Open Letter #2 - Adoption Professionals

WARNING: this letter contains profanity that some may find offensive and inappropriate. The prologue of this book warned about this but I realize some may not have read that. As with the entire book, the language was used to express the energy and emotion felt by the author. So if bad language is hard for you to stomach, you have been forewarned that you may wish to skip this letter. But I also wish to remind everyone that this is one section of a much larger book that is being posted piece by piece. It is not a normal autonomous thread to Guatadopt and should not be read as such.

An open letter to the practitioners of intercountry adoption
By Kevin Kreutner

Let me begin by stating that I believe there are many fine intercountry adoption practitioners. In fact, I believe that the vast majority of people working in intercountry adoption are ethical and truly trying to help children gain much needed permanency. In addition, I take no issue with adoption providers earning good incomes. If I can make six figures marketing food items to restaurants, surely someone creating families deserves the same. I do feel that you can be a capitalist and watch out for your own bottom line without sacrificing your scruples or morality.

There are also far too many adoption providers who are complete scumbags and will certainly burn in hell eternally with the likes of those who molest children, and beat on puppy dogs. There are people who could care less about the children, where they go, the care they receive during the process, or whatever may have been done to get that child “available” for adoption.

This open letter is directed at the prior of the two groups. Because in the case of the latter, they are so slimy that surely no letter from me is going to shake their karma into becoming worthy of the air they breathe. But while this letter targets the ethical providers out there, its content heavily contends with their responsibilities to filter out their scumbag peers.

There is not one adoption provider who can claim that intercountry adoption systems are as they should be. There is not a single country program that could be used as a gold standard or benchmark for others. The reason for this is that those with the potential to be the best are also those with the greatest opportunity for corruption. To the good providers, this is not new news.

Because systems are not what they should, or could, be, everyone who is involved in it has the responsibility to root out corruption and exploitation. And by that I mean the exploitation of birthmothers, children, and adoptive parents alike. Only you have the ability to enact this type of change because only you know exactly the types of things that do occur.

It is not enough for you to run your own agency or law office by the letter of the law. You have a voluntary obligation to improve the systems you work in and the industry of which you are a part.

Voluntary obligation?

Why?

I can take this from a number of angles. The first being that of self-perseverance. If systems don’t improve and corruption, even if only in a miniscule percent of cases, is known, then you know better than I what will happen. The country will eventually close and the opportunity to provide homes for the majority of children in clean cases will cease. Look at El Salvador, Ecuador, Paraguay, India, Viet Nam and Cambodia to name a few countries. In each of these cases genuine corruption in a minority of cases resulted in a shutdown. Some were by the sending country and some by the United States. Either way the end result is the same – children no longer can find homes with loving parents in the United States. And if the countries close one by one because of a few bad apples, sooner or later you too shall rot. In short, at the rate things have happened in the last 10-20 years, your scumbag brethren are threatening genocide to your profession. No more open countries can only mean no more intercountry adoption professionals.

This rationale of self-perseverance is even more relevant to those working in the sending countries. Unlike the U.S. adoption agencies that can move on and start to focus on the “next” country, you are stuck. If the adoptions end, you need to immediately find a new way of earning a living. Please understand this because you may get a false sense of security if you rely only on your agency peers to keep things clean. Don’t forget, they have other adoption options for the time being – you don’t! This is extremely important because you more than anyone can help change the way adoptions are serviced in your countries.

The second reason why I call to a voluntary obligation to help improve adoption systems is because the fact of the matter is that human beings are frail and not deep thinking. This holds as true for adoptive parents as much as anyone else. As more and more stories of adoption professionals going astray become public, it places scars on all of you. Yes, we adoptive parents can stereotype you. We can come to believe that you are all crooked. We can begin to not trust you at all – even if for no good reason. And suddenly you can find yourself being persecuted and stereotyped even though you may have done nothing wrong. Not sure you believe me? I challenge you take an anonymous poll of adoptive parents who have synched into the adoption internet community. Even those of us who had positive experiences operate with a certain amount of distrust and skepticism. This is even true of me, someone who works closely with adoption professionals on advocacy efforts. Another piece of evidence to how you are all judged by your weakest link would be an analogy with politicians. Most elected officials are good people trying to serve their country and their constituency. But no one in his right mind trusts a single one of the bastards. So unless you want to be thrown into the same basket as the scum, you best do something about them!

My last reason for citing a voluntary obligation is the most important one – because it is the right fucking thing to do. Anyone who knows about true crimes being committed that hurt people and jeopardize children has the responsibility to do something about it. You can not just sit back aware of these things and take the stance that if it’s not your case, it’s not your problem. You know damn well that the scumbags who did whatever it was once will make it their mode of operation if no one stops them. Which means more victims. Call it religion, call it karma, call it humanity, but more importantly call the cops, call the licensing agencies, call the press, call the embassy – just do something about it!

This voluntary obligation is not being met today, not even by the most ethical and proactive of adoption professionals. While you wish you could do more, you have for some reason fallen prey to a faulty line of reasoning and a dose of denial. I don’t believe that you are intentionally perpetuating the problems. I believe you genuinely believe that you are doing all you realistically can. But I also believe in the grand scheme that this is essentially bullshit.

The faulty line of reasoning is one that leads you to believe that if you openly admit to the problems that do exist, you are setting yourselves up for disaster. You believe that doing so only hands ammunition to the enemy, intensifying the attacks on intercountry adoption and adding credibility to those seeking to end it. Instead you find it more prudent to operate underground in your attempts to eliminate the scumbags. You work quietly through relationships you have with this bureaucrat or that politician. You slowly manage to eliminate some of the bad seeds while leaving the systematic vulnerabilities in tact. And that is the issue. If you instead focused on the systematic issues, we’d be more likely to create better systems. No matter how hard other groups in the adoption community try to understand the systems’ vulnerabilities, only the adoption providers truly have a good grasp of the entirety of the problem.

So why did I define your reasoning as faulty?

Quite simply, it is at best a short-term solution. Eventually the powers that be will catch up. Some scumbag will make a mistake. Someone’s records will turn up evidence that will be construed as proof of institutionalized corruption. It is only a matter of time. In other words, by not being upfront and accepting some risk in order to bring attention to the issues, you are slowly but surely pounding in the nails on the coffin of that country’s intercountry adoption system. Once again, this is more so the case for the practitioners in the sending countries. The agencies can figure its best to milk each country as long as possible and then move on. By not openly attacking the corruption, they can avoid more challenges while the country is open. And then once it closes, they can jump ship. But to those of you in the sending country, you ain’t going anywhere! If you instead face the problems head-on, you can gain credibility with all the powers that be. Your suggestions and ideas will be able to be judged credible and objective. You will be able to become a part of the solution rather than a spectator to the problem.

I also mentioned that there is a real problem with denial. By this I mean that the best practitioners are the best for a reason. You know the people you work with. You have established policies for your cases that ensure little to any funny stuff occurs. You have no knowledge of any improprieties in any of your cases. This causes you to think that the same must be true of others. And when you do hear of problems, you minimize the extent to which you believe it is going on.

I think it is worth the time to give an example of how this denial occurs. Take the issue of birthmother payments being used to induce women to get pregnant or to relinquish a child. I have had good, honest adoption professionals tell me about how they have met birthmothers who are incredibly grateful that their child will be able to grow up healthy and secure. And after having met tens, maybe hundreds, of these women they conclude that the birthmoms’ sincerity was so pure that there is no reason to believe that adoption professionals would need to supply monetary incentives. The sincerity of the birthmoms unfortunately does not really lead to the conclusion – this is denial.

Another example would come from criticism I have shared about some adoption providers with other providers. My criticism has been based on personal contact with former clients that I know to be bright, honest, and sane. Yet the adoption providers will disagree with me based on some professional involvement they have had with the peer. Well I hate to tell you this, but very few of the scumbags will admit to being so while at a professional conference! They will all claim to be ethical providers. They will talk the talk even if they have yet even learned to walk. You are in denial because you have somehow rationalized a way to discount the true experiences of adoptive parents who experienced first hand how that person operates.

It is very dangerous when you get to the point where you have a natural tendency to believe the fellow adoption provider over the account of some former client who experienced their travesties first hand. The reason being that it creates a complacency that allows not only the provider peers to run free, but also the system as a whole. As soon as any chain in the link of involvement is allowed to weaken, it spreads like a cancer throughout.

I can fully realize the difficult position that you find yourselves in. And more than just about any adoptive parent not gainfully employed in intercountry adoption, I realize the incredibly difficult career field you have chosen. I do fully comprehend that you have to deal with difficult bureaucrats, crooked and incompetent governments, uncertain associates, and people who seemed normal until they officially became your clients. Yet you must realize that you have chosen an incredibly special career field – one that requires excessive consideration. Your jobs are not irrelevant like say someone who markets food products for a living. No matter how well or poorly I do my marketing job, no one will really suffer. This is not the same for adoption providers. In reality, your positions fit more in-line with that of doctors, teachers, clergy and police.

Now don’t start crying about the immense amount of responsibility I have handed you. I realize that I’ve compared you with clergy and they are charged with doing god’s work! But to this agnostic – your job is more important. If someone sins, they can get theirs in the hereafter - if adoption providers fail, innocent children and adoptive parents suffer in the here and now. Nonetheless you all should consider yourselves fortunate and I will not offer sympathy for your chosen field. You are blessed with an ability to do the work that many would claim only god can do – create families.

On one occasion, by sure chance, I was given the honor of telling a family that their adoption was completed. It only happened because I knew their foster family and got the news that the case was complete before the agency had the chance to tell the family. When I told them that they were done, I didn’t realize that they didn’t already know! When it became clear that I had just given them the good news, an amazing energy passed through me. I didn’t even know them – this was the first time we had ever spoken. I was only calling to tell them that they had the most wonderful foster mother in the world and that I had met their future son who was doing well. But as I passed on the good news I was able to feel the complete joy in the hearts of these strangers at the other end of the phone line. The experience was amazing and it is something that you get to do on a regular basis. I can’t imagine the wonderful karma you must gain every time you take a couple struggling to become parents and make that dream a reality. But I hope you grasp how fortunate you are. There are many of us who go through our professional lives with little to no spiritual satisfaction. We deal with the daily reality that the manner in which we earn our living is essentially irrelevant. You do not have that problem – appreciate it!

There is one other primary area that I believe all adoption providers could use a firm kick in the ass about – treating your clients with respect. Some of the best, most ethical adoption providers I know have a tendency to take their proper behavior and sterling reputations too much to heart and as a result do their clients a disservice (Hannah, if you are reading this, I am not referring to you!). Granted, this is not even close to the disservice unethical providers inflict on their clients. But if we are to be visionaries, we MUST strive for perfection!

Adoption is a very difficult emotional process for the parents. It is generally preceded by an extended period of suffering through infertility. Adoptive parents are scared, often having heard numerous stories about unscrupulous providers. We are also nervous. We haven’t seen hundreds or thousands adoptions completed and we understandably want everything to be perfect and smooth in our own cases. We also are privy to a plethora of differing sources of information. If we go to any public adoption internet list and ask about any agency we are likely to find some who love them and some who hate them. Ask basic questions about how long some step in the process should take and we likely hear anywhere from three days to three years. And we will most certainly hear from someone about how his/her agency or lawyer completely zoned out and dropped the ball, despite a stellar reputation, and as a result the child’s homecoming took much longer than necessary.

This is the environment your clients come from.

Empathize!

Nurture!

Communicate!

Tell us what is going on. Give us progress reports. E-mail us just to say “no new news” if that’s the case. We are scared to call you and bother you. We are afraid of what will happen if we piss off our agency or attorney. We are as fucking paranoid as a crack addict jonesing and waiting for a delivery at a hotel where the police are having a convention. Don’t bring us to the point of needing to worry about asking a simple question. And when we ask a simple question, answer us! Answer us quickly and clearly. Take a minute and a half to read our question and make sure you understand it. If you don’t, call us. I personally guarantee that we parents will get back to you with extreme speed. Also make sure you read the whole e-mail to be certain you answer all the questions we have.

I have personally experienced the occasional crazy client you come across. I do not imply that they do not exist. But you know what? Life’s a bitch and sometimes you have to contend with some psychos. It’s not fun but it also is not something that you can make your normal clients pay for. So just deal with them. I don’t mean to minimize the stress that these people may cause. And obviously you can’t spend all day answering one whacko client’s eight thousand questions. But I also believe that it is poor client management that causes many people to become lunatics. More often than not, clients become crazy because you are not delivering a satisfactory level of service. Adoptive parents get put in an atrocious situation when that happens. We are in for the long haul. We’re not done with you until we get our child home. And once we come to feel that you are not really representing us appropriately, be that a true or false judgement, we will go crazy.

To give an example to this I only need to look so far as our own adoption. We had a good ethical provider. But she was horrendous about answering calls or replying to e-mails. There were numerous occasions when she was posting to public internet lists, answering other peoples’ questions, while our questions were still unanswered. How were we to react? Would it then become wrong to start e-mailing daily, hourly, or by the minute? After all, we know that she’s on-line. We know that she’s reading e-mail. And surely if she’s reading and replying to a public list she is not so busy solving some other client’s crisis that she lacks the time to answer ours. But what do we do? We could bombard her with e-mails and voicemails. But then would she get pissed off and not push our case through? We could be scared and just bite our fingernails. But then the anger at her flakiness would cost us sleep and ruin our daily lives. We could, as we did, just try to remain calm and wait. Ultimately that worked and everything went fine. But you know what? That caused us a lot of stress that did not need to occur! If we almost turned into psychotic clients – anyone can.

You also have an obligation to treat us like adults. After all, you are aiding and abetting us in our efforts to bring a child into our home – forever. If we are not mature enough to handle anything that comes from the adoption process, then how could you even think of facilitating us becoming mom and dad? Seriously, think about it!

So why do I seem to have the impression that adoption professionals do not treat their clients like adults? Because often times you don’t! We can handle the truth. We can deal with any wrench that gets thrown at us. This doesn’t mean we won’t need some emotional support. It just means that providing that support is part of why we pay you. There is no need to soften the blows that can occur in intercountry adoption. There is no need to protect us from the truth. At the earliest stages of any issue you have the ethical responsibility to be upfront and let the chips fall where they may. Don’t protect us unless we have asked you to do so.

Despite much of what you may have just read, I believe that all in all you do a good job. And while I hoped I could write this only to the good providers out there, I will end it with a message to all adoption professionals. I do this now because frankly some of you probably believe you are on the good side when in actuality you really suck.

You work in an industry that does require special consideration. You are dealing with the lives of innocent children. You are managing a process that is unlike anything else your clients will ever experience. You must accept full responsibility for the actions of those you associate yourself with. If you are hiring someone to work on one of your clients’ adoption, then whatever they do is your responsibility. Just as it is complete utter bullshit when Nike claims that it doesn’t employ any child labor even though their contractors, who manufacture only for Nike, do hire children, you can’t get away with the “we can’t control foreign service providers” excuse. You hired them and your clients hired and trusted you. If you can’t find good people to work with then don’t do adoptions! It is that painfully simple. We all make mistakes. But when people don’t learn from them and continue to hand out cases to evil associates, they become as guilty as can be.

You also have a responsibility to the trade. Yours is a trade that is under constant scrutiny. You know damn well what I mean! And if the trade fails, children suffer. I know this a lot to place on your shoulders but tough shit, that’s the way it is. No one made you become an adoption provider. You could have taken the easy route and marketed food products if you wanted the simple, mundane way out. But you didn’t and now you have to pay the price.

Realize that while there are many good peers in your trade, there are also way too many slimebags. Despite whatever you may have experienced yourself with someone, remember that you are not experiencing that person as a client. As hard as it may be, be extremely skeptical about how your professional friends behave. As soon as you become trusting and sure, you become complacent and they may be making a fool of you. You must work hard to root out the scumbags in your profession. They are a malignant tumor on every good person who works in adoption.

Try to understand that your clients are good people who have been through an incredibly traumatic time in their lives and are heading into a more difficult period. Deciding to adopt internationally and following through on that decision are enough to drive anyone insane. In order to minimize the impact of this craziness, be extra honest and upfront. Grasp that once in a while, you’ll get a real loony tune that you will need to manage. But the other 99% of the time, we can handle whatever this stinking world can throw at us.

Intercountry adoption is not what it should be! To a large extent, you are to blame. So stop trying to protect your interests. Stop being afraid of what will happen. Become vigilant! Treat your clients with respect. And revel in the wonderful way you earn a living.

Posted by Kevin at March 21, 2006 06:31 PM