After the adoption is finalized
By Ian Forber-Pratt, Executive Director, The Ties Foundation
I spent twenty-five years on the front end of child welfare, in nineteen countries. I sat in living rooms in St. Louis as a foster-care case manager, and I listened to families in places I could barely pronounce. Everywhere I went, I watched people pour real care into one moment: finding a child a family.
And I watched how quiet it got afterward.
I know that quiet from the inside, too. I was adopted from India. Adoption gave me a family, and I am grateful for that every day. It also left me with questions a good home does not automatically answer. Where did I come from? Who am I, living between two cultures? Who else carries this? Those questions do not expire when the paperwork is filed. For many of us they get louder in adulthood, when no one is checking in anymore.
More than 1.1 million people have been adopted across borders since the 1950s. Many of them are adults now, carrying a lot of unasked questions, with very little funding built for them.
That is why we started The Ties Foundation. We are a new nonprofit, built by and for intercountry adoptees, and we fund the chapter after the adoption is finalized: journeys back to the places we come from, therapy, and support for identity and community. Our first grants open in early 2027.
If you are an adoptive or foster parent, or you work in child welfare, I want to say something gently. You are not being replaced, and you are not the problem. The care you give is the ground everything else stands on. What we are building is more of that same care, for the years you cannot be in the room for. Kids grow up. They become adults who may want to go back, to heal, to find their people. The best thing we can do is make sure those doors are open and the support is there, with no shame attached.
If your work is championing the well-being of children and families, I believe that story does not stop at eighteen.
So here is my invitation. The next time you talk with a young person, a parent, or a colleague, say out loud that adoption is lifelong, and that wanting to know more about where you come from is a normal, healthy part of it. And if you know an adult adoptee, tell them there is a foundation made for them.
We are just getting started, and we would love to build this with you.
— Ian
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