In fall 2023, the U.S. State Department issued a request for research into child hosting programs, which offer temporary respite for children from troubled nations. Who exactly who was participating? Were they effective?
Professor Lori Duke, co-director of the Children’s Rights Clinic, quickly recognized the opportunity for Texas Law to contribute. Drawing on her experience in child welfare, Duke applied and was selected within weeks. She assembled a team of then-3L students, Katherine Himaya Lewis ’24 and Franchizca Scipio ’24, to lead the investigation into what is sometimes called “orphan hosting.”
“I’ve always been interested in the legal issues surrounding intercountry adoption,” says Lewis. “It’s an under-researched topic with incredibly complex and nuanced issues,” so when Duke mentioned the project, “I was immediately interested,” she says. Scipio, meanwhile, was seeking a directed research project and joined the team upon Duke’s suggestion.
The students examined this unregulated system from different perspectives, identified risks to both children and families, and offered policy suggestions to the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues to reduce risk that risk.
Lori Duke
In the end, it was a valuable undertaking. “The students examined this unregulated system from different perspectives, identified risks to both children and families, and offered policy suggestions to the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues to reduce risk that risk,” Duke says.
Diplomacy Lab
Orphan hosting programs bring children to stay with a family in the U.S. for up to two months. The goal is to give the children a break from the trauma of living abroad in often poor and dangerous conditions. It is also a vehicle for introducing hard to adopt children to potential adoptive American families.
The Texas Law team hoped to provide State Department officials with a comprehensive overview of the agencies that run the programs; the policies, protocols, and regulations they follow; and the children and host families who participate.
The project was part of the Diplomacy Lab, a State Department initiative that works “with students and faculty experts across the United States on innovative research related to foreign policy challenges,” as Texas Global explains on its website about the initiative. The State Department requests research on specifically identified topics, solicits bids from participating Diplomacy Lab schools, including The University of Texas at Austin, and chooses a team to conduct the work.
With the selection of Texas Law researchers, the study became UT’s first Diplomacy Lab research project conducted in the law school. (No State Department funding was provided for the Texas Law project.)
Information Gaps
However, the team faced significant challenges due to the lack of prior research, oversight, and publicly available information on orphan hosting. There are no governing bodies, federal or state regulations, or centralized data on these programs. Information on the number of participating agencies, children, and host families also proved elusive.
Lewis spent much of her time tracking statistics and stories released by hosting programs. “Very few people are even aware that orphan hosting programs exist,” she says.
The team compared orphan hosting with international and domestic adoptions, which are strictly regulated—requiring multiple family interviews, references, financial disclosures, and background checks. Adoption requires “checking to make sure people are who they say they are, and that they can afford—financially, emotionally, socially—to raise a child in a healthy way to the best of the system’s ability,” says Duke, whose career has focused on children and families in Child Protective Services cases. There were many studies on intercountry adoption and childhood trauma to consider, too.
Scipio conducted interviews with host and adoptive families. Orphan host families reported they received little if any training beyond a video or booklet.
Given the lack of research, it is likely that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Katherine Himaya Lewis ’24
The main finding: Orphan hosting programs are largely self-regulated. Some of the home countries, however, do have requirements, such as limiting how many children may be hosted at one time, for example. “The lack of regulation surrounding host child selection and host family selection is particularly concerning,” Lewis says.
That’s especially true in cases of trauma, which most hosted children have experienced, Duke says. Host families who were interviewed by the students were not trained to care for such children.
“Given the lack of research, it is likely that this is only the tip of the iceberg,” Lewis says.
Missing Oversight
The Texas Law researchers also uncovered a lack of guidance from the hosting agencies, which in one case required extraordinary measures. A family interviewed for the project hosted two sisters from Ukraine. The family, which was hoping to eventually adopt, had been told the girls were orphans. But after they overcame initial language barriers the family learned the girls’ parents had placed them in an orphanage with the understanding they could all be reunited when circumstances changed. The host family members said they subsequently traveled to Ukraine and arranged to reunite the girls with their family.
Hosts also reported receiving incorrect information about children’s disabilities, health, and language skills. Scipio reveals it’s impossible to provide a specific number of children involved. “That’s one of the main issues, there is no clarity and openness regarding this type of information,” she says.
The program’s “intentions are great, but the implementation and the lack of oversight are really problematic,” Duke says. “These children are picked by host institutions and there are no regulations or requirements for what is shared with the family. So a family is getting a child without knowing their trauma history.” Likewise, there isn’t anyone designated to regularly check on the child to make sure the home is safe for them. And the child may not speak English well or at all. “Bottom line: there are minimal safety nets when trouble arises,” Duke says.
“I’m sure there are some children and families who are very grateful for the program—I tried to keep that in mind,” Scipio says. “Instead of just completely getting rid of the program, what are things that could make it into something better and safer?”
Report Recommendations
With that goal, the team compiled their findings and policy recommendations into a comprehensive 100-page report submitted to the State Department. They shared highlights and policy recommendations with the Adoption Oversight Division in the Office of Children’s Issues during a live-streamed presentation that May. (The State Department is currently building a database of past projects, but there is currently no way to access the report online.) The students recommended agency accreditation and a central authority—like what exists for international adoption—to oversee hosting programs in the U.S.
The final report benefitted from skills Lewis and Scipio learned at Texas Law, including the importance of storytelling. “My legal papers will probably never be as interesting as my favorite novels,” Lewis says, but for any subject she attempts to tell a story. “On this project specifically, I was able to use the skills I learned at Texas Law to create a finished product that told a compelling story and was appropriate for submission to the U.S. Department of State.”
And the State Department greatly appreciated their efforts. The project required collecting, analyzing, and presenting data “in a concise and readable format for use by the Office of Children’s Issues,” says Alex Nelson, partnerships officer with the department’s Office of Global Partnerships. “The data will assist in policy-development and decision-making in this office by giving us a better understanding of the situation related to adoption hosting.”
Project Lessons
Contributions of students and faculty through the university’s Diplomacy Lab make a difference, says Holly Schneider, program officer in UT’s Global Initiatives and alumni relations.
Diplomacy Lab’s “value lies in the real-world experience it offers students,” she says, enriching pedagogical offerings and yielding outcomes that “inform decisions in actual policy making.”
“This project taught me the importance of creativity in legal research. At the start of the project, I was discouraged by the lack of information available, but this forced me to think outside of the box,” Lewis says. “I am only a few months into my legal career, and I use this skill often.” After being awarded the G. Rollie White Trust Fellowship, she is currently working as a staff attorney at Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma. Scipio, meanwhile, is going into family law.
For Duke, the challenge also offered important lessons. “The project with Diplomacy Lab allowed Katherine and Franchizca the opportunity to delve into a real-world problem that had little academic research into it,” she says.
Their findings not only revealed the risks in international hosting programs but also underscored the importance of legal research in tackling underexplored policy issues.
Additional reporting by Jeremy Simon.