Chicago Community Trust Awards Grant to FRC

FRC is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant from the Chicago Community Trust (CCT) to conduct a study of Chicago's Latino Community's attitudes towards adoption.

For 93 years, The Chicago Community Trust has connected the generosity of donors with the needs of the community by making grants to organizations working to improve metropolitan Chicago. With assets of $1.8 billion, the Trust made a record-breaking $114 million in grants in 2007. From strengthening community schools to assisting local art programs, from building health centers to helping lives affected by violence, the Trust works to enhance our region.

“Because the Latino community is one of the fastest growing segments in the US, it’s surprising that so little research has been done in this area,” stated Richard Pearlman.

As part of its effort to develop a coherent Adoption Outreach Program focused on Chicago’s Latino community, FRC realized that it needed to gain a better understanding of how adoption is perceived by in the community.

FRC’s long term objective is to ensure that service providers within the Latino community are knowledgeable of current trends and understandings in the field of adoption and to help provide unbiased information about rights and options in adoption to birth parents and adoptive parents.

This study which will be conducted over a six month period starting in August will afford FRC a unique opportunity to determine likely effective characteristics for such an Adoption Outreach Program in the Latino community. Information collected from this study will be useful in helping social service providers understand the degree to which this now under discussed topic affects children, their extended family networks and the community.

FRC’s experience with the Latino population has shown us that women from the Latino community refrain from talking with family members and friends when they decide to place a child for adoption. Anecdotal experience suggests that women from the Latino community are more likely to hide their pregnancies than are women from other ethnic groups. What is apparent is that women from this community who contemplate placing a child for adoption seldom receive prenatal care or support from their family and community because of subtle and overt cultural biases associated with placing a child for adoption. Family Resource Center has observed that when women from the Latino community go into labor they frequently seek medical care through emergency rooms. Once at the hospital they go through labor and delivery alone and without the benefit of family emotional support. Further, in FRC’s experience, once a child is born, Latino women are more likely to sign out of the hospital against medical advice, so that they can return home quickly. It is FRC’s belief that this behavior puts the mother and child at an increased risk to their physical and emotional health.

Family Resource Center believes that in order to provide a wide range of high quality adoption services in Chicago’s Latino community basic study needs to take place to ensure that the services being contemplated are effective, culturally sensitive, and based on an appreciation of what this community thinks is necessary and proper. Any new initiative in this area must be heavily informed by evidence that no one has, until now, gathered.

This “research” project is viewed by FRC as the first phase of a multi-phase project that will result in our ability to provide effective services in Chicago’s growing Latino community. In this phase of the project Family Resource Center will partner with other agencies, individuals, medical facilities and educational institutions for the purpose of gathering data, recording responses and consolidating acquired information about how adoption is viewed within the Latino community.

The second phase of this project contemplates building on the information gathered by: developing materials in Spanish, hiring a Spanish speaking staff person(s), conducting educational/outreach activities, and providing other direct services. FRC looks forward to providing educational training to community based organizations, to medical service providers and counseling clinics where birth parents and hopeful adoptive parents come for information.

FRC is excited to inform our community that in conjunction with this project, and in the interest of having board members and staff who represent the constituents we serve, FRC’s board is committed to recruiting one or more new board members from Chicago’s Latino community within the next four months, and to recruit, hire and train, one Latino social service work to serve on FRC’s regular staff during this same time period.

If you have any thoughts or ideas about this project, or know of someone from the Latino community who you think would be a good candidate for our Board of Directors please contact Richard Pearlman, FRC’s Executive Director at 773-334-2300 or via E-mail at rpearlman@f-r-c.org. We look forward to keeping the FRC community informed about this project.