Abstract
An adoption program must be geared to the needs of the children under its care. The rights of its children must be its primary concern. Among the children for whom agencies are seeking adoptive homes are those children free for adoption but not readily placeable because of the resistance of adoptive applicants to consider them—for example, the older boy, the child with a physical defect, the child with some mental retardation, the child with emotional problems.
Social workers have a responsibility to interpret agency adoption practices to the general public and so gain their support. Before we can do that, however, we must re-examine our own practices, discard what may no longer be valid, develop what we are convinced is good. Only by a thorough knowledge of our own theories, techniques, and practices can we hope to give knowledge to others and so ultimately carry out the responsibility with which we have been charged by the community.
The placement of children for adoption through accredited agencies is both the problem and the responsibility of all social agencies, hospitals, and shelters. It is the job of the social worker, in whatever setting he may be, to interpret to the public wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself, the advantages of agency placements; to point out that there is no easy and painless path to parenthood through adoption but that there is a safe way—the agency way. No matter how attractive the black or gray market placement may appear, it is only the adoption agency that offers safeguards and protection to children, natural parents, and adoptive parents.
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