ANN ARBOR— Despite a decrease in adoptions in which
parents relinquish infants to adoption agencies or already
known prospective parents, overall private-agency adoptions
in Michigan were up 2 percent in 1998?thanks to recent
national efforts to increase permanent placements of older
children, says a University of Michigan researcher.

Federal laws passed in 1996 and 1997 helped spur
increases last year in cross-racial/cross-cultural
adoptions and in placements of permanent wards with special
needs, according to Leslie D. Hollingsworth, U-M assistant
professor of social work, in an annual study for the
Michigan Federation of Private Child and Family Agencies.

Of the 2,781 children placed for adoption in 1998 by
66 private agencies in the state, more than half (1,494)
were children with special needs (mostly older children
with emotional, behavioral or physical problems often
associated with abuse or neglect)?a 4 percent increase
over the previous year, Hollingsworth says.

“The increase in such placements may be related to the
emphasis on decreasing the number of children with special
needs who are in foster care through increasing adoptions,”
she says. “This emphasis was created by President
Clinton’s Adoption 2002 initiative to increase the number
of adoptions by a certain percentage by the year 2002 and
supported by the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997?
which allows children to be released for adoption at a
younger age and which provides funding incentives to states
that increase adoptive placements.”

Besides the increase in placements of children with
special needs, cross-racial/cross-cultural adoptions?
which represent nearly 12 percent of all children placed by
Michigan’s private adoption agencies?rose 15 percent,
from 278 in 1997 to 320 in 1998, the study shows.

The increase in such adoptions, Hollingsworth says,
may be related to the funding incentives of the 1997
Adoption and Safe Families Act and to the interethnic
adoption section of the Small Business Job Protection Act
of 1997, which prohibits states and agencies receiving
federal funds from delaying or denying a foster or adoptive
placement on the basis of a child’s or foster/adoptive
parent’s race or ethnicity.

In addition to adoptions of children with special
needs and cross-racial/cross-cultural placements, children
from foreign countries permanently placed into Michigan
families increased nearly 9 percent and accounted for about
one-fourth of adoptions through the state’s private
agencies last year.

“This may reflect a continued increase in preferences
for seeking international adoptions rather than domestic
adoptions for some adoptive parents who perceive the
waiting period for international adoptions to be much
shorter and the possibility of birth parent decision-
reversals as lower,” Hollingsworth says.

More than 60 percent of the international placements
were of children more than a year old. Overall, of the 704
children adopted from other countries, 354 were from Asia
Europe (including 188 from Russia, 48 from Romania and 22
from Poland) and 72 were from Latin America (including 59
from Guatemala).

While private-agency adoptions of children with
special needs and those involved in cross-racial/cross-
cultural and international placements all increased in
Michigan in 1998, adoptions of infants were down, according
to the report.

Direct-consent placements, in which birth parents give
custody of their infants to previously identified adoptive
parents, decreased 13 percent (from 176 to 153), while
voluntary-release adoptions, in which parents place their
children with private adoption agencies, fell nearly 7
percent (from 460 to 430).

The U-M study also found that:

56 percent of adoptive families were white and 40 percent African American.

38 percent of adoptive families were foster families.

82 percent of families who adopted through voluntary-release or direct-consent placements had incomes
of at least $40,000.

60 percent of families who adopted special needs had incomes below $40,000.

356 sibling groups of two to five children were adopted together.

54 percent of children with special needs were part of an adopted sibling group.

49 children were removed from their adoptive families prior to finalization of the adoption due primarily to the birth parents’ changing their minds about adoption or to the severity of the child’s problems.

Although adoptions by relatives decreased overall by7 percent, 232 adoptive families (14 percent of all
adoptive families) were related to the child.

Of the 74 private agencies licensed to provide
adoption services in Michigan in 1998, 70 (95 percent) took
part in the study. Thirty-eight of the agencies are
members of the Michigan Federation of Private Child and
Family Agencies, a statewide association of 61 private,
non-profit child and family services organizations.

The Michigan Federation was formed in 1969 to better
coordinate service delivery, present a united voice in
advocating for Michigan’s children and families, and
promote wider use of innovative programs established in
private agencies.