This article appeared on Voice of America on January 15, 2018.

Excerpt:
NAIROBI — A ban on the adoption of Ethiopian children by foreigners could curb child abuse and trafficking, but more support is needed for vulnerable families within the impoverished country, experts said on Monday.
Ethiopia is one of the biggest source countries for international adoptions by U.S. nationals, with about 20 percent of all adopted children coming from the east African nation, according to the U.S. State Department.

Adam Pertman contribution
"The most important thing is for the children involved to have permanency, in families," said Adam Pertman, president of the U.S.-based National Center on Adoption and Permanency and author of "Adoption Nation."
"The first choice is within their own family of origin, their own community and their own country," he added.

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This article appeared on Reveal: From the Center of Investigative Reporting on January 8, 2018.
Excerpt
New Hampshire social workers are all too familiar with how opioid abuse can push children into foster care. They see it all the time.
The chain of events is often the same: After being approached by social workers, addicted parents continue to overdose or start dodging them. State officials deem the home unsafe and seek a court’s permission to remove the children.
Then comes a knock at the family’s door.
It’s a last resort, reflecting what appears to be a stark trend across the state: Since 2010, the number of child removals in which substance abuse was a factor has nearly quadrupled. The number of children entering out-of-home care has nearly doubled. And between 2012 and 2016, the number of children born drug exposed tripled.

Excerpt of interview with Adam Pertman
“What we do know anecdotally is that some number are directly linked,” said Adam Pertman, founder of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. “Because the worker sees the parent, the worker sees the circumstances and can identify the direct link. But for every one they can identify as a direct link, there’s an unknowable number that we can safely assume occur.”

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This article is written by NCAP's COO, Allison Davis Maxon, LMFT and was featured in the September 2017 issue of Fostering Families Today.

Article Excerpt
Let’s be clear . . . for the infant, child or teen, adoption is a traumatic experience. The trauma of forever losing one’s maternal and paternal family tree, lineage, cultural identity, genetic mirroring, relationships, siblings and other connections will be experienced and felt throughout the entirety of the child’s life. These losses to the child are traumatic, overwhelming and will linger across the entire life span. Through every stage of development, as the child’s understanding of adoption grows, the well of loss and pain deepens.

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About Allison Maxon, LMFT
Allison is a clinician, educator, and advocate specializing in adoption/permanency, attachment, and trauma. She is passionate about creating systems of care that are permanency-competent and strength-based. She has expertise in the fields of child welfare and mental health and is currently the chief operating officer of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. Allison is co-author and master trainer of ACT: An Adoption and Permanency Curriculum for Child Welfare and Mental Health Professionals, co-author and master trainer of Pathways to Permanence: Parenting the Child of Loss and Trauma, and creator of The Ten Things Your Child Needs Everyday, a DVD with tools that help parents/caregivers strengthen their attachment relationship with their child. You can reach Allison at amaxon@ncap-us.org or 949- 939-9016.

Dear Colleague: I am writing today to tell you about a relatively new nonprofit organization that you may not know much about yet, though you may well recognize the names of our team members and Senior Research Fellows, as they include some of the most-accomplished thought leaders, researchers, trainers, speakers, educators, organizational and communications specialists, and policy experts in the field of child welfare. Together, we have formed the National Center on Adoption and Permanency (NCAP) because we believe deeply that the time has come to make fundamental, systemic, long-term changes to benefit the children and families we all serve – and we truly believe that, together, we can make that goal a reality.

To read the full announcement, click here.

This article is written by NCAP's COO, Allison Davis Maxon, LMFT and was featured in the North American Council on Adoptable Children's Winter 2017 Adoptalk newsletter:

Allison is a clinician, educator, and advocate specializing in adoption/permanency, attachment, and trauma. She is passionate about creating systems of care that are permanency-competent and strength-based. She has expertise in the fields of child welfare and mental health and is currently the chief operating officer of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. Allison is co-author and master trainer of ACT: An Adoption and Permanency Curriculum for Child Welfare and Mental Health Professionals, co-author and master trainer of Pathways to Permanence: Parenting the Child of Loss and Trauma, and creator of The Ten Things Your Child Needs Everyday, a DVD with tools that help parents/caregivers strengthen their attachment relationship with their child. You can reach Allison at amaxon@ncap-us.org or 949- 939-9016.

Article Excerpt
We all enter the world ready to attach because this is how we get our most basic and primary needs met. The human infant, like other high functioning mammals, is completely dependent on their primary caregivers to get all of their needs met—survival, safety, food, shelter, stimulation, comfort. For us to understand where some of our children’s most challenging behaviors come from, we must first realize just how much neglect and trauma affect every aspect of a child’s development. We are social-emotional beings with an innate need to connect and form meaningful attachment relationships. Every inter-personal skill required for us to be successful in creating and sustaining these relationships must be learned.

To read entire article, click here and go to page 8.

This article appeared on February 13, 2017 in the East Bay Times.  To read full article, click here.

Excerpt:
Pertman said IAC’s failure is “ a big red flag” that Americans should rethink their approach to private adoptions, an experience sometimes fraught with uncertainty, hope and heartbreak for prospective parents and expectant mothers alike.
“What is this process? Who does it serve and how do we do this better so if dire circumstances do occur people are not automatically hurt?” he said.

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This article appeared on February 10, 2017 in the Tampa Bay Times. To read full article, click here.

Excerpt:
"The reality is that adoption can be a lengthy and expensive long shot.
Only about 14,000 infants are adopted within the United States each year, way short of the number of couples and single people looking to become parents, said Adam Pertman, president of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency."

To read full article, click here.

This article was published on February 4, 2016 in the Sacramento Bee.  To read the full article, click here.

Excerpt:
“The pressure on traditional agencies is really immense, and finding a way to keep it together has been harder and harder,” said Adam Pertman, director of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, a Boston-based nonprofit group that provides information for adopting families. “Agencies have been closing and consolidating. With fewer placements, you need fewer agencies.”
​
Read more here: full article link

Published January 24, 2017 on Observer. 

UPDATE: Within hours of its Indiegogo launch, Adoptly’s campaign on the platform has been suspended for review by the Trust and Safety team. Adoptly has yet to respond to our request for comment regarding this update.
There’s a new app that’s supposed to make adopting kids quick and easy. Like most startups, it’s targeting millennials. The tagline: “Parenthood is just a swipe away.”

Excerpt:
​‘This is a complex process, not in order to lock anybody out, but to make sure they wind up in safe permanent homes’ —Adam Pertman

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