In continuing the Voices Project, we are honored to introduce Dr. Victor Groza, the Grace F. Brody Professor of Parent-Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He is an active researcher in the area of child welfare, focusing on the effects of institutional care on child development, and both domestic and international adoption. In addition to publishing his work in scholarly journals and books, he continues to share his knowledge and understanding of his field as a professor of social work.
In addition to providing instruction on traditional topics such as adoption practice and policy, and family interventions, Dr. Groza is committed to linking research with practice. In working to this end, he developed the International Travel and Study in Child Welfare course which provides students with the amazing opportunity to both practice and research social work abroad. Additionally, he works with the Adoption PARTners program, a private practice, which offers comprehensive in-home post-adoption support services strengthen and preserve adoptive families.
I would like to thank Dr. Victor Groza for his participation, and for helping us break down the barriers between research, practice, and the community.
- Quade French
What brought you into the field of adoption research?
My interest in adoption began by growing up in a home with an adoptive brother. My adoptive brother was the fourth child to join my sibling group of 5 children. He would have been classified as a special needs child had the term been coined in the sixties. My interest in adoption was renewed while I was pursuing my doctoral work. In order to supplement my income I was hired by an adoption agency to conduct home studies of prospective adoptive parents for children with special needs and to provide supervision to the family after a child was placed for adoption. My first two cases ended in disruption (i.e., the removal of the child from the adoptive home before legalization of the adoption). This difficulty was contrary to my experience with my adoptive brother. This practice experience stimulated my adoption-related research. Initially, my research started on the difficulty of adoption disruption. Subsequently, when it became apparent that most older-child adoptions remain intact (over 80%) and do not disrupt or dissolve, I turned my focus to understanding the intact adoptive family.
My interest in the institutional care of children began in the mid seventies when I was working in a psychiatric residential facility for adolescents. I was keenly aware of the difficulties that existed for both the children and the staff working with them, focusing on the types of problems and abuses that can occur when children are cared for out-of-home during extended periods of time. I was also curious about the role that families played in their children's behavior that resulted in the children's removal from their home settings, and how these families were virtually ignored in residential programs. This occupational interest led me into a master’s program in social work, and consequently to a research interest in ways to understand, monitor, and improve the treatment of children residing in institutional settings. In the early 1990s, I extended this research on institutional care into Romania. My ethnic ties are Romanian and when the plight of children in the "Institutions for the Irrecoverable" first became known, I began to volunteer in Romania. From 1991-2005, I led teams of social workers and social work students into Romania to provide consultation, training, technical assistance, and conduct research.
My work in Romania lead to work in India (2001-current), Ukraine (2005-2007), Guatemala (2008-current) and Ethiopia (2010-current). Less you think I have abandoned my domestic agenda, I just finished an adoption youth development project with a local agency (2005-2010) and helped the county I live in (Cuyahoga) obtain a diligent recruitment grant (2008-2013) where, among other outcomes, we are using a quasi-experimental design to evaluate neighborhood based interventions for obtaining permanency for older children and sibling groups.
What are your thoughts on the progression of child welfare research and/or practice since you began your work?
When I began adoption research in 1986, focusing on older children in the public system, there were few researchers in the field. Since then, there has been an explosion of adoption research and new voices in the adoption of older children who have been abused, neglect or exposed to alcohol and other drugs. During that almost 25 years, I have begun moving away from a solely positivistic, quantitative perspective to embrace a mixed methods approach such as the use of enthosurveys in my cross-national and international work.
Adoption practice still operates from a medicalized and pathological perspective on adoption, forced upon practice by the need to diagnose to receive payment. Instead of being able to help families, adoptees and birth parents through normative crisis and experiences, these normative experiences have had to be translated into deficits. This approach thwarts “Keeping the Promise” (http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/research/2010_10_promises.php) made to members of the adoption triad/constellation.
What are your perspectives on the interaction between poverty, social class and the child welfare system?
We have been moving to a class-based system of adoption for some time. If you are poor or working class, the only adoption option for you is to adopt through the public system. If you are middle class, you adopt also from other countries, provided you can come up with the costs and use your assets like credit/second mortgages to fund the adoption. If you are above middle class, infant adoption from attorneys and surrogacy become additional options. I am not making a moral judgment of how adoption has changed, just making an observation about the process.
Where should we be directing our research attention?
Adoption research should be focusing on examining adoption from a strength based perspective. Instead of focusing on what predict[s] problems, we should focus on what predicts resilience, how to build resilience in children and families, and what predicts success. More importantly, there has to be funding mechanisms in place to study adoption with[out having to turn] adoption issues into problems and pathology to secure funding.
Can you tell us about one major project or area of focus that you are currently involved with?
Partners for Forever Families is a Public-Private-University Initiative and a Neighborhood-Based Approach to recruitment, funded by Adoption Opportunities: Diligent Recruitment of Families for Children in the Foster Care System. At the time this grant was developed, the overall population of children in foster care had reduced but the children who remained in care were older and the more complicated, requiring new methods to promote their need for permanency. The project was initiated in 2008. We employ a quasi-experimental design where neighborhood based interventions are being used in specific areas and a comparison group is getting none of the interventions.
Partners for Forever Families - Areas of Interest
What theories and research methods show the most promise in better understanding the complexities of human development in institutional and adoptive settings?
Family systems theory, attachment theory, human ecology theory, and child development theories have guided my research. Adoption research needs to mature from an either/or approach to research—we use either quantitative or qualitative—we need to move towards mixed methods and mixed disciplines collaborating on projects to begin to understand the complexities of adoption.
As far as institutions go, I come from the value base that children need families, not orphanages, institutions, group homes, etc. While I recognize the need to improve the quality of care of children in group settings, we can never lose site of the vision to move from group care to family care worldwide.
What are the most pressing issues as related to child welfare systems in the United States?
Finding permanent families for the oldest and most complex children in the child welfare system, who we have made legal orphans and for whom life prospects are compromised unless they are connected to a family.