National Reunification Month may not seem like a perfect fit for a program that’s designed to find adoptive families for children who can’t be reunified with their birth parents. But foster care, adoption, kinship care, reunification…they all have the same end goal: to ensure that children grow up in safe, loving, stable families. The specifics of how we reach that end goal might vary a little, but we’re all heading in the same direction.
You’ve completed your home study, aced that training, and been matched with a child! You can’t wait to shower your new family member with love, gifts, and attention. And since that child has been waiting for a family, they will readily embrace all your affection and voila! Instant family, right? Of course not. Although families are often eager to speed through transition periods, kids may have mixed emotions that they don’t know how to process. Embracing change can take time, which is why a transition plan is key.
If you follow our blog, then earlier this month you already learned about what autism is and how it can be different for each person. Even if you don’t feel like an expert yet, that’s okay! You don’t need to know the ins and outs of the neurological disorder to be a good parent. You just need to know how to advocate for your child and find the best resources for them. And in case you don’t have an arsenal of resources yet, we put some together for you!
How much do you really know about autism? Maybe what you know is based on prime-time dramas, a news article here or there, or some posts from a Facebook group. But how can you be sure that what you know is accurate? If you’re contemplating whether your family could be a good fit for a child with autism, don’t let uncertainty scare you away. This blog will go over the basics of what to expect when parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder.
Ask anyone who’s raised children through the teenage years, and they’ll tell you, parenting a teen is not for the faint of heart! Maybe you have a pre-adoptive placement who has just entered adolescence and you’re finding it challenging to connect with them. Or maybe you’ve just been matched with a teenager who is about to move into your home and you’re panicking about how to relate to them. You are not alone! We’ve put together some tips on how to make the teen years a little more enjoyable (or at least a little less daunting) for everyone involved.
For teens in foster care, turning 18 offers a very different reality. They don’t have that safe place to call home. The home most of us can go to when things get hard, or family to call when we need advice. While nothing compares to the forever family every youth deserves, there are resources in place for Indiana teens at risk of “aging out” of foster care.
It’s that time of year: first day of school pictures are flooding social media and children everywhere are returning to the classroom. For a parent of an adopted child, your excitement might be matched with a little anxiety. Navigating the challenges can be hard, so we put together some tips to help you head into this school year prepared and excited to watch your child grow!
Often, birth parents and foster parents feel as though they’re put in an adversarial position, instead of being encouraged to work together. But in the best scenarios, foster parents serve as a strong source of support for birth parents, and birth parents learn to trust foster families as part of their team. To celebrate Reunification Month, we put together some ways that foster parents can work with birth parents toward reunification!
In many ways, parenting an adopted teenager is no different than parenting a biological teen. There are also some key differences, though. In this post, we look at two elements of parenting adopted teens: brain development and identity.
While we focus on celebrating adoption during National Adoption Month, it’s also important to hear what young people in foster care are saying about what they need in a family, what they want, what’s most important to them. Encouraging youth to have a voice in their permanency planning is empowering and keeps the focus where it should be: on what is in the child’s best interests.
Ann and Rhande had decades of expertise in child welfare, but that didn’t mean they had all the answers when they became foster and adoptive moms. Through their lived experience adopting two daughters, Ann and Rhande learned things they thought they already knew, which was critical to their parenting success.
Care communities are groups of 6-8 volunteers from local churches who come alongside foster and adoptive families to provide practical, emotional and spiritual support. Each team “wraps around” the family to provide them the support that they need. For some, this may be homework help or running errands. For others, it could be mentoring a foster child or spending time listening to an overwhelmed parent.
From community events to parades, educational meetings to social media posts, Adoption Champions utilize every opportunity to find forever families for the children and youth in Indiana Adoption Program. They’re the perfect people to talk to as you begin your adoption journey!
The impact of the recent physical distancing on our economic, infrastructural and psychological stability will be felt for years to come. It can be hard to look for the positives in this situation — but we found two families willing to share how they created opportunities for good.