The Battle Over a Baby

This is a case study of a homosexual couple struggling to adopt a child. They face many challenges and impediments to get full adoption of the child. They undergo a hard time in attaining foster rights of the child. Below is a case study analysis of the issues affecting this couple.

The Analysis

The root problem in this case study is inadequate policy and laws regulating fostering and adoption of children. There are laws on same sex marriages but none on same sex parenthood. This was the major problem, since homosexuals are not allowed to adopt children in some states like Arkansas, Utah, Michigan; Mississippi, and Florida. Generally parenting law is determined through cases but not in legislation. Homosexual parents can take good care of a child, taking into account that the so called normal mother and child parents, Kutil and Hess, are ready to raise TiChase and love the child very much. Besides, they had a vast experience in raising abused children like TiChase.

The government is to be blamed for the problem due to its unwillingness to facilitate development of proper policies and laws on child fostering and adoption, which are not discriminative. This makes the law to be easily manipulated, as seen with Judge Blake ruling, according to which TiChase had to be taken away from the homosexual couple to normal mother and father couple; however, it was later refuted by Supreme Court.

The contributing factors in this problem include social attitude towards homosexual. This is seen when the court appointed attorney Thomas K. Fast, who was responsible to monitor the welfare of the child, did not take more than seven minute in his routine check and did not even hold the baby in his arms. Also, Fast was the first to file a motion in court of removing the child from a homosexual home, claiming that the child was likely to be abused; but the truth is that a child can be abused in any form a family, regardless of its sexual orientation.

The other contributing factor is the loophole of the law, according to which, Kutil is allowed to adopt Renee as a single parent but not as a gay parent, while the child will be reared by both Kutil and Hess.

Another contributing factor is unclear procedures in child fostering. This is seen when Department of Health and Human Resources issued “permanency plan” on TiChase to the couple and later withdrew it, claiming that the couple had exceeded the maximum number of children they could keep; yet it was the one which had brought the extra child to Kutil and Hess.

Unstable legislation on parenting causes the foster parents to live in fear of losing the child, since it can be adopted by someone else. Moreover, the child is rotated from home to home, which affect him/her psychologically. Kutil and Hess had fostered many children who left them depressed. If a child is taken away from his/her foster parents, this does not only affect the child but also the parents and the remaining family members psychologically. This is seen by the frustration of Kutil and Renee, when TiChase is taken away from them.

Alternatives Evaluation

Legislation can be enacted to mitigate the problem. This will be a binding law, which will be indiscriminative and precise. The law can encompass policies on child fostering and adoption to avoid the problems seen by the Department of Health and Human Resources.

The other alternative will be to conduct civic education and advocacy on indiscriminative fostering and adoption of children. This would help in changing people’s mind, but will not affect the legislation and policies in place.

The Action Plan

The best solution to this problem will be an enactment of an indiscriminative policy law. This should begin with drafting of the bill, which should be done with consultation of all stakeholders (even homosexual parents). Advocacy on the bill should be done so that it will not get many impediments in the legislature. Once the bill is passed, a thorough civic education on the act should be done so as to make the citizens aware of the new laws and policy on child adoption.

If the legislation strategy fails, then a media advocacy and civic education should be carried out throughout the nation, for people to know that adoption of children should not be discriminative as it is currently, since even homosexual are good parents, as in the case of Kutil and Hess.