Our Mission statement

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Advocates for Change Mission Statement
Advocates for Change is an adoptee-centered support forum. This forum was created by adoptees, and is owned, administered and moderated by adoptees.   Our focus is simple: We are here to provide support for the adoptee in the process of dealing with adoption issues.

Some of our members will be pro adoption, some will be anti-adoption, and some will fall somewhere in the middle.  All posters MUST remember that SUPPORT is the core of this forum, NOT politics.  This board was created for the very real individuals dealing with the fall out of adoption in their lives.  There are other boards for antis and pros.  This is not it.

 This forum is based on the ideal that adoptees need a place of their own, to support one another, to learn from one another, without having to balance our feelings against other members of the triad. That can be done elsewhere, but here, adoptees are at the center. There is no triad here.

This forum is the inside of adoption looking out. It starts with US, the children of adoption, now adults, with voices that need to be heard and words that we need to speak. 

We acknowledge wounds and scars here. We acknowledge loss and grief here.

While we acknowledge adoptee-ness to be our common thread, we also acknowledge that adoptees have different depths of feeling and ways of dealing with our adoption. We want to be able to support adoptees regardless of their political or personal views of adoption and expect that the members and posters will respect their fellow adoptees in ALL stages of their growth.

This is not an adoptive parent support network. Adoptive parents are welcome here if their goal is to learn about the adoptee’s experience in order for them to better parent their adopted child. We support little adoptees. We want adoptive parents to learn from our experiences and encourage them to read our stories: without judgment, and with full awareness that this forum is here for our support and not for their education. Their education is ancillary, a benefit they may reap from reading our support threads.



*WHAT WE ASK OF OUR MEMBERS*

*Unprovoked personal attacks against other members of this forum are strictly prohibited.  If a member launches a personal attack against another member on any basis, that member will be warned and placed on moderated status for a period of one week.
If the same member participates in a subsequent personal attack on members of the forum, this will result in permanent banning from the forum.*

*Suicide threats will be taken seriously.  Appropriate steps will be taken at the discretion of membership or admin staff, which could include, but not be limited to, contacting law enforcement officials to intervene.*

*This is a SUPPORT forum.  Our abilities are limited to offering friendship and understanding to those in need.  We are not cabable of offering any form of psychological or psychiatric treatment.  It is of the utmost importance that this type of care be provided by a licensed provider.*

* Don’t Jump on each other for use of language, we *prefer* the terms that each group as identified as respectful for themselves, adoptive parent and mother, or natural mother, but we will not upbraid  you for using adopter, or birthmother.  People use the language they know, we do not want a dewy adoptee run off for using the term birth mother like happened to Joy, when she tried to ask a question as a new person at a site, Not supportive not helpful and that is what we do want to be about, ADOPTEE Support.

** Let the moderators and Admin moderate.  If you want someone moderated let us know, if they have been moderated, let it be.  We do not support public floggings.

*** If you feel that your views are too strong for a support thread, be respectful and take a breath. Walk away. Go to another part of the forum to vent. Do not force your views on another adoptee on this forum. This is not a forum for persuasion, it is a support forum.   We do not want to create any toxic environments here. 

And finally, all reading this mission statement should know that we have a fabulous collection of hand-picked, interesting, adoptee-centric smilies. Any vocal disagreement with smilie choices is a violation of our TOS. 

ALL DECISIONS BY ADMIN STAFF ARE FINAL.

Thank you.



******TOS***********


1. Absolutely no solicitation of our members for any services in exchange for money, regardless of type of service or product

2. Agency professionals are not elligible for membership

3. What is said here stays here. Anyone caught cross-posting without permission of original poster will be banned.

4. Anyone acting suspiciously in chat with underaged members will be banned immediately.