Mariel Carlson, University of Minnesota MSW Student and Outreach Graduate Assistant at CASCW
Laura LeBrun, MSW, University of Minnesota Graduate and Outreach Graduate Assistant at CASCW
Welcome to the Expanding Knowledge blog series! The following is an eight-week series that will feature means to enhance your child welfare work through education by non-conventional means, exploring content beyond traditional academia. We recognize that everyone learns in unique ways and thus will suggest resources from social media, books, podcasts, and more to help broaden the child welfare knowledge base and increase access to a variety of voices.
Our eighth and final week in Expanding Knowledge will explore blogs. Blogs are a unique medium because posts often do not go through an editorial process and thus are unfiltered thoughts by their authors. In addition, posts tend to go more in depth in blogs than in social media, as there is an unlimited character count. These longer posts result in discussions that the authors have clearly thought a lot about. Oftentimes, a lot of this thought comes from lived experience; it should be noted, however, that many bloggers supplement their lived experiences with news, facts, statistics, or research to back up their claims.
As we have said throughout the series, it is important to consider the identities that creators use when considering how these perspectives will influence your child welfare practice. Former foster youth and adoptees, in particular, deserve amplified voices as they are the ones who hold the least choice in their experiences with the child welfare system. As first families’ experiences often get silenced, as well, their voices should be considered too. Foster and adoptive parents have their own testimonies, but it is prudent to remember that they often have the loudest voice when discussing child welfare. We invite you to consider the positions, identities, and power dynamics inherent in any of the child welfare-related media you might view. Whose voice is centered? Are those with lived experience exploited or further marginalized?
Below are blogs that we recommend you consider exploring:
Kinship care is a form of out-of-home care that we have not often featured in our previous blog posts. Step Up For Kin is a blog run by the Step Up Coalition in
California that works to ensure child-centered care in the child welfare system and support for relative kin foster parents (kinship care). This blog features stories from various caregivers sharing their experiences with kinship care – the positives and the negatives. The legal process of child welfare and guardianships can be overwhelming, so many of the blog posts here explain in better detail how it works; or simply provide empathy for other families going through similar situations. More recent blog posts highlight the struggles of caring for multiple children and living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has shown that kinship care provides children with overall better outcomes when compared to non-relative foster care. We know that states differ in the financial support and benefits offered to kinship care families versus non-relative foster care, and for this reason we recommend this blog for child welfare workers and kinship caregivers alike.
Grace Pinghua is a transnational adoptee, one of the 80,000 adoptees from China who currently live in the United States. She was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu Prov
ince, China and adopted to the United States at the age of three. Grace has been writing in her blog since July 2013, so there is a ton of content for readers to review. Grace’s voice possesses a lot of strength, even in her early years; while it is possible that her views have changed since the initial writings of these posts, posts such as “Questions Minus Answers” invite the reader to truly empathize with an adoptee’s thoughts and experiences. In recent posts, Grace has discussed a variety of topics that will interest readers from varying backgrounds. For those working in child welfare or adoptive parents, “Love Is Not All You Need” offers many other considerations that need to be made when working with adoptees. If people are looking for a more clinical look at working with adoptees, “Balancing Emotions with Adoption Jenga” offers an interactive way to process the thoughts and feelings that come with adoption. People looking for interpretations about visual media will enjoy Grace’s thoughts on “The Queen’s Gambit and Adoption”, and those who prefer books will appreciate her “Adoption Themed Book Club List”. Grace has an incredible way with words and is one adoptee, of many, that deserves to be amplified. If you enjoy Red Thread Broken, we also recommend Diary of a Not-So-Angry Asian Adoptee. This blog is written by Christina Romo, a Korean adoptee who grew up in Minnesota. Her posts are not as frequent as Grace’s, but she offers another perspective from a transnational adoptee.
3. Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.)
The Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) strives to provide support and competent services for the foster care and adoption community. Much of t
heir support is focused on adoption-competent mental health services for youth. In particular, we recommend this blog post, “Preparing for Search and Reunion” which highlights perspectives of adults in the adoption constellation (sometimes referred to as a “triad”). While the blog can state it better than us, the post is about the complex emotions and memories that come up for all involved when an adoptee searches and is reunited with their birth family. It provides self-reflection questions for adoptees to consider in order to prepare for this complicated journey so they are not caught off guard by the resulting feelings. Other posts feature stories of adult adoptees, the importance of appropriate counseling for adoptees, and transracial adoption advice from adoption-competent therapists to prevent further trauma for adoptees. We recommend this blog for all child welfare workers, particularly those in positions that work in adoption and permanency, as well as any members of the adoption constellation.
In our post featuring podcasts, we highlighted an episode with an interview of JaeRan Kim, a transnational and transracial adoptee from South Korea. Today we are now highlighting her blog, Harlow’s Monkey, as an essential resource for those in the child welfare field. JaeRan was actually adopted to Minnesota and now lives in Tacoma, Washington, working as a researcher on adoption and the practices of Korean adoptee parents. Harlow’s Monkey functions as both a blog and website, providing resources for adult transracial and intercountry adoptees. JaeRan also welcomes adoption professionals and adoptive families to visit and learn about the experience of adoptees. The top blog posts are organized into themes on JaeRan’s personal adoptee perspective, reflections on race, adoption, and child welfare, as well as her thoughts on transracial and intercountry adoption.
5. Foster ACTION (Alumni of Care Together Improving Outcomes Now) Ohio
Lisa Dickson describes the purpose of her work and blog well in the author bio: “As a former foster myself, my passion is to advocate side-by-side with young people in/from foster care, to partner with them to design proactive policy solutions, and to share/help create resources to improve outcomes.” Lisa does just that. Each post documents her work, with foster youth, in speaking with legislation and the greater public. She provides charts and slides of their discussions, such as “Partnering with Disability Rights Ohio” and a meeting with Ohio governor DeWine to advocate for the establishment of a youth ombudsman office. There are about 40-50 posts yearly with details of their work, much of which could be implemented in other states, as well. For a different look at child welfare legislation, we also recommend looking at the blog from Children’s Rights. Children’s Rights is an organization that was started out of the New York Civil Liberties Union and, later, the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming a nonprofit organization in 1995. They imagine a child welfare system that can not only be fixed but also made to run well.
Tiffany Henness is a transracial adoptee who also identifies as a biracial Asian/white woman. Adopted at birth, Tiffany combines all of her identities to conclude that, “[her] cultural background, therefore, is rural, cow-town USA flooded with conservative evangelicalism.” Tiffany’s blog is divided into three main topics: adoption, race/ethnicity, and faith. The intersections of these topics create unique blog posts; some of the ones that are the most interesting involve looking at adoption from a faith-based perspective. Another unique post that Tiffany wrote is about using the words “entrusted family” instead of “forever family” in adoption, acknowledging the discomfort with the term and seeking to note that love is something that comes with “time and care.” While Calling in the Wilderness is appropriate for all people interested in child welfare, it will likely resonate particularly with those who hold faith as a prominent facet of their lives.
Lost Daughters is a writing project, begun in 2011, featuring the voices of women from different walks of life, experiences, adoption types, and countries of origin. The blog is intentionally created to be an adoptee-centric space, providing empowerment and peace while critiquing the institution of adoption. We recommend this blog for all child welfare professionals to understand the perspectives of adoptees and for adult adoptees seeking to hear from those with similar experiences.
8. Musings of the Lame: An Adoption Blog
Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy has been online since 2001 and blogging about her experience as a birth mother and issues within adoption since 2005. Having placed her son for adoption in 1989, Claudia began truly exploring the adoption industry when she began to search for her child and now considers herself an online activist. She wrote all about that experience, and offers a unique perspective in which she discusses telling her son’s birth father about his birth – 19 years later. Claudia has looked at adoption from all angles including, but not limited to, how it is for the “kept” child, what research and statistics tell us about adoption, and how grief is always in birth mothers’ lives. Claudia has many thoughts about the adoption industry based off of her own experiences, and as someone who witnessed adoption as a birth mother firsthand, her voice should be regarded.
9. Sunshine Girl On A Rainy Day
10. Lavender Luz
Lavender Luz was started by Lori Holden, who is an adoptive parent. What sets Lori apart from other adoptive parent bloggers is that she concentrates a large amount of her posts on open adoption. While she attests that open adoption has brought her more deeply into thinking and feeling, she also has the self-reflection to note that she is imperfect and makes plenty of mistakes. Throughout it all, however, she regards that open adoption requires her to see from all people’s perspectives, which makes her posts useful for those who would like to pursue or are pursuing open adoption. Two posts that we recommend in particular are “7 Points About the Birth Mom Conversations” and “Open Adoption Grid: Adding a Dimension to the Open Adoption Spectrum.”
Do you have any blogs or other resources that have been helpful to you as a child welfare professional? Please send us an email at [email protected].
The reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are expressly that of the author and are not that of the University of Minnesota, School of Social Work, or Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare.