According to a June 28 article by Mercury News reporter Sean Maher, this years' San Francisco Gay Pride Parade featured a large contingent of children who were celebrating alongside their adoptive parents:

"I feel like I've seen twice as many children as I saw last year," said Joseph Bowik, who fathers two children with his husband, David Bowik.

The Pride Family Garden, a small park cordoned off near City Hall to give parents a respite and an area for their children to play, saw more than 600 families last year, a record that appeared set to be broken during this year's parade, organizer Meredith Fenton said. ...

The Bowiks described their adoption process as complicated and difficult, but "100 percent positive."

The article indicated that concerns over the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the passage of Proposition 8 (which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry in California) may have led to an increased family presence in this year's Pride Parade.

"Children of gay parents grow up watching their parents fight to be treated equally, and I think it makes them more understanding of the fight for acceptance," 18-year-old Diane Castillo, who was raised by her mother and her mother's partner, told the Mercury News. "It's a great thing. You learn not to take anything for granted."

Labels: same-sex couples

A Wichita-based nonprofit organization will stop providing adoption and child welfare services and instead focus on family preservation. The move will require the organization to lay off about 45 percent of its staff.

A June 28 article in the Wichita Eagle provided the following details about the decision by DCCCA Inc.:

Before, family preservation workers had to split their time between trying to help families stay together and working with courts to ensure foster care and adoptive families followed judges’ orders, officials said. ...

Tom Buell, direction of addiction services for DCCCA, said the change allows his agency to concentrate on what it’s good at. "I like holding families together rather than working the aftermath of the trauma of kids going out of their homes," Buell said.

Children that had previously been working with DCCCA will now transition to Youthville, the state contractor that handles foster care and adoption

Labels: agencies

Television shows like "Oprah" would have us believe that reunions between biological parents and the children they placed for adoption always end with happy tears of reconciliation. But a woman from New Jersey has ended her reunion with a lawsuit.

"According to the complaint, the woman ... received a letter from the Division of Youth and Family Services in August 2008 saying that an adopted adult was seeking information about her birth parents," the Philadelphia Daily News reported. "In the letter, DYFS asked her to confirm her identity and whether she wanted to pursue the matter."

A June 23 article on the AOL News website reported that "the Atlantic City woman, whose name is being withheld from the press, gave up her child after being raped. The lawsuit, filed June 18, claims she felt 'violated, in shock and short of breath,' after her biological child showed up at her home in December."

The woman assumed her lack of response would close the matter, but her adult daughter showed up on her doorstep four months later. This is a situation that highlights the continuing debate over allowing adoptees to access previously sealed information about their biological parents.

Labels: laws, reunions

A British tribunal has ruled that Catholic adoption programs cannot refuse service to same-sex couples who wish to adopt. According to a June 3 article by Steve Doughty of the Daily Mail Online, some Catholic adoption agencies may close as a result of the decision:

Judges ruled in a test case that the charities, which find homes for hundreds of children each year, will be breaking the law if they refuse to accept same-sex couples as adoptive parents.

The ruling means some Catholic agencies face a choice between abandoning their adoption services or their religious principles. ...

Following the ruling a spokesman for the diocese said: 'As the charities cannot provide unrestricted services without being in breach of their obligations to act in accordance with the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, it seems likely that the charities will need to close their adoption services and a flagship service of the charities will be lost.

In the United States, laws governing same-sex adoption adopt vary from state to state.

Labels: international, same-sex couples

Jeffrey Dennings and his wife, Natalie, didn't become parents until 2006, when Jeffrey was 42 years old. In 2006, they adopted two boys, one of whom they met at the Kinship Adoption Festival in Southfield, Michigan.

"The event is sponsored by the Michigan Adoption Research Exchange and the Dave Thomas Foundation," the Flint Journal reported. "At the time [the Dennings] wanted a toddler. When they arrived, they learned that the older children in tie-dye shirts also were available. That’s where they met Ken, who was 8 at the time."

The Dennings family is now in the process of adopting two more boys, bothers who are 10 and 13. Jeffrey knows that some people call him crazy, but what others call "crazy" he calls "family."

Labels: adopted children, fathers, older_children

A Wisconsin couple is in jail on abduction charges after it was discovered that they coerced a young woman into giving them her baby. The woman said she was approached by the couple while she was still pregnant, and was offered $3,000 for her child:

Bobbi Jo Dolski, 32, and her husband, Jason A. Dolski, 30, were arrested earlier this month on charges including abduction of another's child, unauthorized placement of adoption, false statement on a birth certificate and neglecting a child. ...

The couple has tried twice to get a child before their arrest. Four years ago, the couple was raising a child whose mother was addicted to drugs and later refused to give the child back. The biological mother later got custody. In 2008, the couple offered $3,000 to a woman to be a surrogate, but she declined. (Source: The Wausau Daily Herald)

The baby, now 14 months old, is in foster care.

Labels: crime

The lawyer for pop singer Madonna appeared in front of the Malawi Supreme Court June 12 and was told that his client can proceed with her adoption plans. Madonna had been seeking to adopt Chifundo "Mercy" James from an orphanage when a lower court ruled she had not be in the country long enough to adopt.

An article on the CBS News website reported that "Chief Justice Lovemore Munlo, reading the three-judge panel's ruling, said the singer’s commitment to helping disadvantaged children should have been taken into account when deciding on Madonna's request."

Children's welfare groups are still concerned about the matter, with many believing that bending the country's laws for Madonna will make poor and orphaned kids more vulnerable to traffickers. However, because this latest ruling was issued by the Malawi Supreme Court, it cannot be appealed or challenged.

Labels: international