We at Adoptees Have Answers are very pleased to welcome you to your new adoptee and fosteree community space.
Based in our common wisdom and affirmed by current research, AHA holds a core value that adoptees benefit significantly from sharing their individual and collective voices in a circle of their peers.
Minnesota is nationally recognized for its pioneering efforts in adoption. Adoptees Have Answers builds on this tradition of breaking ground and achieving high standards. Guided by all-adoptee staff and Advisory Group, AHA is a first of its kind in the country — a live and virtual community designed by adoptees for adoptees as a safe environment for seeking and sharing answers and connecting with one another. By partnering with others who believe that adoptee voices are underrepresented in the adoption world, we hope to help bring this system into balance and, ultimately, into harmony.
Who made us possible
- Funded by the Minnesota Department of Human Services through a federal Adoption Incentive Grant
- Operated under the Minnesota Adoption Resource Network
- Informed by the estimated 135,000 adopted and fostered people currently living in Minnesota
History
Minnesota Adoption Resource Network (MARN), AHA’s umbrella organzation, has been advocating for children and older youth under State guardianship since 1980. Because no MARN program offers child-placing services, MARN and AHA staff may wholeheartedly advocate for children living outside of their original families, including youth in residential treatment centers and mental health facilities.
What we are not
- An adoption agency or other child-placing organization or an affiliate of an adoption agency
- A social work/welfare organization
- An official mental health services provider
What we provide
- An array of opportunities for adoptee-to-adoptee connections
- An all-adoptee staff and executive leadership
- A highly diverse all-adoptee Advisory Group of distinguished professionals and community leaders
- A website featuring resources for adopted individuals
- Online networking tools including individual profile pages, blogs and community groups with forums
- Adoptee-facilitated support groups across the state
- Live events honoring adoptee groups and adopted individuals of all ages and backgrounds
- An electronic newsletter with adotpee-related research articles, resources and opportunities to contribute ideas and artwork
- Interactive online education from an adoptee-perspective through a 12-part webinar series, CD presentations and video
- A master calendar of adoptee-focused events and meetings
- A toll free AdopteeLine for general information inquiries and First Responder calls
Key research
Adoptees Have Answers is founded on two key pieces of adoption research — ‘The Psychosocial Model of Adoption Adjustment’ and Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption. Other often cited research findings include ‘The Seven Core Issues in Adoption’ and Ambiguous Loss by Dr. Pauline Boss.
- The Psychosocial Model of Adoption Adjustment was developed by David Brodzinsky, Marshall Schechter and Robin Marantz Henig and first published in Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self in 1992. This model expands Erik Erikson’s theory of human development to include the unique developmental tasks of adopted individuals. http://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/grief_brodzinsky_article.php
- Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption was conducted and released by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in November 2009. These findings were based on data collected from the largest known survey response by adult adoptees. http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/research/2009_11_culture_camp.php
- The Seven Core Issues in Adoption were first developed by Deborah Silverstein and Beth Roszia in 1982 and first published in a 1999 article in Adoptive Families magazine. This important work was one of the first to debunk the notion that families formed by adoption were no different than families formed biologically. http://www.adoptionsupport.org/res/7core.php
- The theory of ambiguous loss was developed by Dr. Pauline Boss, longtime professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, published in her book, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, in 1999. Her work resonates almost universally with adoptees striving to move beyond losses that have no physical reality for them. http://www.ambiguousloss.com/about_ambiguous_loss.php
