Adoption's changing face

Yesterday the Olympic torch was carried through our town.  I don't watch the Olympics but it is very unlikely to see the torch again.  Despite the amount of police being in force there was a nice atmosphere and the weather was good.

I am taking each day as it comes.  Severe depression comes and go so I try to concentrate on things that will distract me.  It has become easier to read these days.  I am choosing which battles I am willing to continue standing my stand.  It is easier just to 'walk away' from individuals who refuse to educate themselves and attack mothers like me.  They simply get pleasure from hurting mothers for no better reason than they can.  There are far more important battles to fight and win.  Adoption reform is an important battle as the myths and lies need to be exposed.

People will choose to believe adoption happens for good reasons.  After all who is going to believe that social workers will lies, disregard doctors, psychiatrist and police reports.  They will write that a mother is willing to surrender her baby even when she doesn't.  They will hold back information that can help a mother to keep her child or continually move goal posts just to make an adoption possible.  Relatives are refused guardianship simply because they may let the parents see the child or refused being allowed to adopt because they are too old or they are Christians.  No regard for the mother's wishes are taken into account.  It's all about what social workers want and how much funding they can get from the government.  Don't get me wrong there are good social workers out there and I have got to know them   They do their best to keep families and only keep children in foster care or get them adopted when it's truly in the child's best interests.  These social workers work within the system trying to improve it as that is better than losing their jobs and not being able to help families.
 
These days it is more about educating people that adoption isn't always in the child's best interests and coerced adoptions still happen.  These days it isn't so much about clear cut coercion and more about 'persuasion' that open adoption is wonderful.  What people don't understand is that open adoption can be closed even if it is written in the paperwork.  Also adoptive parents can move or get divorced, there are no guarantees in this world.