Child welfare advocate says church can help amid adoption decline

Caring for orphans and vulnerable children in the United States and around the world calls for multi-faceted ministry by followers of Jesus and helpful public policies amid the dramatic decline in adoptions by Americans, according to a leading child-welfare advocate.

The number of children adopted from other countries has fallen by more than 90 percent — from a peak of 22,989 in 2004 to 1,622 in the fiscal year that ended in September 2020, according to the U.S. State Department. Meanwhile, total domestic adoptions in the United States dropped from 133,737 in 2007 to 110,373 in 2014, according to the latest estimate by the National Council for Adoption.

Herbie Newell, president and executive director of Lifeline Children’s Services, said the church should exercise a three-pronged approach regarding child welfare.

The strategy for Christians should be “caring for the family on the front end and helping them stay together” and “helping put those families back together once those kids have left the house,” he said. “[L]et’s not let kids languish when those aren’t possibilities, and let’s find opportunities for them through adoption, both domestic and international.

“We’ve got to be about building families back,” Newell said. “Adoption is beautiful. Adoption is something we should support. But the … best (option) is that the child would not become vulnerable, would not have to be separated or would not have to be taken away from their family.”

At the same time, adoption needs to increase, he said. Lifeline has experienced excellent results in its family reconciliation work domestically and internationally for more than a decade, “but we’re still seeing kids that that’s not a reality for them,” Newell said. “The truth of the matter is, with 140 million orphans in the world, not every single one of them is going to be reconciled and restored to their family.”

Lifeline, which is based in Birmingham, Ala., performs child welfare work in 23 countries, but most of the 17 with which it partners in intercountry adoptions ask if the agency has more families to receive children into their homes, he said.

Southern Baptist policy specialist Chelsea Sobolik affirmed the need for Americans to adopt children.

“Every child deserves a safe, permanent and loving family,” said Sobolik, director of public policy for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “For some children around the world, their only opportunity for a family is through intercountry adoption.

“In some cases, the decline in intercountry adoption is because courts are more open to domestic adoption and foster care, which ought to be applauded,” said Sobolik, who was adopted from overseas and is in the process with her husband, Michael, of adopting children from India. “But we know that not every child will have the opportunity for a permanent family in their country of origin, and intercountry adoption must be a viable option. Our government and our policies must prioritize the care and adoption of vulnerable children abroad.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the orphan crisis worldwide and has created new problems for intercountry adoption. By the end of April 2021, more than 1.5 million children had experienced the death of a parent or grandparent caregiver who lived in their home and helped care for them, according to a report by a coalition that included the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The State Department largely attributed the 45 percent decline from 2019 to 2020 in intercountry adoptions by Americans to the pandemic’s effect “on operations in countries of origin worldwide, travel restrictions” and its own “Do Not Travel” global advisory.

Domestically, family strengthening and restoration should be goals for the church, but followers of Jesus also need to adopt children out of foster care, Newell said. More than 400,000 children are in foster care in the United States, although many are not eligible for adoption.

“What I would want to tell the church is, as pro-life as we are, those kids in U.S. foster care have parents who chose life for them,” said Newell, who has spoken at multiple Evangelical for Life conferences cohosted by the ERLC. “And so as the church, if we’re really going to be pro-life, we’ve got to care for those kids who are born that are languishing in foster care.”

Lifeline’s domestic work by its offices in 16 states includes pregnancy counseling, adoption and family restoration.

— Tom Strode is Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press.