Do you want to deepen your knowledge of adoption by learning from the foremost experts? Pact firmly believes that adopted people—not adoptive parents—are the first, most important voices to hear from about the experience of being adopted. In this webinar, adopted adults of color share parts of their lifelong adoption journey.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: Adoptee Voices/Adoptee Identity, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Katie Wynen
2022

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Learn from the foremost experts on the experience of being adopted: adopted people themselves Watch a short film featuring adoptees ages 10 to 17 speak about their experiences with and thoughts on race, first/birth families, adoption and more. The film is followed by a facilitated conversation about the evolution of feelings in youth and adults.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: Adoptee Voices/Adoptee Identity, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander
2022

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In the world of adoption, first/birth parents are often talked about or spoken for, but rarely heard from directly about their lived experiences. In this webinar, you can hear from a panel of first/birth parents as they discuss the many complexities of adoption from their own perspective.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: First/Birth Parents, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander
2022

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Learn from the voices of experience! Hear adoptive parents share things they wish they had understood earlier. Topics include: handling your own fears; understanding how children experience adoption; why the words we use matter; talking about our child’s birth and first/birth parents; responding to difficult behaviors in children (and ourselves); anticipating children’s questions; and adjusting our parenting expectations.

Target audience: Adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Adoptive Parenting, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2022

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Many, perhaps most, adoptions now begin with the possibility of some amount of openness and contact between birth and adoptive parents. How do you determine what’s right for you and your child? This webinar will address common concerns and questions, and help you distinguish between your own needs, desires, and fears and those of your child.

Target audience: Prospective adoptive parents and expectant parents.

Subject categories: Preparing to Adopt, Open Adoption, Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander
2021

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In this webinar, we outline the process of creating your Dear Expectant Parent(s) letter to introduce yourself to expectant parents considering an adoption plan. Our approach reflects Pact’s ethical, non-coercive approach to adoption. We’ll help you create an honest, authentic profile, not manipulative marketing material.

Target audience: Prospective adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Open Adoption, Preparing to Adopt

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2021

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Adoptive parents of color raising children who look like them have choices about when or even whether to talk to their children about their adoption history. Sometimes parents worry that telling a child they are adopted will lead to feelings of insecurity or disconnectedness. This webinar unpacks those concerns, and the unintended repercussions that silence and secrecy can have.

Target audience: Current or prospective adoptive parents of color with same-race families.

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2018

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Adopted youth who grow up in blended families (with both adopted and non-adopted children) are sometimes at risk for feeling less connected than their non-adopted siblings. Hear an adoptive parent, a non-adopted sibling, and an adoptee share their experiences of living in blended families—what was rewarding and what was challenging.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: Siblings, Talking About Adoption, Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2022

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Siblings can have many complicated relationships with adoption: Growing up with both adopted and non-adopted siblings; siblings who are adopted with different levels of birth family contact; siblings by birth growing up in different families through birth and/or adoption; found siblings; siblings placed together and/or in different families. Join a conversation with adoptees and parents (by birth and adoption) who have lived experience with sibling relationships both in their adoptive and birth families and what they have found helpful in navigating them. This triad-expansive conversation will offer insight and explorations of the many different relationships found in the unique complexity of adoption.

Target audience: pre-adoptive parents, adoptive parents, birth/first parents and adoption professionals.

Subject categories: Siblings, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Susan DG Leksander
2022

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Does your organization provide counseling to women facing unplanned pregnancies? Do you feel confident about how to support women and families considering an adoption plan? Or those whose children have already been placed into adoption or foster care? This webinar draws on both first-hand personal experiences of birth parents, and the latest research, to help you discuss adoption with honesty, balance, and compassion.

Target audience: Professionals working with pregnant people and birth parents.

Subject categories: Talking About Adoption, Ethics in Adoption

Lead Speaker: Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander
2019

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This webinar captures a candid and critical discussion of child welfare reform that seeks to radically imagine a different way forward for families within an anti-racist and abolitionist context.

Target audience: Adoption professionals.

Subject categories: Ethics in Adoption

Lead Speaker: Christina Feliciana
2021

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As the landscape of adoption providers continues to be heavily dominated by for-profit entities and “do-it-yourself” online matching services, foregrounding ethics in voluntary infant placement and adoption become all the more critical. This webinar raises questions about current practices in voluntary placements.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: Ethics in Adoption

Lead Speaker: Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander
2021

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This webinar focuses on talking about adoption and foster care in communities of color. Learn strategies for supporting adoptive and foster parents of color throughout the adoption journey, from preparation through separation.

Target audience: Adoption professionals.

Subject categories: Preparing to Adopt, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2021

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Hear practical and ethical advice about what to expect when pre-adopters have been matched with expectant parents in an adoption plan and are invited to the hospital when a child is being placed for adoption. We will focus on how to manage the complex time when first/birth parent(s) are making the legal and emotional decision about whether to move forward with placing that child for adoption and address questions about when to arrive, who makes medical choices, feeding choices, breast-feeding, naming, gifts, goodbyes, and contact after birth.

Target audience: Prospective adoptive parents and expectant parents.

Subject categories: Preparing to Adopt, Talking About Adoption, Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2020

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To better serve the needs of adopted children, open adoption was created as an alternative to the challenges of closed adoption—but open adoption brings new challenges, for both adoptive and birth parents. With the three simple shifts covered in this webinar, you can develop a new mindset and strategy to guide you in your open adoption parenting. Practical tips and examples for managing open relationships are included.

Target audience: Adoptive parents and first/birth parents.

Subject categories: Open Adoption, Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Lori Holden
2019

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Attachment is the cornerstone of connection, healing, and harmony in an adoptive family. This webinar with Dr. Laura Anderson explains how children with trauma histories and/or attachment disruptions can have differing brain and body chemistry, including differently developed sensory integration systems, and suggest strategies for fostering connection.

Target audience: Adoptive parents, professionals.

Subject categories: Attachment, Trauma-Informed Parenting

Lead Speaker: Laura Anderson
2019

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Learn how to start conversations about adoption with your kids, and introducing new concepts without going over your child’s head. Topics include: understanding how children understand and experience adoption, why the words we use matter, why beginning with a child’s birth makes sense, how to talk about first/birth parents, and answering and anticipating children’s questions, whether they ask them or not.

Target audience: Adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Talking About Adoption, Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2020

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Are you preparing to welcome a newborn or young child into your family? This webinar covers a continuum of age-specific attachment issues and introduces strategies that promote secure attachment for adopted children from infancy through toddlerhood.

Target audience: Adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Attachment, Preparing to Adopt, Trauma-Informed Parenting

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2021

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Are you doing everything you can to make adopted children and adults welcome in your family and community? The language we use and the rituals we perform communicate our values. Words and rituals send powerful messages to children and adults, underscoring what we consider important. Learn about adoption-sensitive language and the impact it can have, and why adoptive families may choose to modify their rituals or create new ones.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: Adoption Rituals and Holiday Celebrations, Ethics in Adoption, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Katie Wynen
2021

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It’s critically important that you become comfortable talking about all the complexities of adoption with adopted children—the sorrows as well as the joys. Learn developmentally-appropriate strategies for talking with children about adoption, first families, and loss.

Target audience: Prospective and current adoptive parents, expectant parents, first/birth parents.

Subject categories: Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2021

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Adoptive parents of color join in a practical discussion about how to talk to children of color about race. Topics covered include developmental milestones, cultural context, social narratives, and strategies for maintaining joy and pride despite it all. Parents share strategies they like for support their children.

Target audience: Adoptive parents of color.

Subject categories: Race and Adoption

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2021

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An uncomfortable truth in adoption is that privileges are extended or denied based on class. For many families of color who built their families through adoption or foster care, the class dynamics reveal intersections of oppression. This webinar takes on this seldom-discussed reality, starting a difficult, important conversation about how we can challenge these dynamics and build connections across class.

Target audience: All triad members and professionals.

Subject categories: Race and Adoption, Ethics in Adoption

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2020

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Transracial adoption for parents of color is becoming more common. Learn from adoptive parents of color parenting across race: the steps they took to prepare themselves for transracial adoption, the experience of parenting their children at different ages and stages, and the continued work they do to support their child’s race and cultural heritage in conjunction with their own.

Target audience: Prospective adoptive parents of color considering transracial adoption.

Subject categories: Transracial Adoption, Race and Adoption

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2020

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Are you planning a transracial adoption, or are you already parenting across racial lines? This webinar is for white parents working to educate themselves about race and racism, which includes understanding white privilege and interrogating your own whiteness. We explore how these issues play out in adoptive families where children and parents do not share the same racial identity.

Target audience: Prospective or current transracial adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Transracial Adoption, Adoptive Parenting, Trauma-Informed Parenting, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Katie Wynen
2020

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This webinar is for white adoptive parents ready to interrogate their own racism, talk about race with their children, and do something about racism now.

Target audience: White adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Race and Adoption, Ethics in Adoption, Transracial Adoption

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2021

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Children learn much more than reading and math in school–they learn how the world operates beyond their own home. If they are lucky, they’re taught to search for commonality and to appreciate differences in their classmates and then in the people of the wider community. One of the ways kids are taught about the world and people around them is through assignments that focus on family. When these assignments are broadened purposefully to be inclusive and respectful of many diverse family models, children growing up in “non-standard” families can relax and learn. This webinar focuses on strategies for navigating school and supporting children who join their families through adoption.

Target audience: Adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Adoption and Schools, Race and Adoption, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Malaika Parker
2021

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Parenting an adopted child is both the same as and incredibly different than parenting a child born to you. When children exhibit challenging behaviors, parents can often become confused as they wonder whether the behaviors have deeper meaning in the context of adoption. Join us for an exploration of research-based insights and practical guidance for adoptive parents. We will address specific parenting theories and their applicability to adoptive family life, with a focus on positive and effective discipline methods.

Target audience: Adoptive parents and professionals.

Subject categories: Trauma-Informed Parenting, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2022

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What is your little one thinking and feeling about adoption? Preschoolers are very concrete thinkers. They are just beginning to learn about things like “same and different” and to apply their new understanding to everything, including friends and family. Each stage of their development will challenge you to grow along with them!

Target audience: Adoptive parents, first/birth parents.

Subject categories: Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2019

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Learn how children at this age use their developing conceptual skills to figure out how and why adoption happened to them. Having differences in family structure and/or racial identification pointed out can make elementary school kids uncomfortable. Practical advice about how to navigate new peer relationships and school challenges will be addressed.

Target audience: Adoptive parents, first/birth parents.

Subject categories: Adoptive Parenting, Adoption and Schools

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2020

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Learn how adopted tweens are developing new analytical abilities, and beginning to explore new ideas, identities, and world views. They are getting messages from media and peers that they should begin to separate from their family, but most of them are not emotionally ready to do so. Understanding what is happening, and why, really does help!

Target audience: Adoptive parents, first/birth parents.

Subject categories: Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2019

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Parenting teens can require deep wells of patience, and challenge you to suspend judgement and listen closely. Explore how adoption and racial identity formation add to the mix of issues that teens and their parents are navigating. Topics covered include general identity formation, adoption identity, and racial identity.

Target audience: Adoptive parents, first/birth parents.

Subject categories: Adoptive Parenting

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2019

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Adolescence is hard and complicated for everyone, and even more so for adopted teens of color. Learn how to understand the many changes taking place in the brains, bodies, and emotions of your beloved, frustrating tweens and teens so you can help your adopted child navigate these changes and the intersections with their experiences of race, adoption, foster care, and/or trauma.

Target audience: Foster or adoptive parents of tweens and teens of color (ages 10-19).

Subject categories: Adoptive Parenting, Trauma-Informed Parenting, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Beth Hall
2022

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This panel discussion of social media and its intersections with adoption covers topics including search and reunion for adoptees, self-esteem and portrayals of adoption online, and internet safety issues. We explore how parents can be curious about and supportive of their children’s social media interactions.

Target audience: Adoptive parents.

Subject categories: Ethics in Adoption, Adoption and Schools, Talking About Adoption

Lead Speaker: Jamie Nunez
2020

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