Strengthening Ourselves with Adoption Support

The Emerging Leaders Candid Corner

A place where adopted adults candidly share THEIR stories & answer YOUR questions

When I hear the phrase “Adoption Competent Training” initially I think to myself “Wow someone knows what that is, cool!”. Half the battle with adoption competent training is just raising the awareness about it and making people understand that it is something the child welfare field and practitioners would benefit from having. So many times, we spend our time trying to get people to take the relevant trainings they need to help those with adoption experience that we fall into an all too easy trap. A trap of excluding individuals with lived experience, in this case with adoption, from helping to develop trainings or even better yet, we don’t allow them to co-create the trainings with those “qualified” to do so.

In the latter part of my career in child welfare, especially my foster care work and advocacy, we’ve begun to see an intentional push to include lived experience and expertise into each facet of the system and its reforms. The same is needed with the adoption space and adoption competent trainings. Not only is this the right things to do, but it’s the critical thing to do. Critical because adoption is not all that it always seems to be. Adoption is portrayed as a “happy ending” for all involved, and while it can be, it doesn’t happen on accident.

Supports are needed to keep families together and ensure that a forever family is truly that.
But what does creating a forever take? Sure, there are best practices that have been well researched and “experts” can attest to, but no amount of formal education creates a forever. If we want that and for it to be sustainable then authentically and meaningfully incorporating lived expertise from adoptees and their families (both adoptive and biological) is absolutely necessary. Without a doubt that can be a slow, painful, and difficult process, but the alternative is much more harmful. We owe it to every family that has been touched by foster care, adoption, and child welfare in general to do our due diligence to create a system that is shaped by them, and one in which they are regarded as the experts they are.

I am encouraged that C.A.S.E. and other organizations are moving in this direction by centering the experience and expertise of those they serve when they create trainings. As a field we have a long way to go to ensure all families touched by child welfare and adoption have the bright futures they envision, but slowly and surely, we are getting there.