On-Demand Learning

This resource is intended to help you understand and meet the unique needs of foster and adoptive families and their children. This introductory training is designed to help mental health professionals, social workers, educators, attorneys, and CASA volunteers become more adoption-competent and better able to meet the needs of children who were adopted. Part 3 of 4.

This resource is intended to help you understand and meet the unique needs of foster and adoptive families and their children. This introductory training is designed to help mental health professionals, social workers, educators, attorneys, and CASA volunteers become more adoption-competent and better able to meet the needs of children who were adopted. Part 4 of 4.

This resource is intended to help you understand and meet the unique needs of foster and adoptive families and their children. This introductory training is designed to help mental health professionals, social workers, educators, attorneys, and CASA volunteers become more adoption-competent and better able to meet the needs of children who were adopted.

As you begin to think about what type of adoption is the best fit for your family, this video will offer insight into adopting from foster care in Colorado. We will explore the challenges faced by children placed in foster care and things to consider. We will discuss becoming a foster parent in the hopes of adopting as well as adopting legally freed children. In addition, we will provide information about the types of agencies you might consider.

This webinar offers child welfare professionals, caregivers, and parents of foster/adoptive children, youth, and adolescents an interactive training and discussion. The webinar includes current data regarding teens in the U.S. foster care system, plus a discussion of how emancipation data improves when just one adult commits to a child’s well-being and permanent future. We consider the importance of how child welfare is shifting perceived outcomes and how we can best benefit adolescents through more efficient and specific permanency recruitment - using connection strategies that work.

This webinar training covers the following topics:

1. Tips on how we can help youth move past resistance for an adoption plan.

2. “Impermanence Has Implications” - Why being more efficient in recruitment is more practical. Effective collaboration of youth and agency relationship is part of the plan.

3. “Follow the Love Approach” - How to find the adult relationships needed to change a youth's trajectory. Identifying the skills and competencies needed from adults who are permanency options. The “Follow The Love” theme that Pat O’Brien teaches will be detailed.

4. Birth family outcomes. Working with birth parents. Honoring the need for knowledge and identity formation.

5. Improving outcomes for our LGBTQ youth and teens of diverse culture, race, and/or ethnicity.

6. The importance of becoming a teen behavioral detective. Reviewing the general developmental and mental health of this population.

7. Teaching our adolescent youth to practice self-care in a digital world, and why it is more important now than ever.

8. The specific strains that the current COVID-19 pandemic has caused.

(February 2021)

The class will cover the following topics:

• The Process: things to consider
• Types of adoption
• Choosing an agency
• Application process
• Home Study or Family Assessment
• Completing the process
• Waiting
• Placement and finalization
• Paying for your adoption

If you are just beginning your adoption journey, this 15-minute video will help to orient you to the many elements of the adoption process. We will discuss how to start your adoption process, important steps to take, and things to consider along the way. You will gain a better understanding of how to choose an agency and the approval process, including the home study. Please utilize our additional resources regarding adoption available to download from our website.

Many families who foster, adopt, or otherwise take custody of a child have children who are already living in the home. We call these children ‘resident siblings.’ They may also be called biological siblings or adoptive siblings. In most conversations about the preparation, process, and support of these families, resident siblings are left out. Many people assume that the resident siblings will not struggle or need support, despite a foundational change in their family taking place. This panel discussion aims to inform families about the experiences and needs of the resident siblings and offer practical suggestions to support them.