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Finding Families: An Ecological Approach to Family Assessment in Adoption
Presents a model of family assessment as a shared process which takes place between adoptive applicants and adoption workers, including a description of assessment tools that translate the ecological perspective into practice.
107 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1979
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October 24, 2012
This book, lent to me by a colleague with over 30 years of adoption experience, was published in 1979. "It's out of print!" she said, "You can't get it anywhere else." Not really a merit in the world of non-fiction publishing. I definitely would not have read this under other circumstances.
It was very worth my while though. The slim book, geared towards social workers, was a great introduction to the third side of adoption. Not the children, not the parents, but the person who is trying to match the two. How can they select a "good" family? How do they know what family is a "good" match for the child? As the author pointed out, if an historian wanted to study the changing values of the American people, they need look no further than the changing definition of a "good" home for adoptive children.
I was shocked by some of the historical practices, but that's not really the meat of the book. It's sufficient to say that adoption has come a long way and as a result, the home study has come a long way (and has probably come a lot further in the 30+years since this was written). Hartman described the concept of "EcoMapping" to get a full picture of the systems that make up the family as it is today, and the resources available to it. We completed one according to the instructions in the book, and it was enlightening to see a visual representation of the different pieces that make up our family and our lives. We knew we had a great support network, but we didn't really realize how great it was until we saw it mapped out on the page like that with all the thick lines sprouting everywhere. Very reassuring!
The second big piece of the book was the creation of a genogram. This is like a souped up family tree, and in addition to the traditional fare can include things like family diseases, careers, even markings to indicate estrangements. I'm not sure I really agreed with the premise of this one. I worked on ours a little, but I just didn't see how including all the divorces of extended family, or the health problems of a distant aunt, had any relevance to our family. We are here, now. We are not the lines on this tree that show an estranged grandfather or a group of cousins we forgot we had. So I did it, but half-heartedly and before my husband was home, so his side has a lot of ?s on it. We'll put more effort into it if this turns out to be a tool that caseworkers still use, but in the meantime we'll stick to the ecomap.
It was very worth my while though. The slim book, geared towards social workers, was a great introduction to the third side of adoption. Not the children, not the parents, but the person who is trying to match the two. How can they select a "good" family? How do they know what family is a "good" match for the child? As the author pointed out, if an historian wanted to study the changing values of the American people, they need look no further than the changing definition of a "good" home for adoptive children.
I was shocked by some of the historical practices, but that's not really the meat of the book. It's sufficient to say that adoption has come a long way and as a result, the home study has come a long way (and has probably come a lot further in the 30+years since this was written). Hartman described the concept of "EcoMapping" to get a full picture of the systems that make up the family as it is today, and the resources available to it. We completed one according to the instructions in the book, and it was enlightening to see a visual representation of the different pieces that make up our family and our lives. We knew we had a great support network, but we didn't really realize how great it was until we saw it mapped out on the page like that with all the thick lines sprouting everywhere. Very reassuring!
The second big piece of the book was the creation of a genogram. This is like a souped up family tree, and in addition to the traditional fare can include things like family diseases, careers, even markings to indicate estrangements. I'm not sure I really agreed with the premise of this one. I worked on ours a little, but I just didn't see how including all the divorces of extended family, or the health problems of a distant aunt, had any relevance to our family. We are here, now. We are not the lines on this tree that show an estranged grandfather or a group of cousins we forgot we had. So I did it, but half-heartedly and before my husband was home, so his side has a lot of ?s on it. We'll put more effort into it if this turns out to be a tool that caseworkers still use, but in the meantime we'll stick to the ecomap.
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