e-mail
Today I gave the PowerPoint presentation I spent all last Friday creating. I spoke to private adoption agency personnel from around the Kansas City metro area. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect today… I didn’t know if it was all private agencies, or if there would be representatives from our social service departments. Social services didn’t like me much when I lived here before… (but frankly, it was mutual!)
I am happy to say the talk went very well. I walked them through my life experiences with children who had serious attachment issues. I showed them pictures that represented our lost hopes and dreams, and also pictures that represented the gift of kids who healed—Beth. I ended my presentation with about 8 minutes of edited footage from Nancy Ashe’s knock-‘em-dead presentation at the ATN conference last year.
Part of what I was supposed to talk about today was “What do social workers need to know?” So here was my list:
• ATN exists
• Parents don’t know what they don’t know
• Parents don’t hear what they don’t want to hear or don’t have a frame of reference to understand…(but you know this already!) so you must compensate!
• Love is unequivocally not enough…
• Without support, placements WILL fail
• Unless you have lived with an attachment-affected child (and they have targeted you) you won’t get it completely
• What does support look like?
At the end of my presentation one gentleman left sporting sort of a “deer in the headlights” look upon his face. He said, “You have opened up my world today!” and thanked me. I figure that man alone was worth the effort. If I have opened up one person’s world to the realities of “our families” than that is a good thing. These are agency folks–they impact adoption in a big way. I do think there will be a ripple effect from this talk and I hope it is a big one.
When social workers don’t get it, false abuse allegations occur. Here’s more info about that…
Good.
Anything to open people’s eyes and help these children!
I so believe that most agency’s fall short on the support issue.
Lisa
Go Nancy!!!! I’m sure it was a fabulous presentation and I’m certain you started some great ripples!
Hurrah! One worker at a time seems to be the only way to make progress. Let’s hope you can contact enough NEW workers to have an impact on THIS generation rather than the next!