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In California a statewide television campaign urges blacks and Hispanics to consider adoption. In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a nonprofit agency called the Miracle Makers has placed 671 children in 473 black foster homes during the past two years by recruiting prospective parents at churches, civic centers and homes. In January the agency sent them all letters asking if they would be interested in adopting. "We received 125 affirmative answers," boasts agency director Willy Wren.
Parents who adopt special-needs children speak of the rewards as often as the difficulties. Says Sam Borodin of Philadelphia, who with his wife has adopted three girls with Down syndrome: "They have given us joy and love back tenfold." But there are times when caring for a child with special needs can be too hard a test. In Texas a group of seven couples has brought a lawsuit against the state adoption agency, charging that they should have been told that their adopted children had been abused. As the children approached adolescence, they began to behave in a bizarre and sometimes violent fashion, hacking up furniture, setting fires, assaulting family members. All eventually required psychiatric care, costing up to $20,000 a month. Though the parents' case -- in which they are asking the state for further information about their children and assistance in caring for them -- has not yet gone to trial, the ! state has already enacted a law requiring agencies to provide full records to would-be adoptive parents.
The child-rearing problems encountered by the Texas couples are not typical, but no one denies that parents who take on special-needs kids must enter the relationship with their eyes open. The minimum requirements are a level head and a spacious heart. Susan Edelstein, a clinical social worker at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is supervising a study of children exposed to drugs, has a list of the mental and spiritual resources that the parents of such children should have. It could apply to anyone who takes on a special-needs kid. "You've got to be optimistic without denying what is happening," she says. "You've got to focus on strengths, keep perspective, set reasonable goals and get help when you need it. You have to be able to tolerate the unknown. You have to be able to say, 'I will love this child forever.' "