Realizing Open Adoption Dreams (The ROAD) is an adoption services project promoting permanence through adoption for older youth in foster care while also maintaining their existing relationships with birth family members and others who have significant meaning in their lives. An open adoption allows youth in care the opportunity to develop a positive, well-integrated identity while providing the support and stability that a permanent adoptive family offers.

Goals of the Program: The ROAD creates awareness amongst adolescents in foster care, their birth parents, extended families, kinship networks, adoptive parents and caseworkers that permanency is possible for older children and that the option of an open adoption is available.

Service Area: New York City .

Languages Spoken : The ROAD is a bilingual program; we offer services in English and in Spanish.

Services Provided :
•  Counseling adolescents about the possibility and benefits of an open adoption.
•  Conducting focus groups with adolescents that explore their questions and concerns regarding adoption.
•  Working in collaboration with foster care agencies to develop a permanency plan for each adolescent.
•  Instilling in caseworkers the positive belief that a child is never too old to be adopted.
•  Identifying permanent resources within the adolescent's own network of relationships and matching each adolescent appropriately to a prospective parent or parents.
•  Tailoring post-placement services to the adoptive parent and adolescent's needs .

For further information, contact:
Mark Fairclough, Project Director
(212) 475-0222, ext. 207
mfairclough@coac.org