Chaos, Madness, and Unpredictability: Placing the Child with Ears Like Uncle Harry's
Chaos, Madness, and Unpredictability is a book about the placement of older and handicapped children for adoption.
It is, in general, a description and analysis of the chaos, madness, and unpredictability of those portions of the child welfare and legal systems responsible for foster care and adoption; of the shuffling of children from one foster home to another; of the procedures to legalize adoption which differ among almost all courts; of the adoption laws which differ from state to state; of the innumerable traditionally accepted explanations offered by adoption workers for not finding adoptive families for these children; and of the still common use of widely accepted but highly flawed methods for determining the "best" parents for the child - all in a effort to predict the unpredictable: to create and maintain, in advance, a successful adoption.
More specifically, it is the story of an attempt at solution.
It is the story of Spaulding for Children, a small adoption agency in Chelsea, Michigan, created specifically for finding families for older and handicapped children not placed by other adoption programs. It is a description of the agency's philosophies, methods, and techniques.
It is an attempt to show, by example, that the categories "hard to place" and "unadoptable" can be extensively redefined and, in almost all cases, eliminated.
But it is also the story of families who have a special understanding for these children; families who can become committed to children with whom they find commonalities - even if those children have other characteristics such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, or large, funny ears "like Uncle Harry's."
It is an attempt to describe what Spaulding has provided since its beginning in 1968 - that with the right choice of techniques, hard work, and dedication, a permanent adoptive family can usually be found for almost every child traditionally thought to be "hard-to-place" or "unadoptable."
Although written some years ago, the philosophies, methods, and techniques remain a proven approach for maximizing efforts to create successful adoptions for today's older and handicapped children in search of permanent families.
Copies of Chaos, Madness, and Unpredictability (374 pgs) may be obtained from Dr. Unger.