Postadoption Services

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You are in section: Table of Contents 1 - Introduction 2 - Who Benefits From Postadoption… 3 - How Can Postadoption … 4 - What Postadoptive Services… 5 - What Postadoptive Services Do S… 6 - How Are Postadoption Services… 7 - How Are Postadoption Services… 8 - Why Evaluate Postadoption s… 9 - What Are the Implications Fors… 10 - What Future Research… 11 - Conclusion 12 - References 13 - Resources

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8. Why Evaluate Postadoption Services?

Outcome evaluation of all services in these times of tight budgets is critical to sustaining effective programs. Postadoption services programs tend to use a combination of process and outcome evaluation strategies. (Barth, Wildfire, Lee, & Gibbs, 2002). The primary indicator used to evaluate outcomes of postadoption services is the rate of disruption and dissolution during the duration of the study. Other measures include parent and child satisfaction surveys, improvements in the parenting skills of adoptive parents, well-being indicators for adopted children, and whether communities were more aware and supportive of adoption.

Challenges in Evaluating Postadoption Services. The lack of rigorous, systematic evaluation with clearly measurable outcomes by most postadoption programs has made it difficult to determine how postadoption programs that "succeed" differ from those that "fail." Tangible outcomes, such as prevention of adoption disruption or dissolution, are very difficult to track. Thus, it is challenging to conclusively prove that families would have had a negative experience without a program's intervention (Barth, Wildfire, Lee, & Gibbs, 2002).

Other specific challenges to effective evaluation, identified in a review of the postadoption literature by Barth, Gibbs, and Siebenaler (2001) and in a synthesis of Adoption Opportunities grantees (Information Gateway, in press), include:

• Lack of expertise by direct service staff
• The lack of a centralized source of information about postadoption services
• Relatively modest outcomes that are often difficult to measure
• Lack of clear points in time at which to measure outcomes
• Small sample sizes

Promising Evaluation Strategies. Some pioneering programs have been able to overcome these common evaluation barriers to demonstrate how postadoption services lower the rate of disruption or dissolution over a specified period of time. The literature review by Barth, Gibbs, and Siebenaler (2001) suggests strategies for overcoming evaluation challenges, although the authors acknowledge that these efforts will demand more intensive and costly methods of research. Their suggestions, which could be implemented by postadoption programs themselves or by administrative evaluations of postadoption services, include:

• Developing a classification scheme for postadoption services and supports.
  
  
• Conducting randomized clinical trials. (Researchers acknowledge this might be difficult due to the small number of similarly situated cases served by most agencies.)
  
  
• Using multi-State evaluations to generate large enough sample sizes to determine effectiveness.
  
  
• Conducting direct assessments of both the well-being of children and of families' and children's expectations for each other.
  
  
• Testing interventions that have demonstrated effectiveness with other troubled families with those families needing postadoption services.
  
  
• Using an administrative review of records to identify the use of adoption subsidy or residential treatment by adoptive families.
  
  
• Analyzing foster care data to determine disruption rates in States with the capacity to track this.

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You are in section: Table of Contents 1 - Introduction 2 - Who Benefits From Postadoption… 3 - How Can Postadoption … 4 - What Postadoptive Services… 5 - What Postadoptive Services Do S… 6 - How Are Postadoption Services… 7 - How Are Postadoption Services… 8 - Why Evaluate Postadoption s… 9 - What Are the Implications Fors… 10 - What Future Research… 11 - Conclusion 12 - References 13 - Resources

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