Amara

Funding from the Elevate Prize will catapult The Adoption Files Initiative(TAFI) to advance national and international adoptee justice reform by addressing the fundamental human right to access the truth of one’s own story and through acknowledging agency accountability for harm done to adoptees and birth parents. This initiative dismantles systemic racism, historically institutionalized sexism and recalibrates the distribution of power within the child-welfare system, ultimately creating new best practices in adoption that prioritize equity and avoid harm.

Funding: 

• Replicate TAFI’s low-cost, volunteer-based file auditing model at adoption agencies nationwide. 

• Follow-through on cases of file neglect or oversight by utilizing Confidential Intermediaries to search for and find adoptees or birth parents. 

• Provide stipends to members of the volunteer Ethics Committee to guide the expansion of TAFI, ensuring beneficence, accountability and transparency.

• Update technology to create sustainable and accessible file storage solutions (the paper files are housed in large locked storage boxes, making the precious items at great risk of destruction by fire or flood). 

• Conduct a research assessment on the impact of retrieving identifying information as means to transform intergenerational trauma to intergenerational healing.

• Present findings and educate about adoption history and nuanced narratives.

The Adoption Files Initiative began in 2019 at Amara with Post-Adoption Program Director, Angela Tucker who identified neglected adoption files.  Turnover and societal shifts over Amara's 100 year history resulted in oversights such as unanswered search requests, undelivered gifts and letters from adoptees to their biological parents and vice versa.

Angela Tucker is a transracial adoptee and has spent the past five years as the Director of Post-Adoption at Amara. Her search and reunion journey was chronicled in the documntary, Closure. Her story has appeared on CNN, NPR, Red Table Talk, and top outlets to center adoptee stories. Angela founded The Adopted Life where she mentors adopted youth and is a sensitivity consultant for media who use adoption storylines. She has been published in The Journal of Child and Family for her Inclusive Family Support Model and serves on the steering committee of The Society of Adoptee Professionals of Color In Adoption.

Amara is supportive of Angela's goal to create an adoptee mentorship program to continue to offer healthy spaces for adoptees to build their sense of identity and belonging.

All adoption files are confidential in accordance with State and Federal laws.

Adoption laws differ in each state, bureaucratic processes are
unnecessarily complex and neither adoptees nor birth parents hold any
legal power over their adoption files. Because of these archaic laws, adoptees and biological parents rely on adoption agencies to share any pertinent information with either party. However, a lack of sustainable funding, and a focus on the foster-parent crisis, combined with the societal belief that once a child is adopted that the reform is finished has meant that post-adoption services are not prioritized. Many adoptees and/or biological parents are completely unaware that adoption agencies have adoption files that contain their original birth certificate, information about biological siblings, photos, letters or gifts and/or other medical and health information. We believe this has constituted harm to many individuals over the years and has prohibited opportunities for healing and crucial connections.

In March 2019, Amara staff and volunteers began auditing 3,700 of our own adoption files between the years 1950-1999. Files are audited for information such as the color of their birth parents' eyes, a photograph of them as an infant, the number of biological siblings they have and more.

The Adoption Files Initiative is an unprecedented project. We are pushing back against the status quo for adoptees and their families with the goal of changing adoption practices in the United States. Our focus is to support the mental health of adoptees and right historical wrongs perpetuated by agencies due to the belief that adoptions should be secretive. We recognize that social workers have always done the best they can with the information that they have at the time, and thus believe best practices must continue to evolve based on new research and data. According to the Academy of Pediatrics, 1 in 4 adoptees who seek therapy attempt suicide. We know that having access to one's own adoption files can improve mental health outcomes.

Adoption is a lifelong journey. When adoptees enter adulthood, many begin thinking about their birth family, community, and country.  While adoptees may be loved deeply by their adoptive families, the primal wounds and ambiguous losses lead to struggles with trauma, depression, ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief. 

TAFI has proved to be healing for the individuals that have been impacted at Amara as some have stated “it feels like a major puzzle piece of my life has been put back together.” When adoptees and birth families meet they have been able to clarify stories of love and loss, integrate truths and ultimately receive messages of belonging. While investigating and providing healing answers to adoptees and birth families cannot change the past or historical oversights, it can challenge and inspire child welfare and adoption organizations to move toward healthier models of transparency, inclusion and empowerment that is representative of adoptee identity needs. The acceptance of agency accountability through TAFI could mirror South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

The Adoption Files Initiative has the ability to change the lives of adoptees and their birth families across the lifespan, and influence the future of adoptee and child welfare justice, nationally and globally.