Word: specializations
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While public agencies concentrate on special-needs children, private agencies remain the traditional vehicle for finding healthy infants. These have historically been clubby, starched places; singles were not at the top of the selection list, nor interracial, gay, handicapped or older couples. While their policies are gradually changing -- especially in helping place older or special-needs kids -- many still primarily serve a specific religious group...
...story also sounded a special chord for associate editor Richard Lacayo, who wrote the story on the children who wait, too often in vain, for adoption. His brother Joseph, now 21, was one who did not. He arrived on a day Lacayo remembers as the happiest in his family's life. "All the while that I worked on this piece," says Lacayo, "I had my brother in mind as the image of why adoption is worth whatever trouble people go through." Despite uncovering some painful sides of adoption, our staffers came away heartened by how many children and potential parents...
...John Lennon promised. Sometimes that's true. Then again, there are the children like Mickey who need more. They may need hospital care because their mothers used crack during pregnancy. They may need psychiatric treatment to deal with the effects of sexual abuse. They may need wheelchairs, costly medication, special classes. And without a doubt, they will need a home...
...frailty, Mickey is in some ways fortunate -- he's in the process of being adopted. That makes him an exception among "special-needs" children, to use the innocuous term for kids who don't find permanent homes easily -- and most often don't find them at all. They include blacks and other minorities, the physically or mentally handicapped, and any group of siblings who must be adopted together. The term also applies to children who are simply too old for a market that favors infants. In the beauty contest that is adoption, it is never wise to turn five...
...some estimates, these special-needs children account for about 60% of all those available for adoption. They make up the large majority of the youngsters now handled by the public adoption agencies of most states. Yet while there may be dozens of couples bidding for every healthy white infant, only about one-third of the approximately 36,000 available special-needs kids will be taken in any given year. Some of the rest can be found in hospitals as "boarder babies" -- left behind at birth by addicted or otherwise incapable mothers. Others are crammed into group facilities...