From North Carolina, a heads-up on an easy way to help kids in the state ...

As part of the Wendy's Wonderful Kids program, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is selling "Trick or Treat Gift Books" at Wake County Wendy's restaurants to raise money to fund a staff position in the Children's Home Society that would be "focused on finding permanent families for an identified group of children... more

Improvements in the relationship between the American Indian tribes and South Dakota's Department of Social Services are changing the way the the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is being implemented.

With the establishment of a "Collaborative Circle", tribal members are now more fully active in the processes of the state involving children with DSS supervisors and social workers, advising of kinship placements and other issues.

With all of the changes South Dakota has made, other states are far behind. Tribes everywhere have to deal with - other than their own state... more

Continued from the previous post.

Money isn't everything when is comes to the well-being of children, so let's look at an angle that has less to do with income and more to do with intent ... the percentage of children living in homes where there are less than ten books. That's right ... it's the total number of books in the home that we're looking at here.

The lowest percentage is in Czech Republic where less than 2% of the households have fewer than 10 books. Hungary, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Finland, all follow with incremental increases. The USA is third... more

Hot off the presses, UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center's Report Card 7 is available in its entirety in tidy PDF format at a computer near you.

Like the first six report cards, this one takes a close look at basic indicators of the welfare of children in developed countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the "economically advanced" countries of the world.

"The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security,... more

A conference titled "International Adoption, after the Hague", and hosted by the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys will be held in Baltimore on the 11-12 October.

Speakers will include officials from the State Department and USCIS as well as the presidents of the National Council for Adoption and the Joint Council on International Children's Services.

For yet another look at a family trying to deal with the ... more

As announced by Deb in her blog today, the Missouri court that had been refusing to give the increasingly-slim Gary Stocklaufer another chance to make his case for parenting the son he and his wife have been raising since birth has has taken back its big fat NO and granted a new hearing.

Good. This seems the least the judge could do in a case where a family is at stake.

Parliamentarians in Australia... more

Researchers at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute have been analyzing data on US kids under the age of nineteen with bipolar disorder and have found there's been a huge increase. The question now is: Is the surge real, or are many children being misdiagnosed?

A 40-fold increase between 1994 and 2003 ... that's a jump from 20,000 to 800,000 kids ... just happens to coincide with the use of antipsychotic drugs in children. Considering that some doctors don't even believe in bipolar disorder in kids, these numbers are worrying.

Dr.... more

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he's resigning.

Not that it will make one bit of an impression, but I'm glad to hear it. I have close to zip interest in the politics of Japan, but Mr. Abe's attitude toward adoption ticked me off from the gate and I'll be happy to see the back of him. I'm pretty sure, however, that whoever replaces him will be just about as negative toward the option of adoption for kids or families.

It's a Japanese thing, you see, to look down the nose at adoption. As this admittedly... more

Another adoption scam is in the news, or, to be more accurate, it's more information about an ongoing one that's out today.

The name Orson Mozes is getting to be very familiar, and it appears that those of us who have only heard of him should consider ourselves to be very lucky.

According to accounts, many hopeful parents who have tried to adopt through his agency have found themselves left with nothing but heartbreak.

Through what sounds too much like the old bait and switch, parents report that they were encouraged to fall in love, pay out, and even... more

A birth mother's hopeful vision of the life her relinquished daughter enjoyed cultured over twenty-eight years burst like a ruptured bubble when she learned that the child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at the age of 6-months.

This story from the Salt Lake Tribune reports that the birth mother is now fighting to have Utah law changed to require agencies to notify birth parents in the event of their child's death.

Also from Utah, this article suggesting that a misinterpretation of a federal law designed... more