1555 Sherman Ave, #173
Evanston, Illinois 60201
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Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

  1. What Information Do We Collect? When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.
  2. Personal Information You Choose to Provide We may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, placing an order, requesting an estimate, or participating in online surveys. If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.
  3. Website Use Information Similar to other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below, "What Are Cookies?") and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.
  4. How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us? Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may at any time to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.
  5. What Are Cookies? Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.
  6. How Do We Use Information Collected From Cookies? We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our website and better serve our users. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our website to better meet the needs of our users and prospective users. Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.
  7. Notice of New Services and Changes Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request.
  8. How Do We Secure Information Transmissions? When you send confidential personal information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website. Other email that you may send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.
  9. How Do We Protect Your Information? Information Security -- We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction. Evaluation of Information Protection Practices -- Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information. Employee Access, Training and Expectations -- Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.
  10. How Can You Access and Correct Your Information? You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us using the contact form provided to you within the site structure of our website.
  11. Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties? We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.
  12. What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information? We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.
  13. Permission to Use of Materials The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly.
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We are grateful for your donation and support of our organization. If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to our organization please contact us. Refunds are returned using the original method of payment. If you made your donation by credit card, your refund will be credited to that same credit card.

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© Activism in Adoption

Ethics in Adoption: Housing Practices

byKristin Thomas

On Your Feet Foundation sits on the other side of adoption. After placement has happened, after the paperwork is signed, after the adoptive parents are home with their child. Where the process of adoption ends, we begin, providing help, support, and community to post-placement birthparents in need. That help begins when birthparents begin to share their stories with us as we work with them to determine what they need, and their stories make clear the need for commitment to an ethical adoption process by every person involved in the adoption constellation. We have more than twenty years of birthparent stories, and as part of our Ethics in Adoption series, we are sharing them with the adoption community, so that we can shine a light on the birthparent experience, and hopefully help inspire change where it is needed.

 

“Once the papers were signed, it was like I didn’t exist.”

“These feelings have been buried.”

“I need help and I have no one else to talk to.”

 “I feel like I was just there for the transaction.”

 

We know that what we are hearing is not the experience of every birthparent, but at the same time, even one story of coercion or abandonment is one too many. Resources promised and never received, counseling offered, but limited to three sessions, no help in finding an adoption-competent therapist, and birthmothers being moved by their agency to a different state, compelling them to finish out their pregnancy and deliver their baby far away from the community, comfort, and support they need at home. The most common reason given for these moves is so that an expectant mother will be in closer proximity to the prospective adoptive family or agency, decentering her needs for their convenience, but it can be a coercive practice when the only support she now has around her is from the adoption agency and the hopeful adoptive parents. And often pregnant women are moved because the laws that protect their rights as part of the adoption process are stronger in their home state than in the state to which they are being moved. There are no clear numbers, either, on how many women experience this, because so much of the birthmom experience is related anecdotally, and not through record-keeping or publicly accessible information. 

"We were very successful in OH - You really need to look at your tolerance for risk / and the state's laws - the Birthmom could not sign before I think 72 hrs - but once she signed there was no going back for her. That was VERY important to me." - KBM, online adoption forum

Women experiencing a crisis pregnancy don’t always have the emotional bandwidth to be strong advocates for themselves, and when they agree to move into agency-provided housing, aren’t likely to be aware of the tenancy laws governing their stay, leaving them vulnerable. And what happens to the expectant mother after she gives birth? Sometimes after placement birthmothers are left stranded, far away from family and friends and with no local resources, sitting alone in their grief while healing after delivery. Some mothers are expected to sign relinquishment paperwork while still in the hospital, and once that paperwork is signed, are abandoned, with no way to get back home. Others are told that if they don’t sign the paperwork, they will have to pay back expenses. 

Someday, you are going to have to tell your child the circumstances surrounding their adoption. Are you going to be able to tell them that you did everything you could to make sure their adoption was ethical? – Hope Baker

It is easy for adoptive parents to assume that the burden of providing ethical care rests with their adoption agency, but the truth of it is, it isn’t your agency that will have to explain to your child one day that their birthmother was separated from her support system and flown to a state that privileged the wants of adoptive parents over the needs of expectant mothers. Your agency isn’t going to explain to your child why their birthmother was forced to give birth alone in another state, without her family or friends around her. What can we do about it, is something adoptive parents often ask. We don’t make the rules. This is just how it works. And that is true, to an extent, but ethical adoptions can only happen when everyone involved in adoption – agencies and adoptive parents -  work together to make sure the experience is designed to minimize trauma for adopted children and their birthparents.

What can adoptive parents do? They can actively seek out education that focuses on best practices in adoption, centering harm reduction and mitigating trauma for both expectant parents and their children. And ask questions, throughout the entire adoption process, to verify that expectant parents are being treated ethically and fairly with regard to their housing during pregnancy and after giving birth, regardless of whether they place their child or choose to parent. As a starting point, we recommend asking the following:

 

  • Why can’t your expectant parents stay where they currently live?
  • Why are they being moved? Who benefits from the move?
  • If they are moving to finish their pregnancy and give birth, what steps are being taken to ensure they are connected to their support system back home at a time when they need the most support?
  •  What is the living agreement for them where they are staying? How long do they stay after they give birth?
  •  If they are being moved to another state, where are they living? Do they have an ethical housing agreement in place that protects them should they choose to parent their child?
  • Is their housing contingent on placing their child for adoption? If they change their mind, what measures are taken to make sure they are safely housed?
  • If they decide to parent, will the agency ask them to repay expenses? 
  • How is their post-partum medical care being handled? And where is it taking place: in the place in which they were moved, or back home? Who is overseeing their post-partum medical plan and screening them regularly for Postpartum Depression?

In later posts, we will be covering other issues in adoption ethics. Drop us a line if you have other questions hopeful adoptive parents should ask to help make sure that their adoption is as ethical as possible.