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Adoption support, learning and networking

Our commitment to you

Adoption South East has an ongoing commitment to supporting our adopted children and their families. We recognise that challenges can arise at different points of adopted people's lives and know just how important available support is.

We provide post adoption support through training, facilitating and supporting peer groups, adoption events, supporting contact arrangements, post adoption worker assessments and support, and applications to the adoption support fund.

To keep up to date with all the latest ASE events, groups and news approved adopters can sign up to the monthly ASE newsletter. To do so please email adoptionvoices@adoptionsoutheast.org.uk, with details of your adoption agency (and social worker if you have one).

Contact post adoption support

You are extremely welcome to contact us to talk things through with a Post Adoption Worker when adoption support is needed for your child. We have an experienced team who will do their best to offer you helpful advice. Your family may also benefit from support from other agencies, for example Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. To ensure your family/child are referred to all of the services that might be of benefit please make contact through the "Front Door" services. They have the ability to refer you into other organisations, in addition to adoption support services. All Front Door services within the ASE region have been given the opportunity for training, by ASE and delivered by Adoption UK, on adoption related issues.

To access multi agency support contact:

Any request that subsequently comes through to Adoption South East (ASE) will be explored by the duty/advice line worker. Should the need exist for further support, the first step will be to undertake an Adoption Support Needs Assessment. You are entitled to an Adoption Support Needs Assessment through ASE if:

  • You live in Brighton and Hove, East and West Sussex or Surrey (ASE region) and adopted a child through any of these agencies.
  • You live in the ASE region and have adopted a child from another authority more than three years ago.
  • You live outside the ASE region but your child was placed by a local authority within the ASE region and the Adoption Order for a previously looked after child was made less than three years ago.

Contact ASE directly for adoption specific advice:

Adoption South East training

At Adoption South East (ASE) we believe in learning together. In addition to training run by ASE, and in response to feedback from our adopters, we commissioned a comprehensive training programme from Adoption UK that can be accessed throughout the adoption journey. We would like to continue to learn from you. If you think there are other subject areas that would be useful to cover in the learning programme, please let us know at adoptionvoices@adoptionsoutheast.org.uk.

ASE learning opportunities throughout the adoption journey

Stage 1

  • Preparation groups
  • Meet the adopters
  • Prospective adopters with birth children

Stage 1 or 2

  • Fostering for adoption

Stage 2

  • Paediatric first aid
  • Family and friends
  • Getting ready for placement
  • Keeping in touch, thinking about contact

Approved adopters

  • Trauma and Attachment
  • Eating Issues for Adopted Children
  • Children Who Struggle at School
  • Navigating Education Health Care Plans
  • Child on Parent Violence
  • Sensory Integration
  • Challenging behaviours in the home and managing anger and defiance
  • Supporting adolescents and their transition into adulthood
  • Understanding Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
  • Keeping in contact with birth families
  • Talking about adoption
  • Siblings

Keep up to date with the training offer

The courses on offer are continuously updated in response to our adopter feedback. The full course listings can be found on the Adoption UK website.

Details, and updates, about the training are sent out in our monthly newsletter. Please email adoptionvoices@adoptionsoutheast.org.uk, with details of your adoption agency (and social worker if you have one) to join the Adoption South East mailing list.

Memberships

We also have arrangements with other adoption support organisations to provide many of our adopters with memberships. These are:

How the Adoption Support Team can help you

We can undertake an assessment of your family's support needs in order to agree a support plan tailored to those needs. A support plan is a written agreement between ASE and yourself. It sets out the services you will be offered; the outcomes and how those will be measured.

The support we can provide includes helping you understand and support your child with:

  • How their needs relate to their history
  • The impact of early trauma
  • Understanding their life story
  • Parenting therapeutically
  • Contact with birth family (direct and indirect)

We can also offer:

  • Emotional support to adopters
  • Therapeutic parenting advice
  • Workshops and training for adopters
  • Support, guidance and mediation around contact
  • Links to community and specialist resources
  • Financial assessments and support (adoption allowances)
  • Referrals to Adoption Support Fund for therapeutic services.

Allocated Social Worker

The support plan will indicate whether there is a need for ongoing direct involvement by a social worker, and if so, one will be allocated. Many families find that once the adoption support assessment has been completed, and a therapeutic service is underway, they do not need any additional involvement with a social worker. In such circumstances no adoption social worker will be allocated. Where this is applicable, families can continue to gain support from the adoption advice line and have a therapy review by the advice line worker who can also submit a new Adoption Support Fund application if needed.

Adoption Support Fund (ASF)

The Adoption Support Fund provides funding for assessment and therapies for children who were:

  • Previously been looked after but are placed for adoption
  • Adopted
  • Placed under a Special Guardianship Order
  • Children adopted through Intercountry adoption.

Restrictions and requirements of the ASF fund

  • ASF funding is available to the children listed above, up to the age of 21 or up to the age of 25 if they have an Education Heath Care Plan (EHCP)
  • An Adoption Support Assessment needs to be less than 3 months old to apply
  • ASF funding for assessments has to be adoption related such as trauma, attachment, loss and Foetal Alcohol Syndrome/Spectrum disorder
  • Assessments must be led by a clinical psychologist
  • Therapy applied for must be adoption related.

There are two categories of funding:

  1. £2,500 per child per year for specialist assessment
  2. £5,000 per child per year for therapy.

Only specified therapies can be applied for and only approved providers can be used. More details can be found on our Mental health and therapies page.

Groups and events

Time and again our adopters tell us that peer support is particularly helpful. We recognise there is also a need for peer recognition, and networking, for our adopted children and young people.

To meet this need we:

  • hold Adoption South East (ASE) wide adoption events eight times a year
  • run an adoption choir for parents and young people
  • run parent and toddler groups for adoptive families across our regions
  • run a new parents networking and support group for adopters who have recently been matched with a child
  • are funding a pilot youth group for young people, with a vision to roll it out across the region if successful
  • support, and work alongside, adopter led networking groups across all 4 ASE areas
  • run networking groups on subjects' adopters have requested (such as FASD and Education)

Details of these groups are circulated in the monthly ASE newsletter.

If you would like to receive the newsletter, please contact adoptionvoices@adoptionsoutheast.org.uk, letting us know who you adopted through and your social workers name (if you have one).

Transition to parenting

Becoming a parent

Whilst becoming a parent is joyful, it can also be a stressful experience. It requires readjustment in many areas of life including relationships, employment, friendships and the way you socialise. You may feel a mixture of conflicting emotions. You could be excited, optimistic and happy with parenthood. But you may also experience sadness, tearfulness, feeling deskilled, and even hopelessness.

Post Adoption Depression Syndrome

In 1995, June Bond identified Post Adoption Depression Syndrome (PADS). PADS is not uncommon amongst new adopters. PADS is indicative of the stress, and anxiety associated with a placement.

Seeking support from your partner and family and friends is important. It may also be necessary to talk to your GP and/or a mental health practitioner, for example from Health in Mind and your supporting social worker. Your social worker will be familiar with PAD and will be able to listen and support you.

The child's grief

Likewise, the child placed with you will be experiencing feelings of loss. This may be the first, and one of the most challenging experiences you may face. The intensity of children's grief is linked to their preparation for the move, their attachment strategies and trauma, as well as positive relationships they have formed. Therefore, grieving is very individual. It is difficult to predict how long it will last or how it will present. Some adoptive parents feel overwhelmed. Giving and receiving comfort can be difficult for both parent and child. It's important to recognise those feelings as part of the normal process of loss. Kubler-Ross Model has mapped out the five stages of grief.

Parenting as a couple

Becoming a parent is a significant developmental life stage. If you are in a couple, you may be moving away from a well-established predictable routine. The sudden addition of a baby/child requires you to revisit established patterns and rules. This can throw up unexpected differences of opinion. You may find yourselves unable to resolve disagreements on how to proceed in parenting or in your couple relationship.

Most couples will also find that their intimate relationship is affected by the presence of a baby/child in their house. Couple therapy can be a useful and supportive setting to talk through the many changes that need to be made. Relate is an agency that offers private and confidential support.

Family and friends

During the assessment you will be offered family and friends training. This will help your family network to understand the different approaches needed in parenting birth and adopted children. You may also want to recommend they read some of the recommended books, refer to the reading about adoption section.

Sometimes the process of adjustment to parenthood can extend over a period of time and it might be important to consider a Family network meeting. Your social worker can arrange a family network meeting to gain support from extended family and friends.

Bonding and attachment

The bonding process with a child/baby may happen spontaneously or it may feel hard to establish a relationship with your baby/child. You might be left with questions about the quality of the relationship between you and your baby/child.

Playing with your child is one of the most significant ways of relating to your child. Home-Start is a service which offers weekly visits by a trained worker for a limited number of sessions. The worker will assess your child's development level and deliver home based play sessions with you and your child.

Video Interactive Guidance (VIG) is an intervention which helps to promote the attunement between parent and child and can be especially helpful in the early days of placement. Association for Video Interaction Guidance UK. This approach has encouraged adoptive parents that even when their baby was distressed, they managed capture moments of attunement.

During the transition to parenthood it is important to look after yourself and promote your own well-being.

Reading about adoption

The book suggestions on these pages have been recommended by our adopters or social workers.

  • Attaching in Adoption by Deborah Gray
  • Attaching through love, hugs and play by Deborah Gray
  • Born for Love by Bruce Perry
  • Building the Bonds of Attachment by Dan Hughes
  • Creating Loving Attachments by Kim Golding / Dan Hughes
  • First Steps in Parenting the Child Who Hurts - Tiddlers and Toddlers by Caroline Archer
  • New Families, Old Scripts by Burnell, Archer and Gordon
  • Next Steps in Parenting the Child Who Hurts: Tykes and Teens by Caroline Archer
  • Nurturing Attachments Supporting Children who are Fostered or Adopted by Kim S Golding
  • Parenting A Child with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties by Dan Hughes
  • Preparing for Adoption by Julie Davis
  • Parenting from the inside out by Dan Siegel
  • Therapeutic Parenting in a Nutshell by Sarah Naish
  • The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  • The Primal Wound by Nancy Barrier
  • The Whole Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Dr Tina Payne Bryson
  • Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Khon
  • What Every Parent Needs to Know by Margot Sutherland
  • Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt

Books for friends and relatives

  • Before I Arrive by H. Townsend
  • Related by Adoption by Heidi Argent
  • No Matter What by Sally Donovan

Books to read with your child

Love

  • No Matter What by Debi Gliori
  • The I Love You Book by Todd Parr
  • Love Block by Christopher Franceschelli
  • Guess How Much I Love You by Sam Mcbratney

Looking after/showing care for

  • The Rescue Party (Tales From Percy's Park) by Nick Butterworth

Settling into a new adoptive family

  • A Safe Place for Rufus by Jill Seeny

Family diversity

  • Picnic In The Park by Joe Griffiths and Tony Pilgrim
  • Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
  • Mommy, Mama and me by Leslea Newman Daddy, Papa and Me by Leslea Newman
  • A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza

Memories

  • Elfa and The Box of Memories by Michelle Bell
  • The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson

Worries

  • Morris and The Bundle of Worries by Jill Seeney
  • The Huge Bag of Worries by Viginia Ironside
  • Help! I've Got An Alarm Bell Going Off In My Head by K.L. Aspden

Anti-prejudice, diversity and being yourself

  • Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
  • It's Okay To Be Different by Todd Parr
  • A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara Maiden & Princess by Daniel Haack
  • The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
  • Elmer by David Mckee
  • You Choose by Pippa Goodheart and Nick Sharratt Norman
  • The Slug With The Silly Shell by Sue Hendra

Wetting

  • Pip and Posey The Little Puddle by Axel Scheffler

Playing gently

  • BE GENTLE! by Virginia Miller Barry
  • The Fish With Fingers by Sue Hendra

Starting school

  • Pete The Cat, Rocking In My School Shoes by James Dean

Eating issues

  • Charlie and Lola; I Will Never, Not Ever, Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child

Adoption

  • The Teazles' Baby Bunny by Susan Bagnall
  • Nutmeg Gets Adopted by Judith Foxon
  • The Mulberry Bird by Anne Braff Brodzinsky
  • The Most Precious Present in the World by Becky Edwards
  • We Belong Together by Todd Parr

Relationship to birth parents

  • A Place in My Heart by Mary Grossnickle

Emotions

  • When I'm Feeling Sad by Trace Moroney
  • How Do You Feel? By Antony Browne
  • Help! My Feelings Are Too Big! by K.L. Aspden

Avoiding bedtime

  • Is it bedtime Wibbly Pig? by Mick Inkpen

Sharing

  • Pip and Posey and The Super Scooter by Axel Scheffler

Friendship

  • Barry The Fish With Fingers by Sue Hendra

Navigating emotions

  • We're Going On a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen

Blogs and podcasts

You may find some of these blogs or podcasts have content that you find useful. The podcasts have been recommended by individuals from the adoption community.

Other training providers

  • The Children and Trauma Community Hub (CATCH) is an online community providing support and information for adopters. ASE is affiliated to CATCH which enables some of our adopters to join free at the point of need. For further details of how to apply for membership you can sign up for the ASE newsletter (ASE adopters only) by contacting adoptionvoices@adoptionsoutheast.org.uk In your email please let us know which adoption agency you adopted through, and your social workers name, if you have one.
  • Adoption UK is an adoption charity that supports, trains, and connects people whose lives involve adoption. They also campaign on adoption policy at a national level.
  • Coram BAAF is an independent membership organisation that seeks to improve the lives of those who have been through, or are in, the care system. They provide resources and training.
  • Beacon House is a private therapeutic service with a particular specialism in working with individuals who have experienced trauma. They also provide training and resources sheets.
  • The National Association of Therapeutic Parenting is an organisation that provides support for parents whose children are neurodiverse, have experienced adverse childhood experiences or have developmental trauma. They run listening circles, an expert run helpline and provide resources. ASE purchased a finite number of memberships for this organisation. For further details of how to apply for membership you can sign up for the ASE newsletter (ASE adopters only) by contacting adoptionvoices@adoptionsoutheast.org.uk In your email please let us know which adoption agency you adopted through, and your social workers name, if you have one.
  • Touchbase is a community interest company that is passionate about whole community understanding of the effects of loss and trauma on children. They provide therapy, training and resources.