Incorporating the whole family into treatment is often essential in ensuring positive outcomes with children and teens. Relationships within the adoptive family are key to adoption success and family counseling is instrumental in providing each member of the family with the chance to improve communication and strengthen relationships.
Foster care is rewarding, and it can also be challenging. Our team of trauma-informed therapists is uniquely attuned to the issues that can impact children in foster care. Foster parents face their own set of challenges when trying to provide a stable, loving environment. C.A.S.E. can help ease this transition for everyone involved.
While kinship care and adoption can be a wonderful option when children cannot be cared for by their birth parents, C.A.S.E. therapists know that kinship families face similar challenges to adoptive families. We can help with unique issues like helping children understand why they’re not being raised by their birth parents, establishing roles and boundaries in relationships with birth parents, and handling difficult behaviors related to loss, grief and loyalty issues, and much more.
While we believe in the importance of involving a child’s or teen’s family in the counseling process, our treatment plan for a child or teen may also include individual sessions with the therapist.
Through individual counseling, a skilled clinician can help a young person identify and express themselves including complex feelings related to adoption, which is important to the healing process. Most often, individual counseling helps the child or teen prepare to share their struggles with their parents in the family sessions. With teens, the promise of confidentiality gives them permission to explore the difficulties they are experiencing (however, it is important to know that confidentiality has its limits where safety is concerned.)
Being adopted can have a significant impact on a person’s life at any age. Often times, adoption-related issues can be triggered by significant life transitions such as leaving home, marriage, pregnancy, parenthood, empty nest, or loss of a parent. Adults who have been adopted and considering search and reunion with their birth families will also often experience complex feelings too.
Feeling overwhelmed about your options? C.A.S.E. therapists can help you make the best decision that is right for you. If you are considering adoption, we ensure you have the education you need to navigate this option. Options include knowing your rights, how to choose a potential family for your child, and negotiating post-adoption contact/agreement with the adopting parents. Future partners, spouses, grandparents or siblings of children who are placed in foster care or adoption may also need counseling and support.
Being a birth parent also has a significant impact on your life at any age. We understand and can guide you through whatever challenges you are experiencing, including if you are involved in the experience of search and/or reunion.
If you are considering adoption, we can educate you about the different paths to building your family through adoption. We will help you identify and resolve initial questions and conflicts. We understand the unique concerns of single, biracial, older and LGBT parents as well as those with complex blended families. Learn more below.
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