A Day in the Life of a Gladney Intern

Today I had the chance to go to Adoption Day at the Fort Worth courthouse. It was so exciting, heartwarming and emotional. In Texas, once a prospective adoptive family has been approved to adopt and has taken placement of a baby (after the birthmother relinquishes), the family is under a supervisory period for six months before they can finalize the adoption with a judge. During that six month supervisory period, the baby (or child) comes to live with the family but the adoptive parents have not yet established firm legal parenting rights. Once the six month period is over, the parents must go to court to finalize the adoption with a judge. They may do so any day they would like, but many families choose to wait until Adoption Day which takes place once a month at the Fort Worth courthouse. The courtroom was decorated with balloons and stuffed animals and about twenty families gathered with their children, friends and relatives to finalize the adoption. Rather than feeling like a s...

This week I went to Austin with Heidi Bruegel Cox for a two-day meeting of the Adoption Review Committee , which was appointed by the governor. The Committee is charged with identifying barriers to adopting out of foster care and creating legislative proposals to overcome those obstacles so that children in the foster care system can find permanency more quickly. On Wednesday the Committee heard testimony from individuals and families who had fostered or sought to adopt children from CPS ( Child Protective Services ) but felt that CPS created barriers to the adoption that was damaging to their family and to the children. A common theme throughout their testimonies was that the current foster care reimbursement system disincentivizes adoption. Parents who had been fostering medically fragile children – some of whom suffered from degenerative conditions that weaken and deteriorate their bodies and who required treatment from multiple specialists – find themselves financially unable to a...