Former social worker Thea Ramirez has developed an artificial intelligence-powered tool that she says helps social service agencies find the best adoptive parents for some of the nation’s most vulnerable kids.
This image shows part of the user guide for Adoption-Share’s Family-Match software in Florida, Georgia and Virginia dated April 2023. An Associated Press investigation found that Adoption-Share’s tool – among the few adoption algorithms on the market in 2023 – has produced limited results in the states where it has been used, according to the organization’s self-reported data that AP obtained through public records requests from state and local agencies.
Virginia and Georgia dropped the algorithm after trial runs, noting its inability to produce adoptions, though both states have resumed business with Ramirez’s nonprofit called Adoption-Share, according to AP’s review of hundreds of pages of documents. Ramirez, of Brunswick, Ga. where her nonprofit is also based, refused to provide details about the algorithm’s inner workings and declined interview requests. By email, she said the tool was a starting point for social workers and did not determine whether a child would be adopted. She also disputed child welfare leaders’ accounts of Family-Match’s performance.
Ramirez has said she called Gian Gonzaga, a research scientist who had managed the algorithms at eharmony, a dating site with Christian roots that promises users “real love” for those seeking marriage. She asked Gonzaga if he would team up with her to create an adoption matchmaking tool. After the algorithm generates a score measuring the “relational fit,” Family-Match displays a list of the top prospective parents for each child. Social workers then vet the candidates.
In Virginia’s two-year test of Family-Match, the algorithm produced only one known adoption, officials said. Social workers said the tool’s matching recommendations often led them to unwilling parents, leading them to question whether the algorithm was properly assessing the adults’ capacity to adopt those kids.
Scott Stevens, an attorney representing the FamiliesFirst Network, told AP in June that only three trial placements recommended by Family-Match failed since the agency started using the algorithm in 2019. But Adoption-Share’s records that Stevens provided to the AP indicate that his agency made 76 other Family-Match placements that didn’t show the children had been formally adopted.
Family-Match assists social workers in making “better decisions, better matches,” Petion said, but her agency, Family Support Services declined to provide statistics about Family-Match. Bofill also said it was difficult to assess the tool’s utility because social workers who found potential parents were sometimes asked by Family-Match officials to tell the adults to register with the tool even if it played no role in the adoption, allowing the algorithm to claim credit for the match.
In Tennessee, a version of the algorithm’s questionnaire for prospective parents asked for their specific household income and for them to rate how “conventional” or “uncreative” they were. They were also asked if they agreed – or disagreed – with a statement about whether they seek God’s help, according to records AP obtained.
Ramirez wouldn’t say if Family-Match has deleted pilot data from its servers, but said her organization maintains a compliance audit and abides by contract terms.
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