Crucial Values

1. Honor the adoptee.  The needs of the child are paramount.
2. Be based on candor, honesty, and kindness.
3. Be based on choices.  People can “own” decisions when they freely choose them from real alternatives.  Conversely, people tend to resent outcomes that result from coercion.
4. Be covenantal (Covenant means binding agreement).  The quality of the adoption will depend on the integrity the participants bring to their commitments.
5. Acknowledge and honor the loss, grief and pain.  Our capacity to acknowledge the pain brings authenticity to the adoption experience.
6. Transform.  Adoption is a life-altering experience for each person involved.
7. Be adaptable.  Healthy open adoption relationships – like the children they serve – are dynamic and ever-changing, never stagnant.
8. Build community.  Each participant affects and is affected by the others in the extended adoptive clan.

Adapted from The Spirit of Open Adoption, by James L. Gritter, 1997

Support Adoptee Needs and Right

• [Adoptees] have a right to know who they are and how they joined their families and to grow up knowing the truth.
• [Adoptees] do not cease to have a connection with their birth family because they are adopted.  They have a right to information about their birth family and to maintain a connection with them.
• [Adoptees] have a right to be recognized by society as full and equal members of their adoptive families.
• [Adoptees] have a right to freely ask questions and express their feelings about being adopted.
• [Adoptees] have the right to be accepted as individuals with a unique genetic heritage that is modified, enhanced, and developed by the environment in which they are raised.
• [Adoptees] have a right to a positive sense of racial identity as well as a positive sense of family identity. 
• Families have the right to choose the circumstances under which they disclose to others their involvement in adoption.  Information about a child’s origins is private information that belongs to the child.  The child has the right to choose the circumstances under which that information is disclosed.
• Being placed for adoption is a separate issue from being an adopted person.  Suffering from infertility is a separate issue from being an adoptive parent.  Having an unplanned pregnancy is a separate issue from making an adoption plan.  Each circumstance has a separate and unique emotional reaction.

Adapted from The Open Adoption Experience, by Melina and Roszia, Harper/Perennial, NY,