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Do you think your child or your family would benefit from counseling? How do you find the right therapist and how can you tell in advance if they will be a good fit for your family? We talk with Debbie Riley, a Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist and CEO of the Center for Adoption Support and Education.
In this episode, we cover:
- What type of professional can provide therapy to an adopted or foster child or family?
- What’s the difference between being adoption competent and adoption informed?
- Why is competency in adoption or foster issues important?
- What do we mean be an “adoption competent therapist”? What makes a therapist adoption competent?
- Is adoption/foster competence the same as trauma competence?
- How can you tell if a therapist is competent to handle adoption or foster issues? Are there specific trainings that provide adoption competency?
- Creating a Family provides a list of ways to find an adoption competent therapist on our Adoption Therapy section.
- Is one type of therapeutic model of treatment more effective for adoptive children and families? Theraplay, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), Narrative therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), etc.
- Should therapy with adopted kids on adoption issues involve just the child, or the child and the parent?
- What is home-based therapy and are there advantages to this type of therapy for adoptive and foster families.
- How can you find a therapist that will provide therapy within the home? (One source is http://www.familycenteredtreatment.org/)
- Is therapy via tele-health or via teleconferencing as effective for adopted children? For families? How to know if it will work for your family? Ways to make it more effective.
- How can a parent determine if the therapist is a good fit for the child and family? What questions should they ask?
- How many sessions to try?
- When to seek a therapist?
- How to find a therapist with lived experience of being adopted?
Resources
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Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
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