OPAN

Nelly from AUT is making good progress with her project about the experiences of adoptive mothers and birth mothers in open adoptions.  But she still requires 2 or 3 birthmothers from open adoption arrangements for her study.

Birth and adoptive mothers will not be matched (i.e. birth and adoptive mothers of the same child) in the study. She is simply seeking 2-3 birth mothers in open adoptive arrangements.

Each participant will be interviewed individually and the participants will not be brought together, nor will information about participant experiences be shared with others.

If you can help out by taking part in this valuable study, please contact Nelly.

Related documents attached…

• Research_Invitation [Word]
• Participant Information Sheet (Birthmother) [Word]

As adoption applicants in the local pool in Auckland, the adoption numbers (ie: how many adoptions so far this year, and how many applicants in the pool) are important to us. These numbers give us a feel for our “odds”. Unfortunately the figures aren’t getting any better (as mentioned in the recent NZ Herald article link on an earlier post).

Recently OPAN contacted CYF with a request for some detailed historical statistics for NZ/Auckland Adoptions for the last 5 years (number of adoptions vs avg number of applicants in the pool).  Unfortunately they weren’t able to provide stats for the rest of the country at this stage – but we’ll continue to ask.

Thanks to Lynley at CYF for the above information.

Update: It looks like similar statistics for local adoption in Australia: 61 Local Placement Adoptions in 2009/10.

The OPAN Library is now open, head over to the Library page and take a look through the more than 100 adoption books that are available for loan.

We’ve had a request from a post-graduate student at AUT, who is starting a small project that looks at the experiences for adoptive mothers and birth mothers in open adoptions.

They require 2 or 3 participants from each side of the adoption. However, they are not seeking matched persons (i.e. birth and adoptive mothers of the same child). They are simply seeking 2-3 birth mothers in open adoptive arrangements, and 2-3 adoptive mothers of children in open adoptive arrangements.

Each participant will be interviewed individually and the participants will not be brought together, nor will information about participant experiences be shared with others.

If you would like to take part in this valuable study, please contact Nelly.