Post Adoption Services

I would guess that anyone reading this blog would know what the word orphan meant. Most of us would state it means a child without parents, although Answers.com clarifies it to mean a child whose parents are dead. Answers.com lists a second definition as a child who has been deprived of parental care and has not been adopted. Another definition is one that lacks support, supervision, or care. All of the above definitions are nouns. Answers.com offers this use of the word orphan as an adjective: Not developed or marketed, especially on account of being commercially unprofitable. Where is this plethora of definitions leading? Most of you reading this blog are dealing with orphans … orphans in the strictest sense of the word. Kids who lacked parents… [more]

In my recent interview with Andrew Bridge, we discussed respite care and the problem of finding appropriate solutions for kids who can’t or won’t maintain a placement. One of the solutions I discussed with Andrew is something I heard about a few years ago. It is called Circle of Families, and it is (was?) an innovative idea proposed by Rick Delaney in conjunction with Casey Family Services. I have no idea if this unique approach is still being utilized; I have a call in to Casey Family Services to learn the answer to this question. The information paper I have saved to my computer dates back to June of 2003. So what is the Circle of Families? A document released by Casey describes this… [more]

Today I would like to continue with my discussion about Listening to Parents, the report and website designed to address the disconnect between parents wanting to adopt children in foster care and the agencies responsible for finding families for those children. Nancy Deren, one of my blog readers, commented on the report. Her experience mirrors the statistics provided by the report; of the ten families who started training with her, she was the only one who had adopted within two years of the training. One of the underlying and oft-repeated themes in the report was the difficulty inherent in preparing parents for the realities of life with traumatized children, without unnecessarily scaring them away. How can that best be done? The logo for the… [more]

It has been an insane day thus far. Dora awoke in a foul mood (come to think about it, she went to bed that way, too!); Beth is exhausted from a really tough swim practice last night, and therefore quite grumpy; Best Buy canceled my umpteenth repair on my washing machine and rescheduled for Friday (the washer is now working, but the “new” drain pump they installed vibrates something fierce, so they are going to replace it again—and this makes me grumpy!); and lastly I spent time on the phone this morning with a majorly stressed out mom. The tearful mom is a local gal, referred to me by someone in our local Metro Adoption Council. Four weeks ago, this mom and her husband and three kids… [more]

I arrived home from exhibiting at the MCCA conference last night a little earlier than I expected … around 11 PM. It rained all the way there and all the way home, a special bonus to driving on dark, hilly, winding, 2-lane highways at night in the middle of Missouri. I talked at the conference non-stop for two hours … a feat even for me! I passed out lots of business cards and postcards about next year’s ATN conference. I explained why horses and zebras, what services ATN provides, and encouraged folks to buy DVD’s, especially Nancy Ashe’s amazing look inside the mind of an attachment-affected adult. Many of the people attending this conference worked at or managed residential treatment facilities. They… [more]