Formerly titled: Preparing Children for Adoption. Whatever our role, all professionals interacting with foster and adoptive children have an opportunity to contribute to a child’s understanding of why they must transition to a new placement. While society may minimize the trauma, loss and grief being separated from attachment figures brings, it is our responsibility to acknowledge the complexity and ambiguous loss that comes with transitions for children who have already experienced so much loss and change. In this interactive webinar, clinicians will learn ways to help children and families prepare for and process endings and beginnings. Clinicians will learn techniques for talking with children about their difficult and traumatic histories in a developmentally appropriate way to help them process the multiple losses they have experienced. Clinicians will also learn techniques to prepare children and families for transitions and necessary good byes; this may include leaving a foster home or group home, a final visit with a birth family, placement with a kinship caregiver, reunification with a birth parent, an adoption disruption or moving to an adoptive home. Experiential activities will be integrated into the workshop to expand the clinician’s toolkit in working with families as they prepare children for necessary transitions and goodbyes. [Elective for Adoption Certificate Program]
At the conclusion of this webinar, participants will be able to:
Define the role of the adoption professional in relation to work with adoptive families
Describe the impact of secrecy on child and family relationships
List techniques for talking with children about their history and transitions in a developmentally appropriate way
Identify the importance of developing the child's personal narrative or Life Story to help make sense of their past
Describe techniques to effectively prepare children and support families through transitions and adoption
9:30 am Welcome/Introduction
Workshop objectives
Opening icebreaker
9:40 am Building the professional relationship and explaining adoption work
9:55 am Telling the truth to adopted children and the impact secrecy has on family relationships, reasons for not telling and techniques to help professionals and parents tell the truth
10:15 am Techniques for talking with children about their history, removal, placement and adoption in a developmentally appropriate way
11:00 am Icebreaker, Building the child's story to help them make sense of their past, tools to help children talk about their past, questions the child needs answered, video and discussion
11:15 am Techniques to prepare and support children and families through transitions, goodbyes and changes, the essential benefits of saying goodbye and the emotional and transitional tasks necessary to validate and support the child's grieving process, case examples and video
12:10 pm Ways to minimize vicarious trauma and the impact this has on the professional
12:15 pm Conclusion/Q&A