[vrefkin]

Hello, my name is Valerie Refkin. I am a doctoral student researching attachment in older adopted children in the Arizona and Southern California areas. I am looking to interview parents and their adopted children.

The goal of this research study is to find adoptive families who are happy and successful and find out what they did to make things work. Because there are many families who have difficulty adopting older children, there is a great need to make this information available for adoptive parents and the professionals who work with them.

To Qualify for this study you must have a child who:1) was adopted at age four or older
2) who is now age twelve or older
3) and who has experienced 2 or more placements prior to their adoption into your home (placements include time living with biological families, foster families, group homes, residential treatment homes, ect.)

and, you, as the adoptive parent:4) consider the adoption to be successful and have no regrets about adopting your child.

If you or someone you know may be interested in participating in this study, please contact me at
(480) 586-8163 or via email at vrefkin@alliant.edu
Compensation will be paid for your time.

I look forward to hearing your adoption story!

[honu]

Hi Valerie,We are currently waiting to be matched with older children, but sorry we cannot help with your research right now. I wanted to offer a couple of ideas since I am happy to see you are researching the positive outcomes of older child adoption, which is what I'm sure everyone hopes for, but often times as others have said it's hard to find those stories and people.

Have you tried the RESOLVE groups near you? Just go to www.resolve.org to find contact info for the ones in your area and maybe you could go to the support groups they have or just leave your info with the group leader to pass along to the folks there.

Also, there are many other adoption forums online including:

http://p079.ezboard.com/bolderchildadoption

http://p103.ezboard.com/bfosteringan...golderchildren

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Christian_Older_Child/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adopt3-5years/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/A_O_K/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GAARP/

There were also several I saw about international older child adoption, which you could look up if interested.

I don't know how active it is, or if you've seen it, but CA also has a forum on their website of waiting kids at:

http://www.cakidsconnection.com/faces_board.html

Have you contacted any state agencies? Are they willing to help in any way with finding people that have adopted and had success?

What about those adoption reunion groups that I've heard about? I've never looked into it, but I've heard of people attending them after the adoption to share stories and what not. I know it's often for newborn adoptions, but many agencies also have them for the older child adoptions as well.

I'll share your info with my forum group, which has several older child adoption families and several people with a ton of contacts. If they have any other ideas or folks that want to participate I'll get back to you or have them contact you directly.

Good luck and I hope your study is successful! Also, thanks for the info on another thread where you posted some references for research studies from different people.

[vrefkin]

Thank you for all your suggestions and links to other forums! I appreciate your good wishes with my study!
Valerie Refkin

[vrefkin]

Hello and thank you all for your interest and support of my research. I am finished interviewing families at this time. I am so grateful to have met with so many families who wanted to share thier success stories. Best wishes to all of you who have adopted or who are interested in adopting!
Thank you,
Valeire
vrefkin@alliant.edu