Hoang was three and a half years old.  More than 20 years ago, as a Holt social worker in my home country of Vietnam, I worked with children like Hoang. I met him a few times each week at the orphanage. Every time we met, his eyes were teary, but he could not communicate as he had severe speech delay. We hardly had access to professional speech therapists as they just did not exist more than 20 years ago in Vietnam. Looking into his teary eyes, I felt he wanted to communicate something to us about his needs. I was asking myself, what would happen if he did not receive the care and interventions he needed? Thankfully, he was adopted into a family in the U.S and later became a medical doctor.

Quan was born a healthy baby. One time, there was a meningitis outbreak at his orphanage and seven children were hospitalized. After treatment, all the children were discharged including Quan, but unfortunately, he lost much of his hearing. We were heartbroken as we knew that with very limited medical care available to children in orphanages, he would most likely experience full and permanent hearing loss. And if he grew up in Vietnam, he would struggle because our society was not equipped to offer the kind of care or support people with hearing impairment needed.

Quan was also adopted by an American family. Years later, in the U.S., I met him again. He had received the medical treatment he needed, had the equipment he needed to aid his hearing, and he was able to communicate with me. He and his adoptive parents let me know that he was thriving and had been admitted into classes for gifted students. At that very moment, I thought this was truly a miracle. Quan had a family who could meet his needs and help him achieve his fullest potential.

For these children, had they not received the care and love and interventions they needed — care provided by their adoptive families — permanent disability was no question.

Then I think of Tan.

Tan had cerebral palsy and was abandoned when he was only a few days old. We were not able to find an adoptive family for him. Once in a while, during my trips to Vietnam, I had the chance to visit him in the orphanage. The last I saw him, he was 23 years old, still living in a government care center for adults with disabilities. Had we found a family to adopt him and give him the treatment he needed, his life would have gone a much different direction.

Every Child Deserves a Family

I have been working in the field of international adoption and global child welfare for 23 years and have traveled and worked in numerous countries as a Holt team member. In the early days of my career, as a social worker in Vietnam, I worked with hundreds of children living in orphanages as well as their birth parents.

I also worked with many single mothers and parents who needed help caring for their children. The same as Holt social workers help families around the world today, I engaged parent(s) in various Holt programs that would help them provide for their children — from educational support, free daycare and nutrition and health services to economic empowerment programs that helped them earn a stable income.

All of these efforts were with one overarching goal in mind — preventing children from separating from their birth families.

These efforts were successful for hundreds of children and families that I worked with. Families were empowered with the tools and resources they needed to independently care for their children — and their children were able to thrive in the loving care of their families.

Unfortunately, there were — and always are — children who could not and cannot remain with their birth parents.

Some of them came into orphanage care after being found abandoned, their birth parents unknown. They were abandoned in hospitals, found at the front gates of orphanages, or found in any public places. Other children were formally relinquished by their birth parents and placed into orphanages for various reasons. In some cases, their parent(s) were imprisoned. In others, their parents had poor health and could not care for their child, or their child had a disability that required medical and therapeutic care that they could not afford. In Vietnam, as in many countries, single mothers faced a strong social stigma for having a child out of wedlock. Under great societal pressure, many of these women chose to relinquish their child. (Today, this stigma has lessened somewhat — and with support from Holt and other organizations, more single and unwed mothers are choosing to parent their children.)  

At Holt International, we believe the best place for a child to grow up is in a family. But it’s not even a matter of belief. Over the years, there have been numerous evidence-based studies that show the long-term harm of institutionalization on the cognitive, physical and emotional wellbeing of children. This is why our mission is to help children grow up in families, not institutions.

Our number one priority is to help keep children with their birth families, whenever possible. For abandoned and relinquished children who cannot reunite with their families, we work with local partners and government authorities to find local adoptive parents so that they can remain in their countries and cultures.

But not every child can be adopted locally. This was and still is the situation today.

In Vietnam, as in most countries, adoptive parents were and are only open to young and healthy babies, not older children or children with medical, emotional and developmental needs. These children — children like Hoang and Quan and Tan — are the children who are at greatest risk to grow up in orphanages.

These are the children who are waiting for adoptive families through international adoption. For these children, it’s critical that international adoption continue. It’s not a perfect process, but it has changed tremendously over the decades to uphold the best interest of children.

How Adoption Has Changed in Countries Overseas

Over the past 23 years, I have seen how adoption has evolved from both sides — in foreign countries where vulnerable children and families we serve reside, and in the U.S. where we support adoptive families with their adoption process.

Here are a few of the changes I have witnessed in our partnering countries overseas:

Improved Counseling for Birth Families

One critical change I saw is how child welfare workers counsel birth parents who are in the process of relinquishing their child for adoption.

In many countries, these workers were not equipped to handle such an emotionally hard process working with birth mothers. But as social work practice has evolved in countries overseas, child welfare workers receive far more education about how best to work with birth parents. Critically, birth parents also receive options counseling to help them decide whether to parent or relinquish their child for adoption in the first place. With Holt support, parents can receive job skills training, help with food, nutrition and respite care, and other resources they would need to parent their child, if that is ultimately their choice.  

More Preparation for Older Children

Today, more than 75% of the children placed for international adoption are now older than 5 years old — or they have special medical, developmental or emotional needs. For the older children, one change I have seen in overseas adoption practice is how they are prepared to join a family in a different country.

Everywhere Holt works, child welfare practitioners — from caregivers to orphanage staff to government officials — all agree that children need to be prepared and supported prior to an adoption placement. Across the globe, Holt has helped develop this pre-adoption preparation for children. Families are now requested to send photo albums and gifts to their adopted child. In some countries, they can attend video calls with their adopted child to help develop connection and bonding. Many orphanage staff and social workers prioritize discussing with the child about their new parents and family, about the culture or way of life in a new country, address their questions and fear, etc. This has helped ease the transition for many children as they join their adoptive families in the U.S.

Preserving a Child’s Health Information

Documentation of a child’s health information is another in-country facet of international adoption that has greatly improved through the years.

Today, child welfare practitioners and government authorities around the world understand more about the importance of documenting and preserving a child’s background and developmental information as soon as they enter into care — or even in the period of time before they enter care, if available and possible. When asked to share about a child’s health or development, I used to see child reports that described a child’s development in only one word — either “Normal” or “None” or “No.”  

As the field of international child welfare in general and international adoption in particular has evolved, child welfare practitioners and government entities now put greater focus on training adoption workers to document detailed information about the children. Not only does this help adoption social workers in the U.S. and other countries as they seek the family best suited to meet the needs of each child, but it also equips potential families with information they need to prepare to parent that child.

A Continual Learning Process

As we learn more about the needs of children and families in an adoption process, the field of international adoption has strengthened practices to better serve the children, adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents involved. These are just a few among many changes to adoption social work practice in countries overseas over the years. And as we continue to learn and evolve, I am sure these changes will not be the last.

Learn more about Holt’s work and history!

At Holt International, we help children thrive in the love and stability of a family. But our services extend far beyond the adoption work we are known for.

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I’ve been working in post adoption services for over 16 years. While unique histories and individual circumstances have brought thousands of adult adoptees to us over the years, many come asking similar questions about topics like adoption files and birth search. I’ll be providing insights and answers to some of those questions in this limited series I’m calling “Tips from Post Adoption Services.”

Part One: Adoption File Copies

Adoptees requesting copies of their files is an extremely popular service. While people tend to think birth search would be the primary driver for seeking a copy of an adoption file, there are several other reasons adoptees might want their file. Something tangible to accompany their memories of childhood stories, general inquiries into where they’re from, scrapbooking, wanting to share it with family and loved ones or confirming the spelling of their name before they were adopted are just a few of these reasons.

Interested in starting the process? Here are my top five tips about file copy inquiries to start your journey.

1. It is every adoptee’s right to see their adoption file. If Holt International was your placing agency, we’ll have a file for you. These files will vary slightly depending on multiple factors: the year of the adoption, country of origin, whether it was an open or closed adoption, etc. Generally, you can expect to find information about the adoption process and any adoptee material (legal relinquishment papers, medical checkups, foster parent reports, etc.) that was recorded and gathered on you during the time you were in care in the sending country. There is typically little information about birth family contained in your U.S. file.
2. If your adoptive parents kept track of all the information given to them during the adoption process, we’ll have nothing new to offer. Everything we have on the adoptee, including any birth family information that was provided to us at the time of adoption, is given to the adoptive parents during the adoption process. In theory, the file we have won’t contain anything different than the file your parents already possess.
3. Depending on your country of origin, you may have other adoption files in the sending country. The overseas file may contain additional information on birth family and background. However, it’s at the discretion of the sending country to determine what’s legal and appropriate to share. Unfortunately, we have no control over what the sending country deems suitable to share.
4. We rarely have copies of the Certificate of Citizenship (C.O.C.). Many adoptees reach out to us asking for this document for a variety of reasons like obtaining a passport, applying for federal financial aid, applying for social security or Medicaid benefits, applying for a driver’s license and others. This document, proving the adoptee’s U.S. citizenship, is typically obtained after the finalization of the adoption. Because of this, there is no formal process to inform us of receipt of the C.O.C., and it is usually absent in the materials we possess in your file. Exceptions do exist, as some parents have sent us a copy of the document for our records or have sent legal documentation that the C.O.C. has been obtained, but typically we won’t have a copy.
5. There is a $25 administrative fee when obtaining a copy of your file. We house roughly 65,000 adoption files in a secure off-site facility in Portland, Oregon, where they are archived and stored. Files are delivered to us each week, but if a file is needed urgently, it can be pulled and delivered to our office within 24 hours. This fee mitigates the cost of storage and retrieval because we are charged for the storage and each pull. If you cannot afford the file copy fee, there is financial aid available. We are happy to work with you to figure out how to get your file.

If you’re interested in obtaining copies of your adoption files, please reach out to the post-adoption services team at pas@holtinternational.org and we’d be delighted to assist you.

About the author

Steve Kalb, Director of Post Adoption Services, is an adult adoptee from the Midwest.  He received his masters of social work in 2009 and is currently pursuing his PhD in social work and social research, focusing on adoptee community and empowerment models.  Since 2005, Steve has worked directly with hundreds of adoptees through adoptee camps and birth search counseling.  He has seen the need for, and benefit of, a strong adoptee community; that experience guides his adoptee advocacy work at Holt.

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One of the hardest jobs we have in the post-adoption department at Holt is to inform an adoptee that a birth search is not possible.

By the time adoptees come to us about initiating a search, they have given it a lot of thought.  They are searching for connection — an answer to questions about their identity, where they come from and who they look like.  Some come to us knowing that the chance of locating a birth parent is not very high, and yet, they remain hopeful. Others come with a deep yearning to fill a hole inside them that can only be filled by reconnecting with the parents that gave them life.

When we are unable to help them fill that gap in their life — when we cannot give them the answers they so desperately seek — it is heartbreaking.

I have seen so many files through the years that they have begun to run together. But I have also always understood the importance of these documents to each individual adoptee. Recently, my awareness of the importance of these documents has become more intense.

Their Only Link to the Past

Lately, I have been working with a number of older adoptees — providing them copies of their child materials as well as determining if a birth search is possible.  In some cases, adoptees have never seen their child materials before. Or they want to know if there is anything new in the file that they haven’t seen or never received from their parents. In some cases, they need proof of citizenship in order to obtain social security benefits. In all cases, this information has or will have a profound effect on the adoptee — regardless of the reason for asking for the documents.

This is their history — their only link to their past.

For those of us who are not adopted, we can sometimes take it for granted that we never have to ask where we came from or who I look like. I know that my mom is of German descent and my father is Puerto Rican. I know I look a bit like my father but take more after my mom. There are times I look at my hands and I see my mother’s hands. I know my medical history because I can just ask my parents. I have connection. It is when I look through these files that I realize the privilege I have as a non-adoptee that most adoptees don’t.

The papers in these files are the only connection to their past — to who they were before they came to live with their adoptive parents.

The Importance of Preserving Child Material

Holt maintains a file for every child we have placed in our past 60-plus years. All of our more than 40,000 files are stored in an offsite secure storage facility. Their care and safety is our priority as we know all too well how important this information is to the adoptees we serve.

The child material in an adoption file usually includes how the child came into care, medical information, and may or may not include information about birth parents. It also may include the legal documents from the adoptee’s country of birth.

Holt’s post-adoption department provides copies of these child materials to adult adoptees and, on occasion, to adoptive parents when requested.  All this information was shared with the adoptive parents at the time of adoption.  However, as time passes, this information may get lost or destroyed.

Not only is it important for the agencies to preserve this information, it’s also important for adoptive parents to preserve it as well. In a lot of ways, more so. You are the keepers of your child’s history. You are the one they will ask what their life was like before they came home.  You are the ones that they will come to trust.

Share this information with your children early on, no matter the information. Allow your kids to ask questions and answer as honestly as you can. You are the safe place they can come to learn about their past and feel what they need to feel about it.

Even though we maintain a copy, it’s vital that you keep this information in a safe place. As you may have some information (such as legal documents) that we may not have in our files, maintaining the files becomes even more important; it may be the only copy.

Not only is this important information to your child, but how you take care of it shows that you find it important, too — and understand what it means to them. You are showing your child that you honor and respect their history, and the value it holds to them.

Being as open and sharing as much information about their history is vital to growing a healthy identity.  Even if that information is difficult, it is still a part of their history.

Holt Supports Adoptees for Life

When we work with adult adoptees and share copies of their file, we make sure they know that we are here to support them and help them make sense of the information. This is an important part of the work we do and of Holt’s commitment to the adoptees we serve. It isn’t always easy, especially if this is the first time they see their information, but it is important.

As adoptive parents, we appreciate your help in holding this information, honoring it and sharing it with your child. Together, maybe we can help our adoptees know, while we may not have all the answers they need, we can and will give them everything we have and be there to support them on this journey.

Sunday M. Silver, M.A.  | Records and Information Administrator

If you are concerned about sharing difficult information with your child and not sure how to approach the subject, Holt’s PACE program (Post Adoption Coaching and Education) is a wonderful resource for adoptive parents. We can provide tools and support on how to talk about adoption and/or share difficult information with your child.

Holt Post Adoption Services

Holt offers lifelong support to all adoptees, adoptive families, birth parents, caregivers and others whose lives have been touched by adoption.

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In part 2 of our birth search video series, we talk about elements of the actual process to search. We break down a couple of the concrete steps that are taken to give you a better idea about what birth search may look like for you.

Buckle up everybody! In the third and final part of our birth search video series we sit down to discuss the possible outcomes of search. In this video, four adult Adoptees sit down to have a candid conversation with each other about the possible outcomes of search.

Not all Adoptees have access to other Adoptees to discuss these heavy and complex topics so we invite you to take part in these candid conversations with us.

Holt Post Adoption Services

Holt offers lifelong support to all adoptees, adoptive families, birth parents, caregivers and others whose lives have been touched by adoption.

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The post Let’s Talk About Birth Search! appeared first on Holt International.

In our focus to serve children and families, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that being adopted doesn’t stop at age 18. Adoptees grow up. They become husbands and wives, doctors, teachers, businessmen and women, parents and grandparents. They work, travel and play. And, sometimes, they have questions they can’t answer without assistance.

Part of my job at Holt is to help adult adoptees discover their background. I speak with and email hundreds and hundreds of adoptees from many different countries now living in the U.S. I provide them with file copies, citizenship assistance, historical and cultural information, and for some, I help determine if a birth search is possible. It’s a part of my job that I enjoy tremendously.

As a child welfare organization, Holt’s primary focus is on helping children and families. This is what we’re known for, and proud of. Over our 60-year history, Holt has placed over 40,000 children into permanent families. But how many of those children are no longer children? Well, Holt’s post-adoption department works with over 2,800 adult adoptees annually, providing over 3,800 services. Adult adoptees make up about 70% of the total services we provide to adoptees, adoptive families and birth families.

Before I came to Holt, I had no idea that adoptees in their 30s and 40s would still need our help and support. I thought, as many do, that adoption services end shortly after a child comes home. But as I mentioned, the majority of the population that I serve are adult adoptees.

So why would an adoptee need Holt’s help? I could probably provide a different example for every day of the 11 years that I’ve been at Holt. Below are just a few of them (I use the names “Jane” and “John” simply for the purpose of telling a story. They are not real people.)

Jane, age 45, moved to another state and needs to have her driver’s license changed. To do so she is asked to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Jane doesn’t know what she needs to prove this; she was always told that her adoption made her a citizen. Her parents are elderly and she doesn’t know what to do. Holt was able to help her by reviewing her file to look for evidence of her naturalization. We also put her in contact with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to replace the Certificate of Naturalization that was lost years before. Jane was able to obtain a new certificate and obtain her new license.

John, age 38, is planning to marry in Europe, where his fiancé grew up. The overseas government is asking for a number of adoption documents that John and his parents can’t locate in their files. John calls Holt to obtain a copy of his file, believing the documents would be on file. After reviewing his file and the list of requirements, we were able to provide copies of his adoption documents, and explain that some of the documents requested were not part of a typical adoption from Korea during that time period. Using these copies, and our letter explaining the adoption process as it was 30+ years ago, John is able to present his case to the government and obtain the marriage license.

Jane, age 40, has a copy of her adoption documents from her adoptive parents, but she doesn’t understand what most of them mean to her so she calls Holt. After determining which documents she has, we are able explain the purpose of each of the legal forms from her birth country. We discuss how she came into care, the cultural implications of an unwed pregnancy during that era in that country, why certain phrases are used in the intake history or child progress reports. For some adoptees, clarifying a single point on an intake history can change how the adoptee views their history. For Jane, her intake report stated that she was transferred from a particular “police box” to the orphanage. Jane has always believed she was abandoned in a cardboard box on the steps of the police station. In Korea, a “police box” is a smaller satellite office of a large police department, not an actual box. By contacting Holt’s post-adoption services team, Jane was able to gain a better understanding of her past.

You may notice the topic of birth search and reunion isn’t mentioned in these stories. Over the years, I’ve discovered that most people immediately think of birth search as the primary reason for adoptees to contact their agency. In fact, birth search is only around two percent of the total services my team and I provide. Adoptee-specific background information and/or file copies comprise 25-30 percent of the total, with another 10 percent of services for citizenship issues.

Adoptees grow up. Some need our help. Some don’t. For those who do, Holt is here.

Deb Hanson | Former Holt team member

Holt Post Adoption Services

Holt offers lifelong support to all adoptees, adoptive families, birth parents, caregivers and others whose lives have been touched by adoption.

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