The adoption of children with disabilities: an exploration of altruistic behaviors and motivations

Social work practice is often focused on the delivery of services by agencies that may be disconnected from the communities they serve, and not on strategies to educate and empower those communities to provide those services to themselves. By understanding what motivates individuals to participate in helping behaviors, especially those behaviors that are statistically rare, social work practitioners may be able to motivate that behavior in others. The literature on children with disabilities within the foster care system tells us that these children are more likely to be abused and less likely to be adopted than nearly all other child groups (Sullivan, 2009; Orme, Cherry, & Krcek, 2013). Exploring the differences between the birth families that lack the capacity to care for these children, and the families that do so willingly has important implications for social work practice as a means of community and individual empowerment, and not simply service delivery. Using adoptive parents of children with disabilities in Butte County as subjects, this mixed-method study sought to find factors that motivate individuals to perform altruistic behaviors.