Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency

For decades, I have been responding to these "seven core issues" as an adopted person, as a parent by adoption, as a poet. Now I imagine myself as a therapist trying to help someone in the adoption constellation. I would definitely want this book close at hand.

A beautifully-organized handbook, full of both strong, conceptual understandings and practical recommendations for living, surviving and thriving in this world of adoption.

As an adopted person, I'm very familiar with the seven core issues, both comprehensively and experientially. Yet even with my prior knowledge, there was a deeper understanding to be attained through the pages of this book. Having had the pleasure to work with and consider both Sharon and Allison my friends, I've seen first hand the passion they have for adoption and helping children find permanence. Their collective expertise, contained here, is, in my opinion, the gold standard for understanding and working towards permanence in adoption.

Too often as healthcare providers, we focus on the medical, contractual, and economic aspects of adoption and 3rd party reproduction. Acknowledging the 7 core issues and their impact on all parties associated with this process is an important first step in improving the care we deliver to our patients.

As an adoptive Dad of three kids from foster care, I found the book to be an insightful and useful resource. It gives voice to both the challenges and resiliencies of those touched by foster care and adoption.

What do you get when two highly experienced, talented, thoughtful and respected adoption experts write a book together? The answer is this exceptional piece of work, which falls into the rare `must have, must read and must use' category of literature relating to all sorts of `nontraditional' families. From my perspective as both an adoption professional and an adoptive parent, I couldn't recommend it more strongly.

This is a very comprehensive, inclusive, updated version of The Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency, which is definitely an amazing resource for families, agency professionals, clinicians, academics, consultants and many others impacted by adoption. The excellent contributing authors have had a variety of professional and personal experiences related to child welfare (i.e. as adoptees, foster youth, kinship care providers, and adoptive and foster parents), as well as having professional training and expertise in working with diverse population groups impacted by the child welfare system. Not only does this book highlight the core issues of adoption and permanency, it is unique, as it includes specific chapters which focus on these issues for ethnically diverse families including: Latinos, African Americans, Tribal communities, Asian and multi-racial families. The book includes content on the implications of the core issues in work with adoptive, kinship families, birth/first families, foster families, and LGBTQ families. It provides very real and practical examples of the impact of losses, vicarious trauma experienced by children and parents, while including content on strategies for coping and gaining resilience. I would highly recommend this book for use in courses on "Contemporary Issues in Adoption and Foster Care", "Child Welfare" and others which are designed to prepare professionals for work in this very important area.

This is a book that has been itching to be written for a very long time, as the framework of the Seven Core Issues has shaped thinking on adoption for the last three decades. Yet the benefit that this book was not written until now is that it is even more expansive. Rarely if ever have I read a book that covers so much ground so effectively. I have immense respect for the authors and their work. Roszia and Davis Maxon are critical thought leaders.