Adoption Assistance for Professionals: Aspects, Considerations & Resources

Children leaving out-of-home care for adoption or other family permanency require preparation and support to help them understand the past events in their lives and to process feelings connected to their experiences of abuse and neglect, separation, loss, rejection, and abandonment. Child welfare, foster care, and adoption agencies often assume that permanent families will provide the healing environment for these children and youth, and these agencies spend considerable resources to recruit, train, and support foster and adoptive parents to provide legal permanency and well-being for these children. While a high percentage of these adoptions are successful -- in that they are not legally dissolved -- both children and families often struggle or suffer from stress that might have been mitigated by better preparation practices for all parties. This book discusses services for children and youth to address their readiness and preparation for permanent relationships. It also explores research, intervention strategies, and resources to assist professionals in preserving connections among siblings; provides a factsheet for child welfare professionals who work with families interested in adoption and/or who are about to receive a referral or foster or adoptive placement; discusses ways to help professionals guide birth and adoptive families who are contemplating open adoption or who are already having postadoption contact; and is intended to support adoption professionals in addressing the needs for postadoption services and meeting common challenges in their delivery. See more