Newsletter Sign UpLooking for a speaker to provide training for your agency/organization staff or parent group? C.A.S.E. offers more than 20 educational trainings, including our most popular program, W.I.S.E. Up! We can come in person or arrange a virtual training through GoToMeeting. Many of these trainings can be tailored for parents or adoption, child welfare, and mental health professionals, or for both parent/professional audiences. We also offer a unique training for educators.
Look for the yellow NEW symbol to identify the 8 new trainings now available. Below is a snapshot of some of our most highly requested trainings as well as the 8 new offerings: Download the PDF for the complete list of trainings:
C.A.S.E. Trainings For Parents And Professionals
- Topics and length can be customized to meet your needs
- Conducted remotely or in-person
- CEUs available for child welfare and mental health professionals
Learn more! Contact Training Coordinator, Ellen Singer at singer@adoptionsupport.org or submit an interest form and we will contact you at your convenience.
Interest Form
Adoption Through the Eyes of Children: A Developmental Perspective
For Parents and Professionals
Participants will gain an in-depth understanding of what children comprehend, think and feel about adoption as they grow up, from the pre-school years through adolescence. Common questions, fears and concerns related to birth parents, relationships with adoptive and extended family members and relationships with peers are addressed. Special emphasis is on methods for addressing ambiguous loss and grief, self-esteem and self-value and identity through an adoption-competent developmental lens. How non-adopted children perceive adoption is included, as well as the impact of feedback from peers and adults in the child’s world which impact adoption adjustment.
Adopting the Older Child/Teen
For Parents and Professionals
Approximately 130,000 children and teens in foster care are awaiting permanent, loving adoptive families. Older children in several countries are also available for adoption. Many of these children have histories of complex trauma. To understand and meet their unique needs, parents must have a special skill set known as “trauma-informed parenting.” This training provides an overview of the common parenting challenges including attachment, academic difficulties, emotional/social/behavioral issues as well as effective strategies for responding to these challenges. Participants will also explore the characteristics of parents best equipped to ensure a successful adoption experience.
Attachment-focused Parenting: Parenting Children That Have Experienced Trauma
For Parents and Professionals
Foster and adoptive parents need reassuring, practical advice for promoting secure attachment in their children. This workshop helps participants understand how attachment develops and familiarizes them with the different styles of attachment. Participants will also explore the life events and experiences, including neurobiological influences that interrupt the development of secure attachment. Attachment-focused parenting techniques will be addressed as well as sensory-related activities that help with emotional regulation and promote connection.
Beneath the Mask: Adoption Through the Eyes of Adolescents
For Parents and Professionals
Adolescence is a time when adoptees struggle with an extra layer of challenges related to their identity, their future and their past. Participants will explore how the “normal” or typical developmental tasks of the teen years are intensified by adoption, particularly if teens are being raised by parents of a different race or culture. Participants will gain an understanding of how adoption influences separation from parents, identity formation and decisions related to sexuality. In her book, Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens, author and C.A.S.E. CEO Debbie Riley highlights “the six spots where teens get stuck” as key vulnerabilities around the adoption experience in adolescence. This workshop will address those stuck spots in detail. Potentially mild and serious emotional and behavioral issues at home and at school will be addressed. Clinical strategies can be included as part of this program. (Recommended as a half or full-day program)
Buy the book!
The Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens book can each be purchased separately in C.A.S.E.’s online store.
Enhancing the Assessment Process for Prospective Foster and Adoptive Parents
For Professionals
This workshop is designed for child welfare professionals who conduct home studies and who provide preparation and education for prospective parents. Children and adolescents with complex trauma histories that include neglect or abuse, loss and grief, breaks in attachment need informed, prepared, dedicated parents. In this workshop, participants will learn: 1) what prospective parents need to understand about the children in foster care needing homes and families; 2) the qualities and characteristics, beliefs and attitudes of parents best equipped to successfully meet the needs of vulnerable children and manage the behavioral, social, emotional and academic challenges that traumatized children may bring to their foster or adoptive families; 3) strategies for assessing parents’ mental health, readiness and competence to become a “healing parent;” 4) the components of a professional home study report that can assist in placement decisions.
The Experience of Search and Reunion in Domestic and International Adoption
For Parents and Professionals
The media often presents the dramatic and heartwarming aspects of search and reunion, but for those involved, the reality is much more complex. This training explores the common questions and concerns of all adoption circle members involved in search and reunion. Participants will learn how to prepare for this unique and important experience as well as how to manage the potential relationship challenges that can present after reunion over time. Special considerations for opening closed adoptions with minors is given. The impact of technology and social media on search and reunion will also be discussed.
Facilitating Educational Success for Foster Children and Adopted Children: Educators and Adoption Professionals in Partnership
For Educators and Professionals
A critical component of counseling and parent support programs at C.A.S.E. is the need to ensure success for children at school. This training addresses working with teachers to ensure sensitivity and understanding of adoption-related experiences and issues and how they may manifest themselves at school — including 1) understanding the emotional overlay of adoption for children with learning differences (e.g. ADHD, learning disabilities) and other special needs; 2) understanding how mental health challenges resulting from early life traumatic experiences including loss and grief may impact school performance and 3) very critically, ensuring that parents and school personnel are able to work together to support the needs of foster and adoptive students. Special attention is given to the creation of collaborative relationships between adoption professionals and school counselors. This workshop outlines ways to connect these important systems for adoptees, particularly those with special needs. Material from C.A.S.E.’s signature S.A.F.E. at School in-service training is included.
Improving Outcomes for Success: Building a Child Welfare and Mental Health Adoption-Competent Workforce
For Professionals
Access to adoption-competent mental health services is a critical and well-documented need of children and families coming together through adoption in order to promote positive outcomes and the long-term success of adoptions. Meeting the diverse needs of adoptive families requires mental health providers to infuse knowledge gained through specialized adoption competency training, which may influence one’s assessment protocols, diagnoses, treatment plans and interventions. In this workshop, C.A.S.E. CEO Debbie Riley will provide an overview of the development, implementation, and rigorous multi-year evaluation of the Training for Adoption Competency (TAC) Program now being implemented in 17 states, as well as the foundational constructs and examples of the web-based products and curricula being developed through the federal National Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) to build an adoption-competent mental health workforce among child welfare and mental health providers throughout the United States.
Talking with Children about Adoption
For Parents and Professionals
This workshop covers the basics of communication with children (through age 12) to help them understand their adoption story. Participants will learn 1) what children understand about adoption at different developmental stages; 2) how this knowledge provides parents with a guide for when, how and what to share with their children at different ages, including information that parents perceive to be difficult, negative, or painful; 3) engaging birth family members in this process in open adoptions, and 4) children’s comprehension of how other people in their lives perceive adoption. Practical advice is offered to help parents anticipate their children’s questions and concerns and learn effective, appropriate ways of responding. Content in this workshop can be tailored to specific audience needs such as focusing on early or later years. Participants also learn how to use C.A.S.E.’s unique card game, 52 Ways to Talk about Adoption to promote family adoption discussion.
Buy the card game!
The card game, 52 Ways to Talk about Adoption, can be purchased separately in C.A.S.E’s online store.
Therapists as Adoption Specialists
For Professionals
Participants in this full-day program will learn the multiple and complex ways that adoption impacts all members of the adoptive extended family system, from both a developmental and family life cycle perspective. Assessment of client needs and treatment strategies will be covered. Issues addressed include: loss and grief, attachment and bonding, identity, self-esteem, and social roles. Effective strategies for communication about adoption, strengthening the connections and relationships within and between extended family systems members and coping with loss will be presented, as well as current trends in community support services to ensure preservation of adoptive families. (Recommended as full-day program)
Understanding and Treating Mental Health Issues of Adopted Children and Adolescents
For Parents and Professionals
In the past, the adoption experience was pathologized (“the adoption syndrome”). Today we understand that factors related to adoption have the potential to significantly impact the mental health of adopted youth: pre-natal experiences including alcohol or drug exposure; lack of pre-natal care, birthmother stress or depression, as well as early life traumatic experiences including neglect and abuse. Children may have genetic vulnerabilities to anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns. In addition, we know that some children may be temperamentally more vulnerable in coping with the normal, predictable challenges of adoption including loss and grief, feelings related to rejection and abandonment, identity development. This workshop provides an understanding of the common mental health challenges faced by adopted youth as well as an overview of the most effective therapies utilized by C.A.S.E.’s adoption-competent therapists, including play therapy, sand tray therapy, individual, group and family therapy, and use of creative arts.
What’s Adoption Got to do with it? Talking with Children and Teens About Sexuality
For Parents and Professionals
Talking with children about sex can be one of the most challenging aspects of parenthood. This task may generate additional anxiety in adoptive parents because adoption stories and sexuality are intertwined in complex, emotional ways for both adoptive parents and their children. Participants will learn the information and guidance that children and teens need to develop the self-esteem and positive sexual identity that will enable them to make decisions that ensure their emotional and physical health and safety. This training highlights how parents can communicate with teens who are often reluctant to communicate with them about adoption and/or sexuality.
W.I.S.E. Up!sm: Empowering Children to Answer Questions About Adoption
Version 1: For Families (or Parents only)
W.I.S.E. UP! is a simple but important tool developed by C.A.S.E. to empower adopted children to handle the tough, intrusive and often troubling comments and questions they receive about adoption. This program has spread across the country and internationally as children have embraced its simplicity and power to address the consistent challenge of explaining adoption and their own unique adoption stories. W.I.S.E. UP! gives children, teens, and parents the power to choose comfortable ways to communicate about adoption with others.
Through concurrent 2-hour parent-child workshops, the W.I.S.E. UP! Program involves fun arts and crafts, role plays and discussion to help teach children how to use this tool, while their parents are provided with best practices in supporting their children with W.I.S.E. Up!. Each family receives C.A.S.E.’s W.I.S.E. Up! Powerbook, created to help families continue to reinforce and practice the W.I.S.E. Up! method.
Buy the book!
The W.I.S.E. Up! Powerbook and the W.I.S.E. Up! Powerbook for Children in Foster Care can each be purchased separately in C.A.S.E.’s online store.
Learn more about the W.I.S.E. Up! Program
*The W.I.S.E. Up! training can also be tailored for child welfare professionals and foster parents based on C.A.S.E.’s W.I.S.E. Up! Powerbook for Foster Care.
Version 2: For Facilitators
Want to bring this powerful program to your community? Professionals in this training will learn how to offer the W.I.S.E. Up! concurrent workshops for children and parents. Note: This training is a highly interactive program; facilitators will be trained by C.A.S.E. personnel and become Certified W.I.S.E. UP! Trainers. W.I.S.E. Up! has been our most popular remote training offered. Visit our facilitator training page online to learn more.