Children adopted from foster care may experience mental or behavioral health challenges connected to trauma and loss or to the adoption experience itself. Child welfare professionals are essential in guiding parents who are looking for support. Here are eight things you can do to promote positive mental health outcomes for children and families.
Help caregivers use trauma-responsive parenting
Trauma-responsive parenting is a valuable way to address mental or behavioral health issues. Strategies include:
- Understanding trauma and loss as brain injuries
- Putting connection before correction
- Considering the child’s developmental stage rather than age
- Being flexible
This AdoptUSKids article outlines how professionals can encourage this parenting style. Consider sharing training options and written resources with parents (such as AdoptUSKids’ trauma-responsive parenting article or this therapeutic parenting post from Adoption.com).
Work with parents to identify their goals
When families seek support for their child’s mental health, help them clarify the issues and their goals. This insight will help them compare and decide on treatment options. Parents can share these goals with potential providers to get everyone on the same page before treatment begins.
Help parents understand their child’s history
Helping parents understand their child’s history can guide treatment choices. For example, if a child was exposed to drugs or alcohol prenatally, parents may want to consider if the child has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Many children who have been in care have FASD, even if it has not been diagnosed. In such cases, the child may benefit from an assessment and parents may need guidance on caring for a child with FASD.
A child’s history may also reveal significant losses—of family, trusted adults, friends, pets, and other important connections. Adoption itself brings core issues such as grief and loss. Identifying these losses can help parents choose treatments that support the child in understanding and grieving these experiences as they heal.
Case files or other records can also clarify if a child has had a specific diagnosis and if previous services were helpful. It is important to remind parents that diagnoses can change over time and that many children may be diagnosed improperly when they really have developmental trauma disorder.
As a professional, you play a key role in helping parents interpret this history. Walk them through the child’s file, discussing how different experiences may affect the child. Share information from assessments, explaining the meaning of diagnoses or results of treatments. You may also be able to connect with former caregivers or birth family members who can fill in gaps in the child’s history.
Normalize the need for support
Some families do not seek support when problems arise. Caregivers may feel judged or think they can handle challenges on their own. But early interventions led to better outcomes. Adoption professionals can help families understand that it is okay to ask for help.
The National Center for Enhanced Post-Adoption Support offers suggestions to help normalize the need for support, including:
- Ensure that all agency information about adoption and guardianship clearly states that families should expect to need support.
- Make it easy for families to know where to turn for support.
When families reach out for support, assure parents they will not be judged for seeking help.
Help families choose adoption-competent providers
It is important to help families understand why finding adoption-competent providers matters.
First, teach what adoption competency is. This National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services resource can help you explain how mental health care needs to reflect the unique adoption experience.
Next, help them find adoption-competent providers. Options include:
- Search the national provider directory for professionals who have completed adoption-competency training.
- Develop a local directory of providers. Start with providers who have completed adoption training. Ask trusted adoptive parents to identify providers who helped their families. Consider developing a questionnaire for providers, with the answers available for families to review.
- Share with parents the following questions to help find a provider that is a good fit for their family.
- How many other adoptive families do they work with? What themes have they seen?
- What training have they received on adoption or the impact of trauma?
- How do they engage parents and other family members in services?
- What experience do they have with families like yours?
- Do they use specific treatment types?
- How do they assess the child’s or family’s strengths and needs to guide treatment?
You can help parents interpret the responses and think about follow-up questions together.
Expand the network of adoption-competent providers in your community
In many communities, there are not enough adoption-competent providers, especially those who accept Medicaid. Here are actions you can take to grow the number of adoption-competent providers where you live:
- Recommend providers take the free National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI).
- Have parents share NTI information with their providers.
- Share resources like the benefits for professionals and this tip sheet about adoption competency.
- Remind providers they can be listed in your local directory or in the national directory after completing training.
- Share information on trauma and adoption with providers or with parents to give to their support team.
- Find resources in the National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services’ knowledge hub or the National Center for Enhanced Post-Adoption Services’ resource library.
- Work toward broader changes. Ask local support organizations to consider using the free NTI training for all staff. NTI’s specialists can work with organizations to plan for implementation. To help increase the entire site’s adoption competence, share with agency leadership that technical assistance is available.
Help families understand interventions
Mental and behavioral health support can mean different things—talk therapy, play therapy, family counseling, sensory support, and more. Figuring out the best option can be overwhelming for parents.
Gathering and sharing information about the treatments that have helped other families can be useful. The Post-Adoption Center’s program manual has an appendix with services that may be effective with adoptive families. Consider sharing this with parents to help them identify local options that might work for their family.
In addition to formal interventions, remind parents that sensory activities, art, music, and rhythmic activities can help children who have experienced trauma.
Remind parents that relationships are key to healing
Trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk said, “The parent-child connection is the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.” Help parents seek supports and services that prioritize these connections. Above all, help them understand that healing from trauma and loss is the work of the entire adoptive family.