Promote family preservation in your community
We all know the myth is strong—the one that mothers who lose children to adoption do so after having all the information possible to make the decision themselves, wholly and with the support of trusted individuals in their communities. But we know that isn't true. It wasn't true during the height of the closed adoption era when we were forced to relinquish our babies and if it is at all true today, it is very rare. The pre-adoption machine is hard at work preying on pregnant women. Only those of us who have been there understand the long- term effects of adoption separation. So how do we help women today save themselves from this pain? How do we give them our experience so they can truly make an informed decision?
Some of our members worked together to launch a pilot program that would distribute these brochures in our communities so women have the broadest possible set of options, including parenting the child they are carrying, rather than only being counseled to relinquish. We made a version of the brochure that we wanted when we were being preyed upon by adoption agencies and prospective adoptive families prior to losing our children to adoption. Read on to see how you can help us get it in our communities.
Family Preservation Brochure
The brochure is double sided and tri-folded for easy display in stands or laid out on tables in provider offices where young women may see them.
How to help:
The goal of this project is to get the brochure out there into our communities and identify the places where it can have maximum impact. Ultimately, we’re wanting to successfully prove the concept that the brochure works as intended and then fund, scale, and automate the distribution. So we need you to help us do that. Here’s how:
-
You’ll need to start with a stack of brochures in hand. There are the two ways you can get then:
Option 1: You can request them from us at no cost to you. Just fill out this form and we’ll get a stack to you.
Option 2: You can put in an order at your local print shop (ie. Fedex Kinkos) and pick them up there. It is important to us that only the professionally printed brochure is distributed as opposed to one printed on your home printer where the quality and paper is not as sophisticated as a professional print job. Here’s the print-ready PDF which you should be able to upload to your local professional print shop.
Note: We recognize you may have contacts at places you think would be interested in displaying the brochures but you’re unable to actually travel there. In that case, feel free to attach the PDF in your email outreach. If they agree, let us know and we can send a stack to them—at no cost to you but on your behalf. Thank you!
-
This is the important part. Women in our communities are at risk of being preyed upon if they or their friends get pregnant unexpectedly. Where are they in your community? Who are the professionals in their lives treating/teaching/mentoring them? We are interested to know how both demographics can receive and be influenced by the brochure.
It can feel daunting to approach a facility with a stack of the brochures and ask for their acceptance to display them so we made this handy Talking Points document with some tips for you.
Note: If you discover additional tips that would be helpful for other volunteers at this stage in the process, we’re all ears so let us know! Thank you.
-
Once you’ve distributed your stack, we need you to complete the feedback loop with us. Remember, we want to identify the opportunities where the brochure had impact with the ultimate goal being to fund, scale, and automate the distribution. So, we hope we’ve made it as easy as possible for you to report your experience. Here are three ways you can share your intel with us:
Fill out this form.
Email us: informeddecisionsarebest@gmail.com
Join our Facebook group: Mother Power: Relinquishment Education and post or PM us.
Thank you!
ICYW, how did we get here?
Here’s the TL;DR version: It all started at our 2021 CUB Retreat where this session inspired conversation about what mothers could do next with the power of our voices, which then inspired this survey where attendees ranked their interests in taking more action, and from that these three “Mother Power” facebook working groups were formed, and one of them—Mother Power: Relinquishment Education—created this very project.