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In 2018, the Ethiopian Parliament closed its intercountry adoption program. Momentum to end the program followed reports of adoption-related exploitation including the abduction and sale of children, falsification of documentation, bribing of officials, inaccurate testimonies, and false promises to birth families. The Ethiopian Parliament also cited concerns over the identity and psychological problems of adoptees as contributing factors to the ban. This paper explores how adoptive parents, with knowledge of exploitation in their own adoptions, are responding emotionally and pragmatically. Qualitative analysis of interview data provides insight into how adoptive parents communicate about and integrate referral and emergent adoption narratives in the service of healthy identity development in adopted children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia legally banned intercountry adoption in 2018 following reports of corruption, illegal practices, and child trafficking. While the intercountry adoption program is now closed, the enduring legacy of exploitation continues. Through interviews with adoptive parents, this study explores what and how adoption-related exploitation occurred. It also describes a cyclical and iterative process that adoptive parents, impacted by adoption-related exploitation, undertook to understand whether and how referral, concerning, and emergent adoption narratives fit together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents with substance use disorders (SUD) require treatment and support in order to provide children with appropriate care and protection. Using the 2012 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), this paper analysed 464 313 substantiated child maltreatment reports to determine (i) the proportion and characteristics of reports involving substance abuse; and (ii) the child and caregiver/perpetrator (C/P) characteristics that predicted referral to treatment as recorded in service plans. Findings indicate that 12% ( N = 53 234) of maltreatment reports involved C/P SUD. Yet, of those reports, only (19%) ( N = 10 088) were referred to substance abuse treatment as part of their service plan, indicating a large gap between those who need treatment and those who receive it. This finding is important given that parental SUD is consistently linked to poorer child outcomes. Amongst other variables, reports indicate that C/P with co-occurring emotional disturbance were three times more likely to be referred to treatment for SUD as part of service plans. Additional research is needed regarding the characteristics that distinguish C/P who receive referrals for SUD treatment in substantiated cases of child maltreatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between managed care and evidence-based practices in outpatient substance abuse (OPSA) programs in New England. The research question s for this study were: 1) does the use of evidence-based practice in OPSA programs vary? And 2) how does managed care affect such variation? This study used cross-sectional data from the New England Outpatient Study (1997). The population included licensed and approved OPSA programs in New England. Factor analysis grouped managed care involvement into two factors: 1) potential managed care revenue, and 2) managed care network involvement. Discriminant function analysis identified the characteristics that predicted high or low involvement on each factor. The first analysis indicated that 15% of the variation between the low and high potential managed care revenue groups were explained by the discriminant function. The following varibles were positively related to the function: use of psychiatric tools, use of biomedical tools, and being located in a community mental health center. The following variables were negatively related to the function: being located in a freestanding substance abuse treatment facility; and the ratio of revenue per client. The function accurately classified 73% of the cases into the high managed care group. The second analysis indicated that 13% of the variation between the low and high managed care network participation groups were explained by the discriminan function. The following variables were positively related to the function: use of psychiatric clinical tools, and number of OPSA facilities the organization operated. Like the former analysis , being located in a freestanding substance abuse treatment facility was negatively correlated with high managed care network participation. Implications for OPSA programs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]