Adoption system seen failing kids from minorities

By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA (Reuters) - When Theresa Alden adopted two black boys from an agency in Philadelphia, she changed her lifestyle for them and they changed her outlook on race.

Alden, who is 50 and white, started attending a black church near her home in Lancaster, established a network of black friends and acquaintances, began listening to more black music and buying children's books by black authors.

"My boys will be in a minority here. How do you face the issues that go along with that?" she said when asked about her attempts to give them role models and points of reference.

Alden's children, Gavin and Graem, are two of around 140,000 adopted in the United States each year. Of those, around 20,000 are adopted by adults of a different race.

But black children in foster care are less likely to be adopted into a family than children from other races and U.S. laws governing adoption are failing, according to a major new report.

One of those laws requires state agencies to seek adoptive homes with people of the same ethnic background but prevent a child from not being placed in a home on the basis of race or ethnicity.

There are many reasons for the imbalance that gives a vulnerable group -- black children in foster care -- an added disadvantage, said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which published the report.

Some parents say children adopted from foster care will be harder to bring up, while others are nervous about bureaucracy surrounding the process of adopting from foster care or reluctant to deal with the complexity surrounding race when it comes to adopting black children.

The trend worries social workers, not least because black children, who represent 15 percent of all children in the country, make up 32 percent of those waiting for adoption -- more than any other group.

"The system is not getting them into the homes at the rate they are supposed to," Pertman said.

'WE'LL MISS YOU'

Transracial adoption, particularly of black children by non-black parents, raises complex issues in a country with a history of discrimination and a struggle to overcome it.

The process was illegal in many states before the 1960s because it violated laws about racial mixing.

Some people challenge whether it is appropriate for white parents to bring up a black child, fearing that the child's black cultural heritage will be lost.

In one example, Betsy Hyder, who with her husband adopted two black children in Georgia, said people regularly affirmed her decision to adopt transracially but not all.