Frozen Children, Icy Silence--Time To Adopt Openness

Washington Post by Marc Fisher | Oct. 5, 2008 (Opinion)

In the reflexively privacy-obsessed world of adoptions, it is somehow an imposition if the public wants to know where the state's wards end up, who is collecting the stipends taxpayers shell out to encourage adoption and how all that money is being spent. We know best, social workers say.

But anytime public money is involved, it's the public's job to demand oversight and accountability, and the only road to that goal is transparency. Full Story »

Posted by Ann Wilmer

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by Jeanne Roberts - Oct. 5, 2008

Excellent journalism by a recognized contributor on the failure of much of the U.S. adoption system to recognize the need for greater transparency in the process to avoid abuses like the one discussed. Adoption is no longer a "dirty secret" which needs to be closeted, but a process involving highly vulnerable young people, and greater transparency will insure these young receive decent homes rather than abusive, or possibly even deadly, ones. As a former foster parent, I agree wholeheartedly with Fisher's suggestion.