Adoptions Gone Awry: Enhancing Adoption Outcomes Through Postadoption Services and Federal and State Laws Imposing Criminal Sanctions for Private Internet Rehoming

The federal government should invest in adopted children who make up the future of the country and are in dire need of rehabilitation and therapy because of their past circumstances. If the government steps in to rescue vulnerable children from inadequate or abusive birth parents by removal, it should also intervene when adopted families are faced with behavioral problems of adopted children that the adopted parents cannot address on their own. Postadoption services need to be accessible and effective to ensure the success of adopted families. Assisting families in crisis postadoption will lower the instances of dissolution and rehoming and keep adoptive families intact. In cases in which postadoption services fail, uniform federal legislation is necessary to make it a federal crime to advertise children for adoption on the Internet without proper certification and state legislation is required to make it a crime to pass on adopted children to strangers without judicial consent, to dissuade Internet rehoming. Internet rehoming of adopted children should be a serious crime as it is tantamount to child trafficking.© 2014 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Postadoption services need to be more accessible and more narrowly tailored to the needs of adoptive families to ensure the success of adoptions.
• Better postadoption services create better adoptive families and adoptive parents will not reach the point of dissolution or private Internet rehoming.
• Adoptive parents should be provided with information regarding all available postadoption resources after adoption is finalized and a government Web site should be created that lists all available resources.
• The federal government needs to provide funding to states that specifically target postadoption services.
• A uniform federal statute is required to punish parties who use Internet forums to avoid government oversight and privately rehome their adopted children.
• States should enact laws that criminalize the unauthorized interstate placements of children.

     

Pfadabhängigkeit in der Mehrebenensteuerung: Das Beispiel Palliative Care

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Food distribution's socio-economic relationships and public policy: Mexico City's municipal public markets

Traditional food supply systems, like municipal public markets (MPM), are in crisis. Nevertheless, MPMs continue to demonstrate importance in the lives of the cities. In this article we discuss the case of Mexico City and the importance of the public markets for its neighbourhoods. We present the results of two research projects, completed in Mexico City at two different historical times and interpreted longitudinally. The results demonstrate the importance of socio-economic relationships for MPM's survival and potential. The article concludes with public policy recommendations to permit conservation, given the MPM's importance for the city's social cohesion.     

Basic education clusters in Cambodia: looking at the future while learning from the past

School clusters have been adopted as an education policy by most Asian countries since the 1960s. In Cambodia, primary schools have been organised in clusters since 1993. Clusters were considered a mechanism for quality improvements of education and a way to facilitate sharing and interaction between schools. Primary school clusters have been partially successful. Today there is a growing interest among Cambodian policymakers for integrating primary schools (Grades 1–6) and lower secondary schools (Grades 7–9). This article provides a policy suggestion by arguing for extending the cluster mechanism to these integrated basic education schools with all grades from 1 to 9.     

Increasing access to rural maternal health services in Zambia through demand-side interventions

This paper examines a demand-side intervention that significantly increased access to maternal health services in rural Zambia in a context where skilled birth attendance rates had been stagnant for over two decades. Aspects of the intervention design that were crucial to the programme's success were the participatory and adult learning-centred approach used to mobilise intervention communities, the use of a community volunteer model, and the design's sensitivity and responsiveness to underlying social factors and problems. The demand-side intervention is already being scaled up in six districts, and is highly suitable for national level scale-up.     

Negotiating one position: Switzerland at the Global Forum on Migration and Development

The paper explores intra-governmental processes in migration policy-making, using the example of Switzerland and examining its preparations for chairing the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2011. Switzerland's “one joint position”, presented at the forum, required intensive negotiations and cooperation between different Swiss federal offices. The paper highlights how and why Switzerland achieved this joint position. It analyses the intra-governmental tensions between national securitisation and global migration and development debates and how they were overcome. This experience of a “whole-of-government approach” offers an insight into politics underlying migration and development debates within donor countries, and its implications for global migration debates.     

China’s Response to the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa

This article examines the Chinese response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, first surveying Chinese interests in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Many Chinese workers have been evacuated and projects postponed. For the first time, China has extended humanitarian aid to countries facing a public health emergency. China is under pressure to ‘do something’ but faces its own developmental challenges as well as problems of logistics. Chinese knowledge of Africa is still relatively weak and uninformed. Although China’s assistance dwarves that from the other BRICS, the Ebola crisis has revealed problems in Sino-African relations, not least the gap between rhetoric and reality.     

Community rehabilitation workers as catalysts for disability: inclusive youth development through service learning

This paper explores access to health and education for disabled youth in sites with and without community rehabilitation workers (CRWs). A cross-sectional survey using a structured questionnaire was undertaken in nine sites in South Africa, and a snowball sample of 523 disabled youths of both sexes, aged between 18 and 35 years, was selected. The survey found that a significantly larger proportion of disabled youth living in sites with CRWs were seen by health care workers at home, and that there was a large difference in educational access between sites with and without CRWs. CRWs are well positioned to promote equal citizenship for disabled youth through service learning with occupational therapy final year students to improve access to health and education, so that barriers to their participation in economic development are removed.     

Overcoming poverty and inequality: Rwanda's progress towards the MDGs

Despite the 1994 genocide there has been annual growth in Rwanda every year since 2000. Poverty has decreased; while the MDG target of 23.8% is unlikely to be met by 2015, the future looks hopeful. The goal of reducing hunger is measured by underweight children – already down to target – and extreme poverty – likely to hit the target. Key to success is reducing dependency on the land, but a majority of the population still depend on their farm or plot. However, hitting targets for reducing poverty is not the same thing as abolishing it, and achieving targets does not necessarily solve problems.     

Farmers,peanuts, and aflatoxins in Uganda: A gendered approach

This article describes a collaborative research for development project that used participatory methods to engage smallholder farmers in Uganda in post-harvest aflatoxin management. It is based primarily on qualitative research with peanut growers tracing ‘the path of the peanut’ through their hand-drawn maps and journal writing. By focusing on everyday life and including recipes and drawings, this research encouraged women's participation and emphasised women's roles. A unique partnership among universities, women's organisations, and farmers created an environment of mutual learning and produced a book documenting food preparation and other post-harvest practices as part of a study and capacity-building effort on peanuts and aflatoxins.