and adults also. That does not mean I'm saying to put a child at risk (just a disclaimer)...there are levels of openness that you can have and can be adjusted to fit the needs of the families (both involved).If the contact is supervised you can keep it supervised and adjust the locations and duration to help it be constructive. For example you could have a visit at a park where bio mom could swing and play tag...or a park for sledding in winter.

We have a closed adoption with all 3 sets of bios. None of them were able to make good choices and it would have been harmful to keep in contact with from the children (one of the bds is in jail for another 15 years,one never wanted anything to do with my baby,one is into drugs so bad that I doubt she will live to see 35) so we felt it was in our childrens best interest to have a closed adoption. My children are 5,6,7,8,9 and 14.Our oldest was the only one who was olde enough at the time to remember the bios,she has asked us begged us to not let them anywhere near her or her brother and sisters.

I'm in the "closed is best, especially at first" camp. In general - it really does depend on your individual details, history & true best interests of the child. I don't believe it's in the best interest of a child to force them to have a relationship with someone who hurt them beyond repair. I consider termination of parental rights due to some type of harm to be "beyond repair". Like I said though, it's dependent upon the specifics of each situation and each family has to determine that for themselves. Speaking for my kids who were 2-5 when adopted and are now 11-15, they do not feel rejected by their bio family although a couple of my kids feel anger. I think the anger will be there regardless of the open vs closed situation though because their bparents did after all harm them. (whether it's physical, emotional, neglect etc....it's all harm) They aren't angry about not seeing them, they are angry about what they had to suffer through because of them. So if I had forced them to have contact, I'm not sure my kids would have been able to freely process their feelings or heal. Things as teens are different and now that they are able to process things realistically and individually, we can make decisions on contact/reunion from a much better and secure place. Lastly, I'll add that the sibling factor DOES have an impact. None of my 4 have the exact same feelings about things, so you do need to consider this aspect too. There's really no one size fits all answer...hope you find yours!:)

I have always believed open was best if it was "safe". Now, I don't believe that so much. Safe, like the reunification standard, is bear minimum and I don't think it really is enough. The problem is the that underlying personality issues that lead to a parent loosing custody/or being pushed to reliquinshment, aren't going to just magically go away. No more than that county can make parents show up, or not be drunk, or not tell the kids fibs, can adoptive parents do the same. Loss is hard to deal with. Abandoment, worry about the family, knowledge of self...all big issues that can have a huge impact on a child......but chaos can be just as, if not more, harmful. So ultimately, I think it should be about the health of the child. Don't let you views color the decision making---mine did, leading me to open even when I knew that for LG it didn't really make a difference.

We're approaching being in the position in the near (well as near as you can expect with FC) future with our FC. As it stands right now - there will be no post adoption contact with their Mom, not because we necessarily wouldn't be open to it, but because her rights will be terminated and post adoption contact will not be allowed. As far as Dad goes, we offered 2 visits per year and 2 updates (pictures/letters) with conditions. He accepted, but since then I've heard that he no longer wants any contact post adoption due to some things Mom has told him (all untrue). I'm open to contact with Dad's mother post adoption as she has been part of the kids' lives all through their time in FC.