I found your discussions and keynotes via Huffpost. Very actual and interesting. Mike´s family name is only originating in my country, Tikkanen is a more common name here than f.ex. the auto-dealer Palin in Pori, Finland. Minnesota could be a part of southmost Scandinavia in its natural dimensions.

Finland has met also just like you severe problems, not only domestic and traditional but also of new type: with immigrant children care and international adoptions. We do have also a well-in-russian-media known children care conflict in two nationalities and two cultures family and they are to continue in the future.

You are not alone with those problems. We do just have gotten a new social affairs minister, mr Juha Rehula, plus we have had some years a national children rights responsible, mrs Maria-Kaisa Aula. Her secretary is a participant in my hobby theatre group.

Forcing parents to trade custody rights for mental healthcare is traumatic for children and parents making emotional disorders worse. For adoptive children, it is really unthinkable considering they have already experienced loss, separation, and grief over losing the first family.

This is a situation not only are we in, but many families in Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Nebraska, and Michigan. In fact MI families are preparing a class action lawsuit.

Even the judges say-There is nobody bad here. There is no criminal. There is no crime. No laws exist that address this situation so they try to make neglect/abuse laws work when they were not intended for this purpose. In the end, either the child or the parents are unecessarily criminalized.

We know what the post adopt problems are. It is important to address the worst case scenarios prior to the adoptions.

It is terribly painful to see parents trying to find mental health resources when no insurance, and no public agency is available and nothing short of a radical act will bring closure to what could be life threatening circumstances. As a guardian ad Litem, my first cases included a four year old girl trying to kill herself, and a seven year old trying to kill her five year old sister.

What could it have been like for the adoptive parents to raise those troubled children without affordable intensive services?

Mental health services are truly priceless when the lives being touched are considered.

The problem is that we have not solved this problem for domestic adoptions. American children are also being adopted by loving foster families. These abused and neglected children also have high rates of severe abuse and neglect, as you, Michael, well know. 1/3 have severe emotional disorders, 50-75% have severe behavioral disorders. The child often becomes unsafe towards other children and parents and needs residential care.

For many states, the solution is that the state takes custody of the child again forcing the now adoptive parents to trade custody rights for mental healthcare. The child does not want this and neither does the parent. There are no criminals and no crime. The child ends up a state ward for the second time because of the trauma that placed him there in the first place.

This is exactly what would have happened to Artyom had he stayed here. He would have ended up a ward of the state because Torry Ann could not afford $450 per day for residential care and her insurance won’t cover and neither will medicaid. Not even $1 of it. The state would have forced her to lose custody anyway. He needs intensive services that she cannot get any other way.

The solution is to provide pre-adoptive agreements that include intensive and residential services so that adoptions can be preserved. For international adoptions they should be intercountry agreements and for domestic adoptions, adoption subsidies that include these services for children facing relinquishment for no other reason than the need residential treatment. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Washington DC calls this practice “barbaric.”

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/tonihoy-242910-Son-he-s-my-Occasions-Family-ppt-powerpoint/