Recommendations after 28 years in child placement work
Bill Betzen, LMSW (Emeritus) - bbetzen@openadoption.org

After studying the information below use the Adoption Agency Selection Checklist linked here to select your agency.

1. For Anyone Considering Placement of an Infant
    
2. For Anyone Wanting to Adopt an Infant
   More adopting parents are needed, even for allegedly rare "healthy Anglo infants."
    
3. Adoption Revolution Led by Adoptees Searching on the Internet!
   The pain shown on adoption and search bulletin boards mandates changes be made!
    
4. Adoption Reform
   Adoption law reforms will benefit everyone touched by adoption.
   

With currently over 1, 000 visitors every day to these pages, I am confirmed in the belief that the best changes and additions to these pages come about due to the comments of visitors. Your comments are valuable! If there are questions on adoption that should be addressed, and are not well addressed in these pages, then I especially welcome your comments. You may E-mail me at bbetzen@openadoption.org.

I hope you find these pages to have valuable information for use in your adoption and parenting plans. It takes work to plan an adoption. Beware of short cuts. They will most often fail.

If short cuts do not fail now, they may in 20 years when your child continues to ask increasingly serious questions about his/her adoption.

The truth cannot safely be hidden.

Also, the core of adoption truths does not change over time.  Therefore I have decided to leave unchanged many sections of these pages, such as the one that follows, written almost 10 years ago.  The truths of adoption do not change.  We humans have always had a need to know our origins.  The driving force behind open adoption is nothing new.

I hope these pages are a help to you and your family.

2/5/04
Bill Betzen

Goals For These Pages

I am writing in these pages the adoption advice I would give within my own family. It is the advice they would receive if they were to consider the placement of a child they are expecting, or the bringing of an infant or older child, or children, into their home through adoption.

I hope you will find the information on these pages to be valuable. I welcome your comments and recommendations for improving them to better answer your questions in these areas.

Everything written in these pages, unless stated otherwise, is only my own opinion. Every professional in the adoption field, that is more concerned about children than making money, will agree that the issues presented in these pages must be addressed in a healthy adoption process. This is true even if there is not agreement with the conclusions I have reached. These issues must be explored so our adoption practices will improve. The adoption process must gain the dignity and respect that children touched by it so richly deserve.

Children touched by adoption must be able to benefit to the greatest extent possible from the adoption process. There is good reason to believe that far too often a maximum benefit is not being obtained with current adoption practice. It is hoped these pages will help in a small way.

2/22/96
Bill Betzen

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