Are you an intercountry/international adoptee 18+ years or older?
- Did you spend time (30 days or more) in foster care, group home, residential treatment, wilderness treatment camp, treatment ranch, or long-term hospitalization program before you turned 18 years old?
- Or did your adoptive parents kick you out of the house, leading you to couch-surf, stay in shelters or live without secure housing?
- Were you “re-homed” or placed in a formal or informal adoptive home with someone other than the parents to whom you were originally adopted?
Adoption discontinuity experiences include an adoption disruption, dissolution, or displacement. Legally, adoption disruptions and dissolutions are formal types of post-adoption instability but there are other experiences in which adoptees are not being raised in their homes. These experiences include:
- Homelessness due to the adoptive parent’s refusal to house the participant or as a result of abuse/neglect by adoptive parents (e.g. couch-surfing with friends, living on the street)
- long-term shelter for youth
- group home
- juvenile detention
- residential treatment center
- in-patient hospitalization program
- formal foster care
- wilderness treatment program or ranch-based treatment program
- an informal, non-relative family placement with a non-related and/or unfamiliar family (i.e. a “re-home” family)
- another adoptive family
Since very few studies on discontinuity include intercountry (also known as international or transnational) adoptees, this study focused solely on intercountry adoptees who, after their adoption by U.S. parents, experienced an adoption disruption, dissolution or displacement. Participation in the study completed a survey and an interview. This study was approved by the University of Washington Institutional Review Board.
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JaeRan Kim 
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