Kim Perry | Adoption Professional Q&A

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Lynette. And I'm Sean. On today's episode we will speak with Kim Perry. Kim is a licensed social worker and has worked in adoption since 2008. You will love hearing from her. She has some really amazing insights. She's also an adoptive mother. She adopted two of her children. They were both adopted internationally. And we will have her on a future episode to talk more about her experiences with that.

0:31On the more personal side of her experiences with adoption. But in this episode we'll be hearing her share more of her professional experiences and advice. Alright, well we are now on the podcast with Kim. Kim, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

1:01Would you take just a few minutes and introduce yourself a little bit? Sure. So my name is Kim Perry. I am an adoption professional here in Utah. And I've worked in the adoption field since 2008. I started then at an agency. And since that point in about 2013 I branched off with a couple of coworkers of mine. And started a business called Utah Adoption Specialists where we do home studies and kind of all of our services for adoption.

1:31We are not an agency but we help our clients focus on private adoptions primarily. Personally I am married and I have five kids. Two of whom were adopted as well. They're international adoptees and I think we'll talk about them at a later date. Perfect. That is Kim in a nutshell. And just for all of our listeners, we love Kim. On the personal side she has been included in or connected to all four of our adoptions in some way or another.

2:01And it's been awesome. So we've worked together for over a decade. Yes. You guys were some of my clients way back in the day. 2010? 9? Somewhere in there? When we first met? Yeah, we got approved in 2010. Yeah. Crazy, crazy. Well we're going to just jump in and ask you lots of questions. Does that sound okay? Great. All right. Yep. All right. So what threw you toward becoming a social worker?

2:31So when I was in high school, you know, Kai, you kind of have dreams about what you want to do as an adult when you grow up. I wrote down that I wanted to be a social worker and that I specifically wanted to work in the adoption field. And I think that that desire stemmed from personal family stories. And I have an aunt that was adopted as an infant. And she was a part of my life from the time I was young and I knew that she was adopted and I knew that was an important part of her identity. And so for whatever reason, that just stuck with me and it felt like the right call towards my career in the future.

3:04Awesome. Thinking about yourself back then and these this dream of becoming a social worker or specifically working with adoption. What has reality looked like versus what you thought it might look like back then? Such a naive person to the kind of intricacies and the nuances of adoption and the complexities of it. I think I started believing and feeling like adoption was something that was just butterflies and rainbows and it was just a wonderful thing and a really great way to create families and just like really cool.

3:37You know, like what a cool thing. And I even had that mentality going into when I started as a caseworker and even into my first few years of training with the agency that I was with. I think now I have done a lot more educating myself and I have personal experience with adoption now and I recognize that adoption is complex. It is a good thing. It is a beautiful thing. It is a fantastic way to grow a family. But there is loss on every side of adoption. And that's not something that you can just skip over or ignore or wish away.

4:11It is a really important part to understand and to be educated about no matter what part of the triad you are in with adoption. So I think that expectation that it was just going to be like a really fun, great job. I mean that is true for a lot of it. But also there is a lot of hard parts of adoption too. So I think I have learned that over the years most. So how has adoption changed in the time that you have been working in the field? I feel like from the time I started as a caseworker in 2008 to now 2021, there are fewer placements overall.

4:48Which some might look at that and say that is a bad thing. That is a negative. But I don't know if that is necessarily true. Kind of to the point that I was making before when I was a beginning caseworker I believed that adoption was the right option for almost anyone that was in a crisis situation experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. And now I don't believe that that is the case. I absolutely don't believe that is the case. I think adoption is the right option for some people but not for everybody. And I think that women should be empowered to make the right decision for them in their circumstances.

5:22And so sometimes that means that they are going to parent their baby and sometimes that means other options for them. And so I think that overall I feel like adoption has decreased over the years. I think that more private adoptions have become more common as well. At least in Utah. I am very well versed in Utah culture with adoption. And it used to be very agency only. You used an agency. That was the only way to go about it. I think that we have learned that you can have a successful private adoption.

5:52You can get the services that you need outside of an agency by doing a lot of research and finding the right licensed professionals and getting the right services. And I think that there has been an increase in private adoptions in the state of Utah at least. I would say too in my connection with a lot of Facebook groups about adoption that I have seen that trend happen nationwide in the US. I think in a lot of places it has as well.

6:23Any other changes you can think of? Most adoptive couples are coming in more educated than they used to be. So I don't know if that's a product of social media and people sharing their stories more openly. Probably. That's probably the biggest factor. But I think that people are coming in more prepared now. Of course there's still things to learn. But versus back in 2008 when I started, people came in with no knowledge whatsoever. And they really just felt like, just give me a baby. I'm going to go home and be happy. That's all I need to know. There's nothing else to it.

6:54Well honestly I think we probably fell into that category a little bit. Most people do, right? Yeah. Interesting. Okay so what do you think some of the biggest societal misconceptions are about adoption? I think probably number one is just the perception of birth mothers in general. That's one that really just bothers me that people perceive birth moms to fit into certain categories. They're young, they're on drugs, they're homeless, whatever it is.

7:28And while that might be the case for some of them, that's by and large not the majority of the ones that I've worked with in my career. But even so, there's just this negative undertone for birth moms in the way that we're talking about them, in the way that we, even though language we use surrounding birth mothers, that they give up their babies for adoption, or that sort of thing. And by and large, birth mothers are normal, stable people that you could be neighbors with and be comfortable having a relationship with.

7:59I just think that they're fantastic people in general and really heroic people to me. I just adore them and I love them and I wish that society didn't view them as like this really negative thing that discarded their child. And I think that also there's a little bit of a misconception that adoption is a second rate way to build your family, that maybe that's not the same as parenting, biological children and really it isn't there's differences, you know, with that come with that education that we talked about before, but on a day to day basis like your family is the same as any other family whether you've adopted children or biological children and it doesn't make a difference how much you love or care for your child whether they are biological or adopted.

8:42So it is an equally good way to build your family as having biological children. Maybe one that I'm thinking of that maybe you could talk to that maybe a misconception is that adoption cures infertility. Yeah, that's a big one. That's a really big one. Absolutely does not like every couple that I've worked with obviously hundreds of couples now over the years who have come to me and said I'm ready to adopt a child, and almost never there's been a few rare exceptions where the couple says you know I feel really

9:13at a good place with my infertility like this is okay I'm at peace, because it's one of the topics we hit pretty heavily in the interviews that we do for the home study. And almost always it's still a pretty sore spot and it's a it's a place that you have to hold some grief for over the course of time. Obviously that shifts with time I just right before this podcast I was on, I was doing interviews with a couple here, and they're pursuing their third adoption, and they started adoption around the same time I did way back in 2008, and they have come a long ways in their infertility, but and they were able to articulate that yes it's still hurts it still flares up.

9:51I still have moments where I feel this, this pain of pain related to infertility that has certainly shifted over those courses, those course of years, but it does not mean that it goes away when you adopt you still obviously you're going to feel, you know, whatever it is about seeing a pregnant woman or seeing baby clothes or whatever it is that targets that infertility for you. Another question that we have for you is, how do you feel that we can better support adoptees in the adoption triad. I think adoptees are by and large the most important part of the adoption triad because they are the only ones that did not have a choice in the matter, the only ones.

10:30And so just being present for whatever it is they feel, allowing them to express their feelings and their emotions around in their adoption, and that's going to vary from person to person is the best thing we can possibly do I think it's very productive and harmful to tell an adoptee, well you should be grateful, you should be so happy that you were placed for adoption because you have this fantastic family and you have all these things that you wouldn't have had otherwise you know they are entitled to feel whatever they feel about their adoption and in some cases they may feel some, you know, joy or some happiness or they may feel blessed by it and other cases they may not.

11:08And in other cases they may feel a combination of all those things and other things and that's completely okay. I think if I can share a story the same my same aunt that I was talking about earlier that kind of led me to the path of adoption. My perception of her as an adoptee growing up was that it was blissful. She fit in our family and she was fantastic and she was my aunt and she wasn't any different than any of the other members of the family. And she, you know, she just felt like she belonged she felt like she was part of us. And so I perceived that it was that she felt the same way about her adoption.

11:43Well, I finally asked her how she felt about being an adoptee when I was already an adoption professional I'd been working as an adoption professional for a couple of years. Three years at that point, and she and I and I share this story when I do our training classes so anyone who's come to our training classes will have heard the story but we, we were driving my aunt and I from Logan Utah where she lived to Boise, Idaho, because we were going to go to the play wicked together. And as we drove all those hours in the car, I finally asked her, what has it felt like for you to be an adoptee. And I was shocked to hear her say that she felt like she had spent her life with a piece of herself

12:26missing, and that there was like this puzzle and this whole chunk of her life was missing. She didn't have answers to who she was because hers was an era of closed adoptions entirely. And so she didn't know what her ethnicity was. She didn't know who she looked like she didn't know why she was talented in math, she was very smart with math, and nobody else in the family was you know like she had all these different unique things about her. That she didn't understand where those certain things came from for her. And so having her tell me that as an adoptee. She felt like a part of herself was missing was completely eye opening to me, family, maybe did her a disservice over those years because

13:06we didn't allow her to express those genuine feelings of how she felt about it. So yeah, that's an example of, of that. In your professional experience, what are your top tips for adoptive parents to help their adoptive children to feel that love and that acceptance. Well, the first one is you've got to deal with your own stuff. So, what gets in the way of us accepting our adoptees and their feelings and being present for them and those things that I just talked about is our own insecurities it's our own infertility, it's our own not feeling

13:40that they're going to be a parent it's our own fear that they're going to go find their birth parent or that they're going to love their birth parent more than us, you know those are those fears of our own that are getting in the way of accepting, whatever it is that they feel at that time. And so, I think that's a number one tip is that you've got to deal with some of your own stuff so talk to people who have been in a position that you have before, how have they dealt with their infertility, go see a professional counselor, I highly recommend that for everybody, talk to people who have had some of those beliefs and some of those things that you feel strongly about.

14:13Talk to your spouse, cry about it you know do kind of the grieving process to work through some of those feelings so that when your adoptee comes to you and says, you know, I feel like I would like to spend more time with my birth parents, or I want to know why I look at you, that's not something that's going to make you feel bad, your initial reaction is not going to be hurt for yourself, but more, what can I do to help support my child in this. And, I mean we'll get into this later when we talk again but my children I have to adoptees that are from Ecuador, and neither of them have an open adoption, just because of the circumstances right they were in an orphanage when we adopted them.

14:55My 16 year old she's almost 17. She comes to me with a lot of those feelings pretty frequently, because she has no knowledge of where she comes from. And it's painful for her, and she cries, and she wants to. She wants to even basic facts about herself that I can't provide for her. And for me as a parent, that's painful, I can't imagine feeling that way, but I want to provide a safe place for her that she can come and share some of those feelings and she doesn't feel like, man I'm going to hurt mom's feelings so I better not say this to her, right.

15:28Instead, I'm a safe place that she can come and share some of those feelings. Yeah, in addition to that I would say, help if they need it, seek out therapy for them to, you know, like we talked about adoption is complex and they might have feelings that they're expressing to a neutral party, or having someone help them navigate even what it is that they're feeling and so sometimes we don't have to do all of that as parents alone, no matter what our circumstances are I think we need a village to raise our children. And so reaching out to have them seek out therapy when appropriate is totally great. I think also connecting them with other adoptees is important too, so that they have a community that they feel like they can be themselves and be be genuine and have a support system

16:07amongst peers. So our next couple questions deal with open adoption. And the first is advice for expectant parents so what, what type of advice would you give to expect parents who are considering an open versus a closed adoption. Always, we know now that open adoption is best, it's best for everybody all the research indicates that all of my anecdotal experience indicates that open adoption is by far best for adoptees.

16:40So yeah, I would just educate them that adoption or open adoption is best for the adoptee and educate the reasons why. But also over the years I've seen open adoptions be very healing for birth parents as well that they get a relationship. It's a different relationship they know that they're no longer the child's parent, but they still get to be actively involved in the child's life and that almost always has an element of healing in it for them. So I think that just educating them that that's the best for everybody is important. In your experience, how have you seen that being the best situation for adoptees. What benefits come to them.

17:17Yeah, I think I mean just my two experiences that I just shared about you know my aunt having a closed adoption, my daughter having a closed adoption. I know the pain of adoptees who do not get those answers and those connections to their roots. Open adoption simply is a connection for the adoptee to understand who they are, where they come from, and why they were placed for adoption. Honestly, those are very basic things about themselves that they should be entitled to, and that they should, they should have access to that information and I think statistics and evidence show that adoptees are better adjusted and do better when they have an open adoption versus a closed adoption.

17:55So prospective adoptive parents are sometimes anxious about the idea of open adoption, what would you tell them. Yeah, so I think same thing just education, they've got to educate themselves about it. I can understand the fear, almost everyone comes in with this fear of, but I don't want to share my child, I'm not going to feel like the real parents I'm going to feel like I'm babysitting, you know, whatever it is, x, y, z, there are so many fears involved with open adoption. But just, they need to talk to people who have done it, because they can get, you know experiences that way. Watch blogs or social media or YouTube or whatever it is to get experiences of people that have done it.

18:35And then just go into it with an open mind, I always tell my adoptive couples, I promise you, you will love the person that hands their baby over to you. I promise you, you will, there's just no way possible that you're not going to form a connection with that person who is giving you her child. And all of us, when they come back for their supervision visit, you know in the first in the beginning they're scared and they're timid and they're fearful I don't know that I could do this I just don't. And then when they come back for the supervision visit and it's always, I had no idea I had no idea why I was so worried, I have no idea, because it's simply loving another human being, and we're all capable of that and that's what we're wired to do.

19:14And they recognize that it really is just, they form a natural relationship with that person and they just love them. So the next question, kind of a loaded question so it might be a couple part question has to do with private adoptions versus agency adoptions and I have a couple questions that people on Instagram will will ask us about what's what's what's better is it better to do a private adoption is it better to do an agency adoption so can you maybe talk to the pros and cons of both pros to a private adoption

19:46is much more cost effective, you're paying for the services you receive and nothing else. So you should be paying a professional to write a home study for you. You should be paying for a professional to do counseling for your expected parents and birth parents, you should be paying an attorney to do the legal aspects of your adoption. You're paying directly for the services you receive. So, like I said that ends up being much more cost effective cost effective than an agency adoption. So the other pro for a private adoption is that typically you get to dictate the own your own parameters around your relationship with expected parents and birth parents you get to form that in a more natural way.

20:23And a lot of times private options are happening by word of mouth so you're meeting independently, you're going to dinner you're forming a relationship agencies I think the one pro that is pretty big for them is that they have the ability to match. So they have expected parents coming to them saying I'm looking for a family that I want to place my baby with. Do you have couples that meet x y z criteria, show me a list, and then they get to choose a family that way. Agencies because they have a much higher budget they're charging more. They have the ability to advertise and so they're advertising online and bringing in expectant parents that way.

21:01They're looking to place the baby for adoption so they have the ability to match and sometimes that means you can have a placement quicker through an agency not always because word of mouth can be pretty quick to, but they can match you quicker sometimes through an agency foster to adopt would be a third option. And that is going through the state entirely so you approach to that really is that the state pays for all of the costs associated with it. They pay for your home study to pay for all the legal fees they do everything that way. However, you always you know you're always going to be adopting a child from a difficult situation, no matter what you know the child's been in a hard place.

21:38And if they're already eligible for adoption, then their parents, their parental rights have been terminated already so something has been the road has been long getting there you know it's been hard and difficult so you're just going to have to know that you're going to have extra needs for those children therapy for sure, maybe some learning disabilities some educational resources that they might need. And of course you can have that with any other child that you adopt or have biologically, but just a higher incidence of, you know, follow up needs that those kids may have an in foster care, the primary goal is always reunification. So foster parents know going in. The goal is to help support, mom and dad getting their rights back and for baby to go back with them really far down the road,

22:17and not be an infant coming out of a hospital. Alright, so what are some principles that you would suggest considering when we're thinking about how to promote more ethical adoption practices. Okay. I have so much to say on that topic. I better narrow it down somehow. I think the biggest thing is to hold your adoption professionals accountable. They need to be doing what's in the best interest of the child, and what's most ethical, and oftentimes, large amounts of money exchange hands in the placement of a child, and so be

23:03questioning you know where is that money going what is going on with that money where why am I paying the certain fee for this, because I feel like no child should really have a price tag on them. Like I said before, you should pay your professionals you should pay the adoption professionals who are helping you with your adoption, just like you would for any other service that you get you pay them for their professional expertise. However, when a large amount of money is being exchanged for the baby, then that's where I think that you need to be asking a lot of questions. Why is that money being charged where is it going.

23:43And I think also important questions to ask of your adoption professionals are, where are you finding expectant parents, what is their recruitment quote unquote what's the recruitment process for them. Are you offering them unbiased counseling, are you offering them ways that they could potentially parent, are you helping them look at all of the options. Are you doing anything that's in a coercive nature, meaning, are you offering them money or something of value, after they place the baby for adoption.

24:16These are questions that adoption, this is very these are very common themes in the adoption world. And the reason these things continue to happen is because adoptive couples turn a blind eye to it. And I completely understand you know like I completely understand that desire to have a family, and to have a child. And I know that that's where a lot of this is coming from, but it does not excuse poor behavior on the part of your adoption professionals. In order for a placement to happen. So, there's a lot of coercion in the adoption world. There's a lot of hidden fees like I talked about there's a lot of people that will charge medical fees when the, the expectant mom is on Medicaid or a state funded

24:59insurance so again, just asking questions about you need some transparency in those processes. And unfortunately that is the responsibility of the adoptive couple. It's a lot on the shoulders of an adoptive couple but it is your responsibility. Think about it this way you know if your child grows up and Google's their own adoption agency or adoption service provider, and all this stuff is on the internet because there have been lots of recent cases in the last year, few years in Utah, where

25:31information is available about certain adoptions and how they've come to be. And if your child found out that information about how they came into your home. How would you feel about that, and how would you answer questions to your child about that, about those practices that led them to your home. How could you, you know justify your behavior in that way so it's really important that you ask some hard questions. One of the questions that I see online are about home studies. Can you just talk us through what the common elements of the home study are.

26:06Yep. So home study is a overview of almost every aspect of your life so the name home study does not just mean that we come to your house and look around your home. We actually are writing documents usually around 15 pages long, and it covers everything from reference letters you have to submit reference letters, background information so we cover everything about your background your parents your family of origin your siblings, your hobbies your likes your dislikes, all that is covered in that section. We have a section on your marriage and how your relationship works if you're married, you know single people can adopt as well so they're single we cut out that section.

26:44There is a section on medical and health history, as well as mental health history and medical reports are required for that. There's a section on finances and employment so we gather certain documents for that like tax returns and financial statements and employment verifications. There are background checks that we run on you several different background checks. There's a section on what your home is, we do come to your home when we look around your home and make sure it's a safe environment for your child. There's a section on preferences that you have in a child that you would adopt to fill out a questionnaire for that.

27:21And I'm trying to Oh, there's, there's like a section on your neighborhood and community and things like that so lots of different paperwork involved, and then you do interviews with your caseworker in addition to the visit to your home and the interviews with your home study usually last at least two hours, and we're talking about again every kind of every aspect of your life so we can compile that into that written report. Kind of a follow up to that, would you say that during this process there's something that kind of catches people off guard, or, or maybe it's most surprising to talk with the couples.

27:58I think that by, by, by the nature of the home city it is invasive, you know we are asking really personal questions and we're a stranger, essentially when we start, we're really good friends by the end but we started strangers. It can feel invasive to tell a stranger about your finances, it can tell you know to tell a stranger about any history with addictions that you've had or any history with mental health counseling or traumatic incidents that you've been through in your life, or we even

28:28talk about intimacy, you know there's like different things that can be really uncomfortable for people to talk about. I would just reassure the people that I work with. I've done so many home studies I've written so many home studies in my life that I really will not remember any of those details about you. I will remember the cool things about you I remember that your personalities and your quirks and the unique things that you do. More than anything, I don't remember the nitty gritty details at all. Do you have any advice for couples or people who are looking to adopt that are trying to match privately, or how to get out there how to make those matches.

29:07So that's a tough, that's a tough thing to say because every match is made in a different way, and what works for one couple is not going to work for another couple. By and large, the biggest way our couples are matched is through word of mouth. So however you can get the word out there to your friends your family your loved ones that you are hoping to adopt your community your support people. That's how your matches most likely to happen in our experience. And to me it completely makes sense because if I'm an expectant parent looking to place my baby.

29:39I'm going to take the advice of someone I know who says hey I know Sean and Lynette and they're amazing and here's what I love about them. I know them to be genuinely good people. So I take that advice to heart versus going online and looking at 1000 profiles, where the people have written whatever they want about themselves, you know, there's not anything against profiles and we actually encourage you to have a profile and have a website, so you have kind of a common area where people can find information about you. All right, there are members of all, I guess all members of the adoption triad listening to this podcast, any last thoughts or things that you would want to share before we wrap up.

30:19So the more I learn as an adoption professional the more I know the importance of ethical adoptions that's probably my number one soapbox item is ethical adoptions and that encompasses using ethical agencies, private adoption professionals, all those things, but also ensuring that expectant parents have access to all of the information they need in order to make a decision and follow up care. So when they do place their baby for adoption that they aren't just immediately sent on a plane back to their home

30:53state, without any ongoing counseling, they need access to ongoing professional counseling for as long as they need. And that's going to vary from person to person. So I just think ensuring that expected parents are well educated and not coerced in any way shape or form, it needs to be 100% their decision. And if adoption is not the right decision for them. There needs to be support in that as well. Love it. You're awesome Kim, we love talking to you. Oh you guys are awesome too. I can't wait to hear about the bone marrow. Yeah, we'll see how it all goes.

31:27Well thank you so much Kim. Thank you. You're welcome. We know you're so busy we really appreciate you taking time for us. Anytime for you guys. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project. We love Kim, she was our first contact in the adoption world and is one of our very favorite people. We hope that you loved learning from her and hearing some of her experiences as an adoption professional.

32:02And we do plan on bringing her back in the future. We do plan on doing a second season but we are planning on wrapping up the season here in a couple weeks, primarily because as Kim mentioned actually, I am actually going to be donating bone marrow in a few weeks. And with that and school starting for both Lynette and the kids and sports and everything. We're going to take probably about a month and a half or two off, and that will be coming in a few weeks so we'll have a few more episodes before we take that break, but just wanted to let you know that that's coming.

32:38But yes, we will bring him back in season two and you can hear about her adoption story and more of her personal connections with adoption in season two we're looking at doing a ton more interviews we have a lot already lined up and so we're really excited for that. And again, thank you so much for listening to this episode with Kim. See you next time.

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