Throughout the United States, thousands of children
need loving, permanent homes,
while thousands of families stand ready to provide these nurturing environments.
A diverse collection of intermediaries,
including private adoption agencies, state governments, and interstate consortia,
work together to place these children in a timely fashion,
but the task is formidable.
Since a disruption (i.e. an adoption that doesn't work out) harms the child and the parents,
the wrong placement is worse than no placement at all.
The social worker, who is ultimately responsible for the child's welfare,
must choose from dozens of seemingly qualified candidates,
selecting a family that is prepared,
in temperament and training, to raise the child
and heal the psychological, and in some cases physical injuries
that the child has sustained.
When several families are well qualified,
secondary factors such as location and lifestyle
come into play.
The selection process depends on accurate and complete information,
and the ability to sift through this information quickly and efficiently.
Like many other sectors of our economy,
the internet can help.
Thanks to amazon.com, a customer can select just the right book
from half a million titles
by entering the appropriate search criteria.
In the same way, a social worker should be able to
describe the child in detail and call up a list of prospective families from a central database.
Of course a child is more important than a book,
and the social worker always makes the final decision,
but an automated search engine can winnow the choices down to a manageably small set.
Social workers aren't the only agents trying to place children into stable environments.
Birth mothers who are physically or emotionally unable to care for their
unborn or newborn infants are also searching for loving homes that meet their criteria.
Unlike a state agency, the birth mother can specify religion and race,
or any other attribute that she deems relevant.
Still, there is a common thread.
Like the social worker,
she is searching for the best family for her child,
based on a set of largely codifyable criteria.
The internet will allow the birth mother
to browse potential families
from the privacy of her home, at no cost, while preserving her anonymity.
Convenient access to this comprehensive database might encourage her to proceed with the adoption,
rather than opting for an abortion
or raising the child herself under difficult circumstances.
At the same time, a couple, who might otherwise remain childless,
is blessed with a new baby boy or girl.
This is clearly a win-win situation.
How Are Matches Made Today?
At present, numerous web sites,
run by private agencies, state agencies, and interstate registries,
list waiting children, complete with photographs and biographical data.
Although this is a step in the right direction,
bookmarking each of these web sites fills an entire screen,
and searching them individually is frustrating and time consuming.
Dave Thomas, better known for his chain of fast-food restaurants,
has developed a web site [1] that knits these diverse sites together,
yet the user must repeatedly enter his search criteria into each subordinate site,
and these individual sites are as different as night and day.
Still, it's a good place to start your search.
This comprehensive web site helped me locate my two beautiful adoptees,
and I know I speak for many adopting parents when I offer my thanks to Mr. Thomas
for the work he has done on our behalf.
Although these web sites bring waiting children and hopeful parents together,
the process is inefficient, because the children are on display, rather than the parents.
Consider the internet in general.
In most on-line transactions, the one who chooses does the browsing, for free,
while the item being chosen is listed in a central database, often for a fee.
Who makes the selections in the adoption industry?
Although the adopting parents and the child's legal guardian
are active participants in the process,
most people would claim that the birth mother or the social worker actually makes the selection,
and the adopting parent can either accept or decline.
If this accurately reflects the structure of the adoption industry,
the existing web sites are displaying the wrong people.
Internet commerce has established the opposite precedent.
In my case, I never saw my adoptees on the web.
I first located a young boy from Missouri that looked like a good match,
but when I called his agent, he was already placed.
A month later I called the same agent (by coincidence)
about a girl who looked promising,
but the child had serious behavioral problems that were not disclosed in her internet biography.
I agreed with the agent; we were not the right family for her.
By this time the agent knew us personally.
She knew which children we could accommodate;
we were part of her mental database.
Within two weeks she called us about a brother and sister, ages 5 and 6.
We were reviewing their case histories before their pictures hit the internet.
In some sense the internet helped us find our children, but the path was indirect.
The internet actually brought us in contact with a caring social worker in Missouri,
and she did the rest.
I can surf the net and locate a plethora of waiting children,
but I cannot choose a child from this list;
the social worker must choose me.
Even if I were empowered to make the selection,
and all the children were gathered together into one central database,
the process would still be inefficient,
because this hypothetical database doesn't always present the information I need to make a good decision.
Agents are understandably reluctant to describe incidents of abuse and neglect on a public forum.
Some sites use only first names, or fictitious names,
but the photographs remain, hence confidentiality will always be an issue.
Several times we called about a child,
only to discover a hidden history of abuse,
or behavioral problems that we were not equipped to handle.
Since internet listings accentuate the positive and downplay the negative,
agents will grow weary of these unproductive calls.
If a third party,
such as an adoption registry,
stands between these agents and the public,
this intermediary will also grow weary of these inquiries.
Either way, something has to give.
Agents and registries may decide that internet listings are not worth the bother, and suspend the practice.
Without a national database of families,
birth mothers also find themselves in a difficult position.
If a birth mother allies herself with an adoption agency,
she has immediate access to the families serviced by that agency,
but this is often a small pool.
"There's nobody here I like." remarked one birth mother
after she reviewed the three families that fit her racial and religious criteria.
Of course agencies share information about adopting families with each other,
and the birth mother is free to explore other avenues
such as personal ads in the newspapers,
but this process takes time, and the baby won't wait.
A birth mother should never be forced to place her child in temporary foster care
because she couldn't find an adopting family in time.
Once again, a central database of adopting families is the best approach.
A Federal Web Site, Under Development
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
is currently developing a national archive of waiting children [2],
which will be displayed on
a web site within two years.
This project will certainly bring parents and children together,
but in an indirect manner, as described above.
A central database of prospective parents would accomplish a great deal more.
I hope HHS considers this alternate view of adoption
before the project is cast in stone.
The Search Criteria
When a computer program (or a human brain) is given the task of matching children with adopting families,
its performance is determined by the quality and granularity of the underlying data.
Yet most adoption registries gather a data set that is surprisingly coarse.
A typical questionnaire asks,
"Can you accept a child whose physical handicaps are severe, moderate, mild, or none?"
There are mild handicaps our family would not accept,
and moderate handicaps that we could accommodate.
Since we don't want to miss any potential matches,
we check the moderate box, and review a number of children
who lie outside our actual criteria.
Contrast this with the Ohio registry,
which asks questions that are specific, detailed, and relevant.
Under the category of sensory handicaps, you might be asked,
"Can you accept a child who is: hard of hearing? profoundly deaf? totally deaf?"
Although it takes longer to fill out this form,
there are very few false positives (children that I didn't really need to review)
or false negatives (good matches that I never saw).
If a central database houses all the adopting families in America,
it must gather detailed information on each family,
following the model of the Ohio registry.
To begin the recruitment process,
each social worker
fills out the same questionnaire, describing the child she wants to place.
Since the data is detailed and complete, the matching algorithm is straightforward.
The computer presents up to ten families that meet her criteria,
and like any other internet page,
she can print or download the information for further review.
The comprehensive questionnaire, filled out by adopting families and guardians alike,
should be implemented in Java script or a series of interconnected HTML forms.
This technology allows the system to ask different questions based upon earlier responses.
For instance, if the child is unborn, there is no need to ask
the user about the child's history, behavior, or disabilities.
The Java or CGI program bypasses these screens
and calls up the form that gathers prenatal risk factors,
such as drugs and alcohol,
or anomalies that can be detected inutero, such as Down's syndrome.
Other screens,
which assess the level of contact with birth parents in an open adoption,
pop up when the placement is voluntary,
and remain hidden when the state has terminated parental rights.
If dynamic forms are used to streamline data entry,
the system can gather all the information it needs to derive high quality matches,
without burdening the users.
One Central Web Site, One Search
I am not the first to propose a web site that lists the prospective parents.
In fact, several of these web sites [3] are springing up across the country,
and savvy birth mothers are already tapping into them.
However, these sites are scattered, and it is difficult to search all of them.
Even if Dave Thomas performs another miracle,
and knits them together into one aggregate,
the subordinate search engines are coarse and inconsistent.
A birth mother could probably query these sites and place her healthy white infant,
but a social worker will not be able to locate a family
that can accept a 6-year-old boy who is legally (but not totally) blind,
uses foul language, and is sexually precocious.
If we want to place all our children in permanent homes,
including those with disabilities and/or a difficult past,
we need one central database of adopting families,
where each listing is well coded for an efficient search.
Ongoing Query, Automated Response
Encoding a child's characteristics may entail several data entry screens,
a significant endeavor that nobody wants to repeat.
If the system does not find an adopting family on the first try,
the child's match criteria are retained for future searches.
Perhaps the ideal family will arrive tomorrow, or next week.
The social worker or birth mother can reissue her query at the touch of a button,
or the system can notify her, by fax or email,
whenever a new family, having the appropriate attributes, enters the system,
or when a preexisting family updates its attributes
to conform to the child's characteristics.
With automated response enabled, the social worker doesn't have to search at all--
the computer searches for her, and sends her notice as families become available.
First In, First Up
When an adoption agency presents descriptions of families
to birth mothers, it often arranges the profiles in chronological order.
If a family has been waiting longer than all the others, it appears first in the booklet.
This is not critical when there are only twenty families to present,
but a central database might contain
hundreds of matching families,
especially if the child is a healthy white infant.
A birth mother could easily find a compatible family on the first screen.
The best way to level the playing field for all adopting parents is to
sort families by time of entry into the system,
and present the oldest listings first.
A computer can do this automatically.
The adopting families also benefit
from an on-board tracking system
that records all inquiries.
If a family's listing has been reviewed 20 times in the last month,
and that family was not selected,
there may be something wrong.
Although few people are willing to admit it,
adoption is an exercise in marketing,
and prospective parents rarely have the necessary expertise.
Certain attributes, both objective and subjective,
"sell" an adopting family to birth mothers and/or social workers.
The administrator of the web site, or a third party,
could help families market themselves.
This may include taking parenting classes (content),
or arranging the pictures and descriptions in the listing (format).
Historical patterns will dictate the content and format that
effectively markets a family, depending on the child they are hoping to adopt.
If marketing assistance were made available to all,
a family's opportunities would not depend on the
marketing skills of its particular agency.
Furthermore, by following the recommendations of the marketing experts,
many families will be better prepared for the adoption.
A father might attend a seminar on abused children because it "looks good on the listing",
but if he then adopts an abused child,
the training could prove invaluable.
If You Build It, They Will Come
Although this project is national in scope,
it does not require interstate cooperation or federal oversight.
If a state agency or private company
develops this web site, and advertises it in the traditional media,
an army of anxious parents will submit their adoption criteria, almost overnight.
Even a substantial listing fee will not dissuade most adopting families.
Some are already spending thousands of dollars to adopt -- what's another hundred?
Once the database attains a critical mass,
social workers will routinely query the web site as part of their overall recruitment strategy.
The service saves them a great deal of time, and it's free!
Birth mothers will also tap into this web site,
and in many cases they won't have to look anywhere else.
As the project gains momentum, this web site will become an indispensable tool,
facilitating adoptions throughout the United States.
Statement Of Ownership
All technical designs and specifications of the proposed national registry,
as presented in this article,
remain the sole property of the contributing author, Karl Dahlke.
Summary
Over the past five years, forward thinking individuals have
used the internet to facilitate adoptions locally,
and others have made modest efforts at integrating these disparate sites into a seamless whole.
Although these efforts have brought many children out of temporary shelters and into permanent homes,
including my son and daughter,
the resulting web sites do not realize the full power of the internet.
A well-planned, national database of adopting families,
equipped with a powerful search engine,
would make the social worker's job much easier,
with concomitant benefits for birth mothers.
The project outlined in this article is entirely feasible,
with a one year, one million dollar development cycle.
These are my estimates, based on my experience as a programmer;
the HHS estimates [2] for its national database of waiting children are somewhat higher.
If a state or federal agency takes up this challenge,
the investment will reap large dividends.
Waiting children will be placed sooner,
and the resulting adoptions are less likely to fail.
Alternatively, a for-profit corporation might develop the software
and sell the service to adopting families,
allowing social workers and birth mothers to browse for free.
When you consider listing fees and advertising revenues,
this venture is almost certain to turn a handsome profit.
Setting this fiduciary motive aside, the real beneficiaries are the children,
who have an opportunity to grow up in a loving, stable environment,
something most of us take for granted.
Epilogue
Some 4 years after I wrote this,
ParentProfiles.com is trying to leave the nest.
This is a step in the right direction,
but only a tentative first step.
If I had a lot of money, I'd buy the company,
lock stock and barrel,
add the features that I want,
and advertise like crazy, until ParentProfiles became a household word.
hqRealestate.com has the same problem.
They have discovered the internet secret that should put most realtors, with their 6% commissions, out of business!
But I still see 1 hqRealestate commercial for every 50 realtor commercials.
What is going on?
Why don't these services take off?
I think the VC folks are missing a golden opportunity here.
References
Dave Thomas has developed a meta adoption web site
that knits dozens of smaller independent agencies together.
If you are hoping to adopt an older child,
or a child with special needs,
this is a
good place to start.
Unfortunately this site no longer links directly to the state agencies,
as it did in the past;
it only lists their phone numbers and addresses.
I have no idea why the hyper-links are no longer maintained.
I called the Dave Thomas Foundation,
614-764-8454,
but nobody could tell me why these valuable links have been removed.
The foundation maintains another site,
www.adoptnet.org,
which acts as a national registry for hard-to-place children.
This is a valuable resource, but it contains only a small percentage
of the waiting children in the U.S.
Many social workers don't know about it at all,
and others don't list their children
unless they have been on the roles for quite some time.
I hope the Dave Thomas Foundation resurrects the original interstate hyper-links,
or convinces the state agencies to list all their children with adoptnet.org
as soon as they are declared "adoptable".
Of course this discussion may become moot within a year (see below).
The Department Of Health and Human Services,
in cooperation with the state agencies,
is currently developing a
national web site
that will list waiting children throughout the United States.
www.adopt-net.net,
launched in 1997,
is one example of a site that lists adopting families.
