Case Study: Adoption in a Rural Setting Carmen’s knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel
Case Study: Adoption in a Rural Setting Carmen’s knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. She drove carefully, only 5 miles per hour. Not because the speed limit was 5 miles per hour—it was 10 in the mobile home park—but because she did not want to get where she was going. Carmen had been working with Andrea for 18 months, and today was their last meeting. When she arrived at the trailer, Carmen wasn’t out of the car before Andrea was throwing herself into her arms. At a tall 14, Andrea was leaning down to hug Carmen, her blond hair mixing with Carmen’s jet black ponytail. They both knew it was their last meeting. Tears were streaming down over Andrea’s flushed cheeks, and Carmen had to admit that tears were filling her eyes as well. As Carmen got out of the car, she put her arm around Andrea’s waist, and they walked toward the trailer where Andrea’s new parents waited.Endings can bring up powerful emotions for workers and clients.©iStock.com/AntonioGuillemThey went inside and slid around the table to find seats. Carmen saw that Andrea’s parents were beaming. They had been Andrea’s foster parents for 6 months and then completed a successful request to adopt her. Carmen was right there the whole time. She had been handed the Snyder application to be foster parents and had built relationships, done an in-home assessment of the safety of the place, and assessed the appropriateness of the family. This part had been hard. The Snyders, a Caucasian family, were not comfortable working with Carmen at first. She was Latina, and they weren’t used to having relationships with Latinas. In fact, they lived in a rural area that was mainly made up of white people, and they both grew up surrounded by the stereotypes people develop when they have few interactions with others. More than once, Carmen had to self-reflect on the strong feelings she had when the family rejected her help. But when the Snyders saw Carmen working hard to help them, appearing at the trailer week after week, month after month, they began to trust her entirely.Carmen had prepared both Andrea and the Snyders for the transition from Andrea’s residential placement to a home and watched all three of them manage that transition with her help. She helped the Snyder family to understand their extended family with a genogram and helped Andrea find her place in it. An ecomap showed Open Door Adoption as a positive resource for the family, and they all came to see the agency as a reliable source of support. This idea was cemented when Carmen stepped in and advocated for Andrea to start at her new school in the middle of the academic year when the building administration was dragging its feet.Carmen, in fact, was the face of Open Door’s consistent support. She was there when David, Jackie, and Andrea decided to create a forever family, and she helped them set goals and make plans for that to happen. Sometimes she helped them get over conflicts, and other times she listened while they shared their joys. Carmen grinned a little through her tears as she remembered the time Andrea bounded out of the trailer to tell her about their first parent–teacher conference. It was the first time in her life that she had parents attending. And now the paperwork was complete, the celebrations ended, and it was time for Open Door Adoption to close the case. To Andrea’s parents, this marked a new beginning for their family. They wouldn’t be reporting to the agency how Andrea was doing in school, how she made out at the dentist’s office, how they were all getting along . . . nothing. They’d be left on their own, and they couldn’t wait. “Now, we’re going to be normal,” said Jackie, with a broad smile. Carmen quickly wiped her eyes and got out the Snyder file. She bent over the most recent case recording page to hide her sad face and wrote the date more slowly and carefully than was needed. When she was composed, she put on a bright smile and said, “It looks like we’re all having strong feelings today. Let’s take turns talking about them.”
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