Tag Archives: adoption competent therapist

Who Decides What “Adoption Competent” Means?

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A general consensus these days is that adoptees are the experts in adoption, that their lived experience is a (if not the) most valid and valuable construct for understanding adoption. I agree. I may have my own insights and perspectives as an adoptive parent, but only adopted people know the depth and breadth of the reality of being adopted.

What, then, does it mean to be “adoption competent”?

It is a term mostly applied to therapy and therapists.

According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway of the U.S. government, “Children and youth who are adopted often have experienced trauma and need help sorting through complicated feelings stemming from their adoption and past experiences. Rather than being a one-time event, adoption is an ongoing process that requires continuous support long after papers are signed. To provide that support, child welfare professionals and other service providers should have adoption competence—the specific knowledge, skills, and values required to meet the complex, unique needs of adopted children and youth and their families.” (I added the emphasis.)

The notion of therapists and others to be “adoption competent” has been around for a while, including via the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Adoption (NCWRCA)’s Guide to Developing an Adoption Certificate Program for Mental Health Practitioners, published in 2007.

In 2013, the Donaldson Adoption Institute funded a policy paper, “A Need to Know: Enhancing Adoption Competence Among Adoption Professionals.”

Fast forward to the relative present time. The program that shows up most in a search for “adoption competence” is from the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.): “The Training for Adoption Competency (TAC) Curriculum is the nation’s premiere assessment-based certificate program for training mental health practitioners and developing adoption competency skills…TAC has 19 training centers across the country, over 1,800 graduates (and growing) and received accreditation from the Institute of Credentialing Excellence (ICE), making it a recognized top-tier program dedicated to public protection and excellence in practice.”

It was offered for free to practitioners in Washington state in 2022-2023, where I live, as part of the Coordinated Care health insurance program. Costs currently seem to vary nationally from $900 to $3500, according to my brief search for the numbers.

I’d like to suggest that the TAC program be offered free to adult adoptees who are eligible as therapists, and would otherwise be charged for the program. That would be a powerful acknowledgment to the value of adoptee voices, a gesture of not charging them nor requesting free labor from them.

While there is a charge for TAC, C.A.S.E. also offers three NTI courses for free, as part, I’d guess of the $9 million grant they were awarded. “NTI was developed by the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) and funded through a $9 million cooperative agreement with the Children’s Bureau (Administration on Children and Families, US Dept of Health and Human Services) with the goal of providing free access to NTI in all U.S. states, tribes and territories.”

The three courses are geared toward child welfare workers (case workers), child welfare supervisors, and mental health professionals.

I recently completed the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training for Child Welfare Professionals. As an adoptive parent, as someone who worked in adoption professionally, as a consultant now for Adoption Mosaic, I was curious about the course. It took me well over 20 hours lol. I will share my thoughts on the course, as well as on “adoption competent therapists,” in a separate blog post.

I would urge others to take the course, as a way of seeing what current thinking appears to be around adoption competency.

It is an evolving concept at best. And I wish my adoption agency social workers and I had some of this information when I adopted my children some 35+ years ago. We keep learning.

Full disclosure: I worked with C.A.S.E. some 25 years ago, including helping with the writing of the W.I.S.E. Up! book and of a foster care-related grant, the exact name of which I cannot recall now. This post is not meant as an advertisement or endorsement or criticism of the TAC program or C.A.S.E. courses. Indeed, there are mixed reviews from a number of practitioners, inevitable when thousands of folks have undergone the training. That said, TAC from C.A.S.E., for whatever combination of reasons, is what shows up in volume on Internet searches.

Therapists Who Are Adoptees: NAAM

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This is day 4 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

All of us humans may benefit from therapy at some point in our lives. Adoptees show up in therapy at higher rates than non-adopted people.

The statistics bear this out. According to the American Psychological Association, “Higher proportions of adopted persons attend therapy (17.71%) than nonadopted persons (8.76%; Miller et al., 2000), and some adopted individuals may struggle with certain issues as adults, such as loss and grief particularly during milestone events like marriage and childbirth (Nydam, 2007; Silverstein & Kaplan 1988); building and maintaining close relationships (Corder, 2012); distress over lack of genetic information; and issues with identity development (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2004).” There are several other studies listed at the APA link related to “clinical considerations for psychologists who see adult patients who were adopted during their childhood.”

Many adoptees and adoptive parents seek out therapists who are also adoptees. Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, a psychologist who is also an adoptee and adoptive parent, curates an incredibly valuable list of U.S.-based therapists who are also adoptees.

Anyone connected with adoption may want to find a therapist who, at a minimum, is adoption competent. The notion of “adoption competent” can be complex. It should be a baseline standard for anyone who works clinically with adopted people. The Center for Adoption Support and Education defines it this way: “An adoption competent mental health professional understands the nature of adoption as a form of family formation and the different types of adoption; the clinical issues that are associated with separation and loss and attachment; the common developmental challenges in the experience of adoption; and the characteristics and skills that make adoptive families successful.”

There is more to their definition; this link goes to C.A.S.E.’s Module on training adoption-competent therapists. (Transparency: Years ago, I worked for C.A.S.E., writing grants and occasionally participating on workshop panels. )

Therapists who work with adoptees should also be trauma-informed, another complex qualification. Many people don’t see the link between adoption and trauma, and that can be true for therapists as well. And “trauma-informed” can have many definitions, especially in relation to adoption.

Two final notes: One–if you’re an adoptive parent and your child is going to therapy, you should also go to therapy to learn what your child is going through, what they are learning in terms of strategies from the therapist, how you may inadvertently be contributing to the trauma, and how you can best support your child.

Two—This upcoming conference is the first of its kind, and will be amazing. “Expert Voices in Adoption” will take place online November 20. It will be “the only National Adoption Awareness Month event solely featuring the voices of adoptee clinicians.” The program will be hosted by Dr. Wirta-Leiker, mentioned above. I have registered, and I am sure many other folks have and will as well. It is an incredible opportunity for all of us.