My most recently completed research was a qualitative study of the placement stability of internationally adopted children with disabilities.
Adopting a child with disabilities can be both challenging and rewarding. Parents who have adopted children from outside the United States with mental health and intellectual/developmental disabilities sometimes struggle to find appropriate pre- adoption education and/or post-adoption support to help them manage the challenges of parenting a child with a disability. The purpose of this study is to inform adoption practices and improve adoption supports for families that adopted children with disabilities.
I hoped to understand and learn how parents who have adopted children from outside the United States with disabilities (including mental health and intellectual/developmental disabilities) manage the challenges of parenting a child with a disability. In particular I looked at families where the parents have made the difficult choice to place their internationally-adopted child in temporary or permanent placements outside of the adoptive home.
For a copy of an article published about preliminary findings, please follow this link (or the one below) to The Roundtable, a publication of the former National Resource Center for Adoption. Check back for more links and updates about this study’s findings.
This study was approved by the University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board #1301P26761
JaeRan Kim 