Toward Successful Adoption: Training for Foster Care & Adoption Workers

This full-day training is approved for six social work continuing credit units and is designed for foster care and adoption workers who are working with foster families and others who are adopting children from the child welfare system.

AM Session: Temperament, Attachment, Trauma & the Brain, Grief & Loss & Common Diagnosis:
How to Better Understand the Children You Are Working With

This three-hour session will focus on the unique needs of children who are being adopted from the child welfare system. The focus will be on the interplay between children’s temperament, attachment styles, trauma, grief and loss, and diagnostic labels. Information will be disseminated that is designed to help caseworkers gain an understanding of the needs of children in foster care to enhance their work with families interested in adopting these children.

PM Session: Helping Children & Families Make Transitions to Adoption

This three-hour session is designed to help participants look at how best to prepare and support foster families and others who are adopting children from the foster care system. Information will be provided about shifting dynamics in foster families who are planning to adopt as well as helping children and families when adoption means moving children. Improving effectiveness in collaboration between foster care and adoption staff during adoption transitions will also be explored.

This program is funded by the Michigan Department of Human Services, thus registration is FREE.

Find all the details and registration instructions in the attachment below.

State launches campaign to recruit foster and adoptive parents
By Kyla King The Grand Rapids Press April 28, 2010

For anyone thinking of fostering or adopting a child, Tammy Schnyders has a message: It might not always be easy, but it is entirely worth it.

Schnyders, who along with her husband, Steve, has been a foster and adoptive parent to more than 25 children in 14 years said the rewards far outweigh the trials.

"I look at my kids and how far they have come from when we first got them, and that's huge for me," said Schnyders, a West Michigan resident and foster parent for Bethany Christian Services.

"What I keep going back to is if they weren't in a good home they might not succeed in life," she said.

State leaders are hoping to find folks who feel the same way when they kick off a statewide campaign today in Grand Rapids to recruit foster and adoptive parents.

"You don't have to go to China to adopt a child or to be a foster care parent," said Ismael Ahmed, director of the Michigan Human Services Department.