Evaluating Risk Factors in Adoption

Understanding the struggles and challenges of children who are waiting for adoption is a vital part of your pre-adoption preparations. There are several risk factors common to all three types of adoption, such as trauma and loss and the resulting impacts of those factors. However, other risk factors are unique to the kind of adoption you might be considering. For example, international adoption often has additional risk factors for developmental and medical needs ranging from minor and correctable to more complex and life-long. In this section, we’ve broken down the risk factors common to each type of adoption to help you educate yourself as you prepare to welcome a child to your family.

Podcasts

Articles/Tipsheets

Suggested Books

Free Courses

The most common risk factors in domestic infant adoption include prenatal substance exposure, including opiates, and alcohol. Many of these substances carry potential for long-term impacts such as learning challenges, developmental delays, and mental health struggles. It’s also important to understand the heritability of certain mental and emotional health disorders in the birth parents’ health history. Finally, prospective parents should also prepare for the risks of premature birth, low birth weight, and the impacts associated with these risk factors.

Foster Care Adoption has several risk factors prospective parents should educate themselves about. The most common are a history of trauma, abuse or neglect. However, there are also risks for prenatal substance exposure, challenging behaviors (from the trauma or from the prenatal exposure), learning issues, and attachment struggles.

Most children adopted from foster care are considered “special needs” due to their age, a history of abuse or neglect, or because they are part of a sibling group. Children adopted from foster care with special needs are eligible for monthly subsidies to help offset the cost of supporting the child.

The most significant risk factors prospective parents prepare for in international adoption involve the following issues:

Medically correctable conditions (such as cleft lip/palate, club foot, etc.)
Chronic or non-correctable medical conditions (Hepatitis C, HIV, Thalasemia, etc.)
Physical differences (missing limbs, deafness, vision impairments, nevus birthmarks, etc.)

These needs can exist on a wide range from mild to complex, and are usually identified in the child’s adoption files prepared by the orphanage’s medical team. Older children and sibling groups are also risk factors to consider, depending on the country program parents are pursuing. Our Adoption Comparison Charts track the most common needs in the Top Ten Sending Countries list.

Most countries’ programs are now considered “special needs” and the adoption process for a child with identified special needs can be shorter. However, we caution parents to not make a decision based exclusively on speed of the process when considering international adoption. It is important to educate yourself on the realities of parenting a child with the identified need first, including a thorough review with a reputable international adoption clinic.