Many people who are planning to build there families through adoption are open to children of races and cultural backgrounds than that are different from their own.  In order to do this, you must first do some soul searching as well as taking a good look at your family, friends and community to make sure that there is cultural diversity in your life in order to meet the needs of your child.  I plan to discuss the subject of transracial or transcultural adoptions in a future article, but I wanted to start this article this way to lead into the possibility of a situation that many families will face: being connected with Birthparents who speak a different language.

In the area where I live there is a huge Hispanic population.  I am fortunate enough to be able to speak Spanish fluently.  When I started working at the pregnancy counseling and adoption agency where I am employed nine years ago, I immediately began offering our services to the Hispanic community.  Throughout the years I have learned things and refined things as I have gone along, but there are a few important things that I wanted to pass on to you if you ever find yourself in the position of being chosen by Birthparents who speak another language.  These concepts include both legal and emotional aspects.  I will start with the legal side of things.

When a Birthparent does not speak the native language of the country, in my case English, it is important that all the legal documents and counseling documents be translated into their language for their review and understanding.  Even though I can speak Spanish fluently and have a small translating business on the side, I found a Hispanic volunteer to translate all of our documents and to be involved in the adoption process if I am working with a Hispanic client who has decided to make an adoption plan.  It is important to have a third party involved for many reasons.

First of all, I can be sure that the clients I work with are getting the appropriate information and that they understand every legal aspect.  When I go to court with a Birthparent to sign a consent to adoption I always take an interpreter with me.  This way the judge knows a non-biased third party is translating information correctly and the Birthparent is being told about their rights and the adoption process.  I have never had it happen, but I wouldn’t want a client to come back years from now and state that I did no inform them of all their legal rights regarding adoption and that they signed the consent with having false information.  Typically the consent that they actually sign in front of the judge is in English because that is what is filed with the courts, so I need to be sure that there is no way that a Birthparent has misunderstood or not understood a particular aspect of the consent before signing it.

Second of all, I have help in giving emotional support to a Birthparent by someone who knows their native tongue.  In many cultures, such as the Hispanic community, adoption is still considered taboo.  I have many Hispanic clients who don’t have any support other than me.  Through the use of a trained volunteer that speaks their language I am able to offer them emotional support from someone else.

In addition to making sure that all legal aspects are covered when working with a client that speaks a language other than your own, there are some important emotional aspects and issues surrounding future contact and exchange of information that need to be covered.  Let’s start from the beginning: putting together your adoption profile.  Obviously if you are open to children of different cultural backgrounds, you could not have your profile translated into every language.  However, if you live in a community with a high population of a particular ethnic group such as Hispanic or Laotian, you could have your profile translated into that particular language.  You can have this done for a reasonable price through a local community college or high school where students or even teachers are always looking for projects.  If you have a friend or acquaintance that speaks that particular language you could ask them for help in translating your profile.  When I am working with a client that speaks Spanish they are typically more likely to choose a family whose profile was translated than to choose a family whose profile I have to read and translate for them.

If you are selected by Birthparents that speak another language, I also encourage you to try to learn that language either through classes or tapes.  Even if you can’t say more than “Hola” and they can’t say more than “Hi” you are both at least attempting to communicate. It will be important for your child to learn that language as well and about the customs and traditions of their Birthparents’ native country.  Make sure that you take the opportunity to learn about these things so you can pass that information on to your child.  If you are planning to maintain contact with the Birthparents, always have a translator present at least for the first few meetings and make the extra effort to have letters or photo captions translated so that Birthparents will know what you are trying to say.  It is also important for you to remember that some gestures are universal.  A hug, smile, handshake and kiss on the cheek all mean pretty much the same thing from country to country.

The thing that you need to keep in mind when working with Birthparents who speak another language is that you want to ensure that their legal and emotional needs are being met and you want to be sure that you understand each other and how each other feels.  Although it does take some extra effort, having documents translated and an interpreter present is beneficial to everyone involved.  The more informed and involved everyone is in the process the smoother it tends to go, which is what everyone wants in the end.

For the past 9 years I have worked with an agency that strictly does newborn placements.  We work with expectant mothers who are considering adoption and we counsel them through their pregnancy and support them no matter what decision they make.  Many of the women we work with want to do a direct placement where the baby leaves the hospital with the adoptive family and this is something we support as well.  The reason I chose to write about this subject more extensively than I did before is that as I am writing this article I am working with a young mother whose child is in interim care with our agency while she makes a decision.  Without interim care, she would not have been able to revisit the idea of adoption after the baby was born because of the rush of emotions she felt when her daughter was finally here.

As an agency, we try to prepare a Birthmother for what the hospital stay will be like, the emotions she will feel the questions she might have. You can only prepare someone so much and the rest they have to experience themselves when the baby is born.  Literally, for most birthmothers, when a baby is born she will have to make her decision all over again.  Before, even though they loved the baby, the baby was just a concept.  When the baby is born he/she becomes reality.

When indecision comes into play, interim care is a safeguard for the adoptive family, Birthmother and the baby.  The adoptive family does not have to live with the fear of the baby being taken from their home, the Birthmother doesn’t have the pressure of making a decision during her short hospital stay and the baby doesn’t have to be moved from place to place.

In this case, the baby was born before the Birthmother had a chance to meet the adoptive family.  She wanted, understandably, to meet them before doing placement and she didn’t want to meet them in the hospital as she was dealing with her own feelings at the time.  Even though she feels like adoption is the best thing for her daughter, she would have opted to parent in place of adoption if she did not have the option of interim care.

Since the baby was born she has met the adoptive family and they plan to meet again to get to know each other before the placement ceremony.  In the meantime, she has allowed the adoptive family to visit the baby in interim care.  She recognizes the value of interim care and, although they would have done an at-risk placement, the adoptive family recognizes the need for it as well.  It has given the Birthmother some time to heal and feel ready to move forward instead of having the pressure to make a rash decision.

This is just one of many instances where interim care can be a good thing.  If we are contacted by a hospital social worker regarding a woman who just delivered and states she wants to make an adoption plan, we always do interim care.  This gives us an opportunity to do counseling with her, to get to know her and to get to know what kind of adoption she wants.  We would never show up at the hospital with a stack of profiles not knowing anything about the situation.  This would be a disservice to her as well as the prospective adoptive families.

A third scenario for the interim care option is when the Birthfather is contesting the adoption.  If he plans to go to court and we don’t know what the outcome might be, we talk to the adoptive family about doing interim care.  Court cases take time and if he has a leg to stand on, he could win the right to prevent the adoption.  This could mean removing a child that has been with a family for many months or even years.

There are other times and reasons that we have suggested interim care.  Anytime we feel like a Birthmother is having a hard time or really on the edge in making her decision we offer it so that she can have more time to make sure that she is making the right decision free of pressure.

Interim care can be a difficult time for adoptive families.  In your heart this is your child and you just want him/her to be home with you.  Instead you have to rely on the foster family to keep the type of schedule you would like or to feed them a certain formula.  If you have the opportunity to visit the baby in foster care, you have to do it on their schedule and you may feel like you don’t want to stay too long because you don’t want to be an imposition while at the same time you would love to pack your bags and move in.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding a specific situation, talk to your agency or attorney about their foster care option.  Ask them about their interim care guidelines and what protocols they follow regarding suggesting it to their clients.  You want to be sure that they are taking everyone’s feelings and rights into account.  As much as you would love to have a newborn in your home, you also want to be sure that they aren’t pressuring a Birthmother.  Pressure could cause her to do something she isn’t ready for or cause her to do the exact opposite because she is feeling too much pressure.

All this being said, I am still a big proponent of direct placements if that is what everyone wants and if the Birthmother feels ready to move forward when the hospital time comes.  I also feel that interim care is an excellent safeguard to have in place just in case.  Every situation and every person is so different so it is always good to explore both options and to know that, even if you have always leaned towards doing a direct placement, sometimes using interim care can be the best for everyone involved.

We have a lot of ceremonies and events to mark special occasions such as baby showers or weddings.  Even though the day a family receives a child is often the most important day in their lives, there isn’t a lot of ceremony surrounding adoption.  For this reason, many adoptive families choose to do Entrustment Ceremonies or Placement Ceremonies to mark the placement of their child, the day they join their forever family.  There are many different ways to do Entrustment Ceremonies.  I’m going to start by telling you how we typically do an Entrustment Ceremony at our agency and then give you guidelines on how to do your own.

When we do Entrustment Ceremonies they are performed at a variety of places.  Sometimes they are done in the chapel at the hospital or in the hospital room.  If a baby has been in interim care or foster care we typically do the ceremony at the chapel at our agency.  There have been times when we did the Placement Ceremony after placement because a Birthparent wanted to be part of the ceremony but needed some time to heal and grieve before she felt ready to be a part of it.

We try to have the adoptive parents and Birthparents both involved in planning the ceremony, but that doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes Birthparents don’t feel that they are ready to take part in a ceremony or they choose to not be a part of the adoption process once they sign papers and we aren’t able to get them involved.  However, a majority of the time the Birthparents we work with choose to help plan the ceremony.

There are a number of things that we include in our Entrustment Ceremonies.  We have a basic ceremony that we do and we allow adoptive parents and Birthparents to add to it.  During our ceremonies we acknowledge everyone involved.  We acknowledge the Birthmother or Birthparents for giving their child life and for the love they have for their child, we acknowledge the adoptive parents as becoming parents and we acknowledge other family members or foster parents when appropriate.

The beginning of the ceremony is when we acknowledge Birthparents and foster parents.  Then we have what we call the “passing of the baby” when the baby is placed in the arms of the adoptive parents.  There are times when only the adoptive parents and their family members are present so we don’t always do the passing of the baby.  We then acknowledge the new family that was made that day.  Various people perform the ceremony from the adoption counselor to an elder in the church to family members.

We allow the adoptive parents and Birthparents to add to the ceremony however they wish.  We have had families write poems, read from the bible or simply talk about their feelings surrounding the day and the baby.  Candle lighting or songs are also very much a part of the Entrustment Ceremony.  It needs to be personalized by all parties involved if at all possible.

Personalization is a key component of a Placement Ceremony.  This is your chance as adoptive parents to be recognized as parents and to recognize the family that you have been dreaming about for a long time.  I encourage you to include whatever is special to you in the ceremony from poems to music to sayings.

Even though you are excited about the Placement Ceremony, it is important that you don’t invite too many people, especially if the Birthfamily is involved.  Birthparents might feel that this is a very private time for them and having too many people around might be overwhelming.  Talk with the Birthparents before you begin to invite people to the ceremony.  You might want to limit it to grandparents, siblings and a close friend or two.  Just as it is a private time for Birthparents, it is a private time for you and you might find yourself glad that you didn’t invite too many people so that you can concentrate on the moment and your own feelings.

If you are going through an agency, talk to them about their Placement Ceremonies.  If they don’t do them or if you are doing an independent adoption, consider doing your own ceremony.  You can find examples of Entrustment Ceremonies online or can contact me for further information on how to conduct one.  You will find that doing a ceremony and marking the importance of the occasion will be very special for you and others involved and it will help make this special occasion even more memorable for everyone.