This presentation explores the often-overlooked consequences of broken adoptions, domestic and intercountry, when adoptive families relinquish, abandon, or institutionalize children they once committed to parent by drawing from legal casework, policy work, systemic data, and lived experiences. The presentation will highlight how federal and state adoption subsidies may continue post-abandonment, with little accountability, and how existing policies fail to protect the rights and well-being of adoptees once a placement dissolves.

Special focus will be given to the legal invisibility of these youth. Often re-institutionalized without due process, citizenship support, or long-term permanency planning, and the urgent need for systemic reform. The presentation will also provide advocacy strategies, policy recommendations, and legal remedies aimed at ensuring post-adoption accountability and safeguarding the dignity and future of abandoned adoptees. Case examples will be used to ground the discussion in real-world implications.

About Dawn
Dawn J. Post, Esq. is a child advocate and civil rights attorney who has spent her career standing up for young people impacted by the adoption and foster care systems. She is the Founder of Themis Youth Law & Advocacy, an organization that works to protect the rights of youth who have been adopted, institutionalized, or failed by the systems meant to care for them.

Dawn has represented thousands of children in court with a particular focus on whose whose adoptions were broken. She fights for justice when adoptees are left without legal protections or denied access to the support they deserve. Her work also calls out how government subsidies meant to help adopted kids are sometimes misused, even after adoptees are no longer living with their adoptive families.

With decades of experience, Dawn continues to push for real change by helping shape laws, policies, and public conversations that center adoptees’ voices, safety, and dignity. She believes that no adoptee should ever be forgotten, silenced, or treated as invisible, and she’s committed to making sure that never happens.