Welcome to ISS-USA’s Family Routes Blog

Welcome to the International Social Service-USA branch’s blog, Family Routes. Each month we will write a blog post on a topic that is relevant to our work in particular or child welfare and child protection across borders in general. It is our hope that these timely and thoughtful posts will begin to raise awareness of the rapidly growing populations of individuals facing complex circumstances in need of social and legal services across international borders, and provoke discussion about best practice in accomplishing positive outcomes in every case we manage. Family Routes will trace the varying routes families must travel to be together and emphasize the importance of family roots to the well-being of children around the world. Many of the issues that we will be discussing are politically and socially contentious. Debates swirl around much of our daily work including intercountry adoption, international surrogacy, and the rights of parents versus the rights of the child. Regardless of the challenging nature of our discussions we view every case through one simple lens: what is in the child’s best interest. Our role in every journey a child must take to be a part of a permanent, loving and safe home will illustrate best practices in cross border social work and technical expertise. We welcome thoughtful responses to, and comments on, our blog.

90 years ago a group of forward thinking women determined that there was a critical need for social services for migrating families that began before they left their country of origin and continued after they arrived in their new home. The radical notion that coordinated services across international borders might decrease the number of families permanently separated is the hallmark of the work of ISS-USA and the ISS Federation. Today the reasons that children and families become separated are far more complex than our fore-mothers imagined. Our work no longer focuses just on families affected by migration. Nonetheless, the bedrock of the idea still supports our work and the work of the ISS Federation. There is no less need for cross-border social services than there was in 1926. Things have just gotten more complicated. ISS-USA continually searches for innovative and sustainable solutions in the best interest of children. On any given day the ISS-USA case management team handles dozens of cases involving children in need of protection or reunification with their families, adult adoptees searching for their biological families, American citizen children or adults in crisis in a foreign country who need assistance in returning home, and a growing number of requests for technical expertise on a wide range of cross border child welfare and protection issues. Our role is to provide expert assistance following best practices in social work to support outcomes in every individual’s best interest. Each month we will include actual case data to illustrate the issue under discussion.

We look forward to your comments and insights.
(Special thanks to Spearfish Innovation for their expertise in assisting us with naming our new blog. http://spearfishinnovation.com/)