Adoption Today: Navigating Complexities in Family Relationships and Broader Society

Thursday, June 1, 2017
The Brattleboro Retreat
8:30 AM - 4:00 PM 

Harold D. Grotevant, PhD 

Click here to Register

Contemporary adoption in the U.S. involves complex family situations that require understanding of how families navigate differences in background and family composition. This workshop addresses the adoption of children across racial, ethnic, and cultural lines in the context of family and community; as well as how adoptive family members navigate contact between members of the child’s adoptive and birth families within the contexts of domestic, foster care, and international adoptions from placement into young adulthood.

Learning objectives
At the end of this conference, participants will be able to:

 1.        Describe the cultural, historical, geopolitical, economic, and legal contexts in which U.S. adoptive families are embedded.
 
2.         List the diverse types of adoptive families in the contemporary United States (including domestic infant adoptions, adoption from the public child welfare system, and international adoption) and explain the distinctive issues facing each.
 
3.         Describe the perspectives of adoption's multiple participants: adopted persons, birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoption professionals.
 
4.         Compare the strengths and challenges involved in establishing and navigating contact between children’s adoptive and birth families over time in domestic infant, child welfare, and international adoptions.
 
5.         List at least two issues that may arise in adoptions across racial, ethnic, and/or cultural lines, considering contexts of family and community.
 
6,         Identify at least two resources that will be useful in clinical practice with members of the adoptive kinship network. 
 
Harold D. Grotevant, PhD, holds the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he founded and directs the Rudd Adoption Research Program. His research focuses on relationships in adoptive families, open adoption, and on identity development in adolescents and young adults.