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 social services - states that do not respond to ICWA. Tribes from across the country have enrolled members who live in many parts of the country; and the tribes maintain a responsibility to those members and especially the children.

The adoption thread in Funky WInkerbean continues, and it's sparking conversation, especially in New Jersey where the debate is going on now on opening birth records to adoptees.

While many books, articles and television shows in recent years have focused on the often overwhelming experience of adopted children who as adults find themselves helplessly seeking their biological parents, less has been said about mothers' separation from their infants--as the Winkerbean comic strip does.

Citing statistics that say that 94% of British birth mothers have welcomed contact from relinquished children made possible since a 1975 law that allowed adoptees access to birth records, a case is made for the process to be followed in New Jersey, as well.

A reunion story seems appropriate about now, and although I don't get the logic of this tale one single bit, it is another example of the faulty human tendency to go all hush-hush over things that should never have been secret.

Seems that 50 years ago, this poor schmuck of a soldier was stationed in Korea when his wife divorced him, married another and suggested that ex-hubby Army guy allow new hubby to legally adopt the three kids the couple had had together. To make the whole thing either tidy or a total mess ... you make the call ... she told the kids, with ex-daddy's permission, that he'd been killed while serving his country.

Zip ahead half a century, and one of the kids is doing an Internet people search and comes up with Dad, and although he let it drop, Dad did some pursuing of his own that led to reunions with two of them.

His daughter said that meeting her dad was "akin to the birth of my children."

"You look into the mirror all your life, and I didn't really look like anybody," she said. "However, when I look at my father I can see where I come from."

Such a senseless waste of time.

And there's another story from Britain on a baby removed at birth from a mother and placed for potential adoption because of concerns over the possibility of neglect based on "emotional problems, which make her agitated, angry and emotional".

The woman has had two other children adopted, and although she chooses not to challenge those placements, she is fighting for her daughter, now 15-months-old, after learning how to do so over the Internet.