This workshop is for anyone adopting domestically, even if you are already working with an attorney or an adoption agency. Agencies and attorneys focus on completing adoptions successfully, which is precisely what you want them to focus on. But they may not have the time or counseling experience to focus on training you to really connect with birthparents. This workshop will teach you to feel more confident and to gain the skills necessary for making an adoption situation work not just for now, but for the long term.
Session 1:
Time: 9:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Presenting Yourself Positively
Speaker: Lindsay Conover, MSW, IAC Center Counselor and Profile Program Advisor
Explore your understanding and anxieties about the relationship between birth parents and adoptive parents. Identify your questions and concerns about communicating with birth parents before, during and after the actual adoption in preparation for session 2 when you will have a chance to have these issues addressed from the perspective of birth mothers who have place their babies for adoption.
Session 2:
Time: 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m.
How to Communicate with a Birthmother
Panel Moderator: Lindsay Conover, MSW, IAC Center Counselor
Speakers: A Panel of Birth parents who have placed their babies for adoption.
These birthparents will discuss how they felt about selection adoptive parents, communicating with the adoptive parents during the adoption process, their personal experiences of placing their children for adoption, and how they feel about communicating with adoptive families after the adoption and about open adoption. In hearing the birth parent perspective, you will gain a better understanding about how to communicate and connect with potential birthparents, how to gather background information that will be important to your child in the future, and how to deal with post adoption and open adoption issues after the adoption.
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