Preparing for Adoption: Everything Adopting Parents Need to Know About Preparations, Introductions and the First Few Weeks

by Julia Davis, Hugh Thornbery (Foreword by)

Overview

The ideal first book for prospective adopters.

When you decide to adopt a child, you might assume that all the important work begins when the child comes to live with you. In fact the preparation stage before is crucial in ensuring that the adopted child will arrive to a safe and secure family. Preparing for Adoption provides clear advice on how to prepare for your adoptive child and create a strong foundation for a healthy and loving relationship. Julia Davis explains how many different factors can shape preparations for adoption, such as finding out about your child's history and using this information to establish a family environment which will meet your child's specific attachment needs. There is also advice on how to prepare your home to create a sense of safety for your child and how to prepare your family to support you as adoptive parents.

Primarily for adopters, foster carers and professionals supporting adopters, this book offers ideas and strategies to help parents prepare a happy and settled home for children before their arrival and ways to parent them in the early days of becoming a family that addresses their attachment needs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849054560
Publisher:	Kingsley, Jessica Publishers
Publication date:	10/21/2014
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Julia Davis is a Child and Family Therapist at therapeutic adoption agency Adoptionplus and a Senior Practitioner in an Adoption Team. She has worked for many years in the adoption field as a social worker and play therapist preparing children for adoption and supporting them through their moves to new families, and also has extensive experience of training and advising practitioners, adopters and foster carers.

Table of Contents

Ch1: Making Sense of it All. Ch2: Other ideas to consider. Ch3: Getting Ready. Ch4: Preparing Family and Friends. Ch5: Preparing Children. Ch6: When Everyone is ready. Ch7: Now you are Home. Ch8: Challenges and How to Meet Them.

Editorial Reviews

Preparing for Adoption breaks down the fraught build-up towards an adoption into calm, manageable and well-informed chunks, all of which are backed up with perceptive references to recent theory and shining examples of good practice. Each stage - preparing yourself, your future child, your family and friends and even their birth family - for the enormous forthcoming change in all their lives - is enlightened by extremely useful suggestions and invaluable insight gained from Julia Davies' personal and professional experience. Best of all, there is real empathy for all those involved in this complex and often lengthy process. I would thoroughly recommend this wonderful book to prospective adopters and their friends and family, as well as foster carers and social work practitioners. I only wish it had been written earlier.

Ali Redford

I thought adopters couldn't be prepared for everything... until I read this book! It is tremendous - jam packed with practical advice and case studies that bring the real issues to life together with an excellent overview of the theory. I think all prospective adopters should be required to read it before children can be placed with them.

Mark Owers

This is the book I wish I could have read before we became foster parents. It manages to walk the fine line between being realistic about the trauma and corresponding issues that the children may face, without making them seem impossible to parent...Adoptive parents, even if you think you've read everything there is on bringing a new child into your home, I urge you to pick this book up...This is a hard job. Don't do it alone.

Erin Kirchoefer

Julia Davis' book fills a big gap - supporting professionals, families and particularly children through the transition from foster care into an adoptive placement. She leads all those involved carefully and with real thought through the process with particular focus on what this transition means and may feel like for the child.
The book contains plenty of practical suggestions around preparing children for a move into an adoptive family and helping them to settle and bond once they are there. She doesn't gloss over the challenges that this momentous time can present, but guides everyone involved with compassion and sensitivity. She also includes information on the special considerations required when siblings are transitioning, which isn't always covered in other texts.
I strongly recommend this book for anyone involved in a child's transition from foster care into an adoptive family. I wish it had been around when our family was starting out.

Sally Donovan