Raising awareness for service providers

• Does your organization provide counseling to people facing unplanned pregnancies?
• Is adoption one of the options you discuss with them?
• Do you feel confident about how to support pregnant people and families considering adoption? Or those whose children have already been placed into adoption or foster care?
• Would it benefit the clients you serve if your staff deepened their knowledge of the complex topic of adoption?

The only program of its kind, Adoption… It’s Complicated! draws on both firsthand personal experiences and the latest research to help service providers discuss adoption with honesty, balance, and compassion.

Through our Adoption…It’s Complicated! program, you can bring Pact’s team of trained first/birth parent educators to deliver trainings to service providers in your organization, such as social workers, options counselors, nurses, and therapists. Your professionals learn directly from educators who have themselves placed children for adoption about how to provide appropriate and compassionate services in an empowering, respectful, and culturally sensitive manner.

Contact aic@pactadopt.org for more information or to schedule a training.

Pact can help your clients find answers to the questions: Should we adopt transracially? Are we ready?

Do you work with pre-adoptive parents considering adoption across race? Has the racial reckoning happening in America motivated you to dig deeper into issues of race and racism in adoption? Is it clear to you that race matters, racism exists, and a few hours of transracial adoption education is not enough?

Pact is here to help. We can partner with you to ensure that the families you work with are digging deeper, learning more, and getting the preparation they need—the preparation their future children need them to have. Pact has been building expertise in anti-racist pre-adoption education for almost thirty years. We know race and racism are too important and too difficult to be adequately addressed via a brief “module” or hasty conversation during pre-adoption preparations. Partnering with Pact will allow you to offer your transracial adoption clients meaningful, in-depth training that will truly prepare them for the complexities and challenges of navigating race, family, and adoption. They will thank you, and their children will thank you.

Combine these options to meet the needs of your practice and your clients. Our goal is to help prospective adopters assess and improve their own readiness, recognizing that transracial adoption isn’t appropriate for everyone.

Should We Adopt Transracially?

Pact’s signature preparation program for white adopters considering an adoption across race. Your clients will participate in individualized training sessions with experienced Pact counselors. Pact believes that when transracial adoption happens, parents must be prepared to examine their own racial identities and biases and commit to their child’s need to build a positive racial identity of their own. We don’t subscribe to the “colorblind” or “love is enough” approach; we know race matters and that parents who are adopting across racial lines must commit to making changes in their own lives in order to support their children. We work with pre-adopters to create a plan for how to examine and challenge their own white privilege, racial biases, become an anti-racist individual/family, bring more diversity into their personal and community circles, nurture a positive racial identity in a child of color, and work to recognize the racism their child will face. Includes 4 hours of personalized consultation time with Pact staff, as well as exercises, homework and access to 3 webinars. Fee is $500/ family.

Webinars Package

Offer your clients access to a series of webinars that will deepen their understanding of transracial adoption. Each session is 1.5 hours. Topics may include:

• How Do We Prepare to Adopt Transracially?
• Dear White People: Anti-Racist Adoptive Parenting
• Adoptee Voices: Transracial Adoption Panel

Fee is $156/family for webinars and one-year Pact family membership, or $108/family non-member rate.

Professional-to-Professional Support

After your clients have participated in Should We Adopt Transracially? and/or the webinar package, we can provide specially-designed materials that will help you assess client readiness for transracial adoption and/or identify areas in which further education or counseling is needed. Pact staff will be available to consult with placement staff on issues and questions related to transracial adoption for up to 5 hours over the course of a year. Fee is $400 per participating agency or individual professional.

For more information about partnering with Pact to enhance your work with transracial adoptive parents, please contact education@pactadopt.org.

“Below the Surface” is a self-assessment guide developed by Pact for adoptive families considering adoption across racial or cultural lines. This learning tool helps pre-adoptive parents decide for themselves if transracial adoption is the right choice for their family. It is designed to give parents feedback as to how challenging this form of parenting is likely to be for them depending on their personality, lifestyle, attitude about race and knowledge of races other than their own. Professionals find this tool invaluable. Discounted price for bulk orders. Purchase here.

Education is at the heart of Pact’s mission, because educated individuals change lives and change the world. Visit our Events page to see our upcoming webinars and conferences about adoption, race, identity and family—there’s always more to learn! CEU available.

Pact can come to you with customized presentations, workshops, or consultations about adoption, race, and family that meet the needs of your organization. Available speakers include adult adoptees of color, first/birth parents, adoptive parents of color, and nationally recognized thought leader Beth Hall.

Please contact education@pactadopt.org for more information.