Families who adopt special needs children : a descriptive and exploratory study

This was an exploratory-descriptive study which examined families who adopt special needs children in the state of Tennessee. The major objectives of this study were to: (1) describe the characteristics of parents who adopt special needs children; (2) determine the differences, if any, between outright adopters and foster parent adopters of special needs children; (3) explore with outright adopters the history of the decision to adopt special needs children; (4) explore the outright adopter's perceptions of their preparation for adoption during the home study phase; and (5) determine whether outright adopters adopted children with characteristics within the acceptable range of their initial request or whether they adopted children with characteristics outside the range of their initial request. The study found: (1) parents who adopted children with behavior and learning problems were more likely to feel the group preparation and information received about the child or children adopted was less than adequate in comparison with families who adopted children without these problems; and (2) families will adopt more children than they had initially requested and families will adopt children who are older than they had initially requested.