Readiness To Adopt Children With Special Needs

Hennepin County Adoption Project University of Minnesota School of Social Work

Interview for the Readiness to Adopt Self-Survey (IRASS): A Guide Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW [email protected] Susan Keskinen, MSW [email protected]

Please feel free to reproduce this interview guide for your professional use.

Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW is professor, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1404 Gortner Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108 USA. Phone: 612/624-3643; e-mail: [email protected]

Susan Keskinen, MSW, is a research and evaluation consultant, 691 Portland Avenue, St. Paul. MN 55104. USA Phone: 651/292-9085; e-mail: [email protected]

Jane F. Gilgun and Susan Keskinen in collaboration with an advisory group developed the IRASS. The members of the advisory group are Ginny Blade (National Council on Adoptable Children, St. Paul, MN) and staff of the Hennepin County, Minnesota, Human Services and Public Health Department: Dan Capouch, Suzanne Douglas, Suzanne Gaines, Marcia Miller, and Mary Herek. Penny Wile, Glenn Bracht, Sheila Schmaltz, and Paula Childers made notable contributions to the development of the tools. The IRASS is one of several products resulting from a five-year collaboration between the Hennepin County, Minnesota, Human Services and Public Health Department and the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW, principal investigator

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Hennepin County Adoption Project University of Minnesota School of Social Work

Interview for the Readiness to Adopt SelfSurvey (IRASS): A Guide

Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW [email protected] Sue Keskinen [email protected]

The following is a guide to conversational interviews with prospective adoptive parents about their readiness to adopt children with special needs. Its purpose is to identify areas of strength in adoptive parents’ capacities and areas that require attention. By using this interview guide to engage prospective adoptive parents in in-depth conversations, adoption professionals will be positioned to help prospective adoptive parents recognize their strengths as well as to provide a basis for recommendations about how prospective adoptive parents can develop additional parental capacities. Referrals to support groups, educational programs, and printed material are typical recommendations that social workers will make. The topics in this interview guide are the same as the topics in the Readiness to Adopt Self-Survey (RASS), which is also available electronically. To use this guide effectively, prospective adoptive parents should have reflected on these topics by filling out the items of the RASS. Some of the topics covered in this guide encourage prospective adoptive parents to reveal personal and sensitive information. Be sure to help them stay within their zones of emotional safety. You can do this by being empathic and using active listening skills. This conversation guide is divided into six parts. Do as many or as few as suits both you and adoptive parents. Remember—this is not a test. It’s a way of exploring prospective adoptive parents’ strengths and areas that require attention. Few prospective adoptive parents are fully prepared to parent adopted children with special needs at the outset. This guide to conversations is intended to give some direction as to how parents can prepare themselves for adoptive parenthood of children with special needs.

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Table of Contents PAREN TIN G Identity as a Parent Commitment Willingness to Learn about Children’s Needs Authoritative Parenting Affirming Children’s Strengths, Cultural Heritage, and Identity Facilitating Children’s Acceptance of their own Pasts

5 5 6 6 6 7

PERSON AL QU ALITIES Sense of Humor Flexibility & Adaptability Emotional Capacities Resilience

8 8 9 9

FAM ILY AN D SOCIAL N ETW ORKS Teamwork Maintaining Contact with Biological Families and Other Persons Important to the Children Willingness to Deal with Reactions of Others to Your Adoptive Parent Status Impact of Adoption on Family Relationships

10 10 10 11

VALU ES, EXPECTATION S, AN D BELIEFS Altruism Realistic Expectations About Yourself and the Children Admiration of the Children Spirituality Sense of the Future

12 12 12 12 13

CREATIN G H EALTH Y EN VIRON M EN TS Play, Hobbies, Sports, and Recreation Physical Environment Personal Resources

14 14 14

W H EN YOU AN D YOU R FAM ILY N EED EXTRA H ELP Willingness to Accept Help in Parenting Preparation to Seek Help in Parenting Relationships with Service Providers Some Adoptions Don’t Work as Planned

15 15 15 16

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Parenting Identity as a Parent

1. The most important quality that adoptive parents have is their desire to be parents. What are your thoughts about wanting to parent adoptive children? 2. If you have a partner, what does your partner say about wanting to be a parent? Are you satisfied that you both want to be parents? What kinds of issues have you talked over with your partner? 3. Parenting entails giving up some things that are important to you. What do you think you may have to give up? What do you think will make it worthwhile if you do have to give up some things? How can you ensure that you keep up with activities and interests that are important to you? 4. Parenting may bring you heartache as well as rewards. What kinds of heartache might parenting bring? What rewards do you anticipate? 5. Parenting can bring up strong emotions and memories in you. Some are pleasant and some are painful. What positive emotions and memories do you think you’ll have when children come into your home? What painful emotions and memories might come back? Do you have a plan for how you will handle these emotions and memories? If yes, what is your plan? 6. Do you think that the children you will adopt will be your children? What are your thoughts about how this will work for you? 7. Parents who have troubled relationships with their own parents can still parent effectively. To do so, they must be able to talk about and think about their own parents without becoming emotional and agitated, or without thinking it doesn’t matter. What kind of relationship do you have with your own parents now? When you were growing up?

Commitment

1. Adoption is a commitment you make for life. What might happen with a child that you adopt that could make you wish the commitment is not life-long? Do you anticipate that this commitment will change as the child grows older? What are your expectations in this regard? 2. Do you understand that adopting children entails risks and that there are no guarantees about how the children will turn out, just as there are no guarantees how biological children will turn out? Can you talk about what might be the possible ways that children turn out? 3. Children who are adopted sometimes require help in handling the harsh realities in their lives, such as separations and losses in their biological families. What kinds of behaviors might children have when they are dealing with these harsh realities? What kinds of things might children say? What might they want? How would you respond to some of the issues that children bring with them? 4. If you have a partner, your partner should have a commitment to parenting that is like yours. Can you give some examples of how you see your partner’s commitment? 5. Sometimes new information about the children comes to light after the children are placed in your home. Do you think you will be able to accept an adopted child or children if you find out that s/he had experienced traumas that you had not known about previously? How about that the child/ren lived in crack houses or meth labs? Please discuss how you think you would respond to this new information.

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Willingness to Learn about Children’s Needs

1. Parenting adopted children with special needs requires a lot of knowledge. Are you willing to attend workshops and trainings on the issues that the children you adopt may have, such as attachment issues, fetal alcohol syndrome and effects, and behavioral issues? What do you think you will get out of these trainings? 2. Adoptive parenting is easier if you can be realistic about how past experiences have affected your children. What kinds of positive experiences do you think your children will have had before they move into your home? How about negative experiences? 3. Children who are eligible for adoption have strengths. In other words, they have shown that they can cope with, adapt to, and overcome negative experiences. What are some of the strengths that the children may have? How will you find out if they have them?

Authoritative Parenting

1. Children need clear, fair, and consistent limits and rules in order to feel loved and safe. What are some limits and rules you might have for your child at a particular age? Under what conditions can you be flexible in setting and enforcing rules? 2. Children need clear and fair expectations so they know what you expect of them. What expectations might you have for your children at different ages? 3. Can you give your children age-appropriate explanations for the limits, rules and expectations you have for them? Please share some examples. 4. Children need to have choices in order to feel some power in decisions that are being made. What kinds of choices would you give your children? 5. Parents need to set clear and fair consequences when children misbehave and they need to follow through on those consequences. What are some consequences for children of different ages? 6. Children, as members of the family, should have age-appropriate responsibilities, such as chores around the house and yard. What are some chores you would have for your children at various ages? 7. Children need a high degree of affection, both through touching and words. How comfortable are you at expressing your affection in both of those ways? 8. Children need to be praised for respecting limits and for other positive behaviors. Can you think of a situation where you could praise your children for respecting limits? 9. A great deal of parenting entails teaching children how to express their emotions and how to get along with other people. What would you say to your children about expressing emotions? What other ways could you show them how to express their emotions?

Affirming Children’s Strengths, Cultural Heritage, and Identity

1. How will you recognize and praise your children’s accomplishments directly to your children? Please give examples. 2. How will you create opportunities for your children to understand, identify with, and be part of their cultural, ethnic, and racial heritages? 3. How will you create opportunities where your adoptive children can interact informally with members of their own ethnic and cultural groups? 4. How will you learn how to perform routine care of children, care that might be different from the ways your own culture performs these tasks? The care of hair and skin are examples. 5. If you adopt trans-racially, you have become part of a multi-cultural family. What

IRASS Page 7 of 17 kinds of things will you do to celebrate and nurture your multi-cultural family? 6.

How will you use humor appropriately to promote adopted children’s positive identity? Can you imagine any situations related to adoption that might be humorous? Do you have any idea how you can learn more about the use of humor in adoption parenting?

7. What will you do or say to your child or children to show that you recognize that racial issues in trans-racial adoptions can be very difficult? That they also create opportunities? 8. You may not know what your adopted children’s sexual orientation will be, just as biological parents don’t know until the children have attained some maturity. How will you respond if one of more of your adopted children is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender? What if your child or children appear to be confused about sexual orientation or about gender identity? What are the various ways you can respond? How might your family members and friends respond? 9. How will you respond if your adopted son shows interest in activities associated with being a girl, such as playing with dolls, putting on make-up, and wanting to be a hair-dresser or nurse? 10. How will you respond if your adopted daughter shows interest in activities associated with being a boy, such as playing with erector sets, getting into fist fights, and wanting to be a carpenter or pipe-fitter?

Facilitating Children’s Acceptance of their own Pasts

1. Adoptive children want to talk about their pasts and need to talk about them. How would you help your children feel comfortable talking about their pasts? 2. Can you be open and accepting of your children’s desires to make sense of their pasts? How would you help them sort out and understand why things happened as they did? 3. Can you engage in age-appropriate conversations and activities to help your children make sense of their pasts? Describe possible conversations and activities. 4. Can you provide your children with age-appropriate information about their pasts? What types of things might be appropriate for children to know at different ages? 5. When you feel threatened or unsure about your children’s desire to make sense of their pasts, do you have people who can help you deal with your feelings in helpful ways?

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Personal Qualities Sense of Humor

1. Parenting requires a strong sense of humor. Describe a time when you found humor in a difficult situation. Can you think of times when you found humor in a situation that involved children? 2. Can you imagine finding humor in your adopted children’s challenging behaviors in ways that build their self-esteem? Can you think of any situations that are difficult yet funny? How would you communicate to your children the humor in a difficult situation? 3. Being able to laugh at yourself suggests that you can accept that you make mistakes. Talk about times when you made mistakes but could forgive yourself and even laugh about your mistakes. 4. Some things don’t seem funny at the time, but get funny later on. Have you ever had situations like that? Can you share a couple of them? 5. Some situations are not funny, but threaten the safety of others. Can you give an example of these types of situations?

Flexibility & Adaptabilit y

1. Different things work with different children and children’s needs change as they grow. Give examples of how children change as they grow. What kinds of things work with younger children but not with older children? How will you change your parenting in response to the changes in the children? 2. Sometimes appointments with doctors and other service providers require work schedule flexibility. Describe the flexibility you have in your work schedule. If you sometimes can’t get out of work, do you have other people who could help you out with your children’s appointments? 3. Would you be willing to move to a different home, a different part of the city, or a different part of the state to meet the needs of your adopted child? What sorts of other changes would you be willing to make to accommodate children you adopt? 4. Do you understand that new information about children may come to light after they have been adopted? How do you think you might respond if you find out about abuse and other traumas that you didn’t know about when your child or children were first placed? What kinds of information and resources might be helpful to you? 5. Are you willing to learn from experience and change your behaviors accordingly? Have you done this before? If so, describe a couple of these situations. 6. Many adopted children have had difficult and damaging pasts. Can you accept things you cannot change, such as their pasts? Describe one or more situations where you had to accept something you couldn’t change. 7. Are you willing to change your lifestyle to accommodate what children need to thrive? Some of those changes may mean working part-time or developing new social networks. What types of changes would you be willing to make? 8. Though adoption typically requires some changes in your lifestyle, it also is important to keep up with your own interests and activities. What activities and interests do you very much want to keep and which ones might you either give up or attend to far less frequently? Please discuss. 9. Professionals may have views about your children that are different from your own. How would you talk to them about these differences? How would you handle it with professionals if the children are easier to deal with than they had told you? What if the children are much more challenging than the professionals led you to believe? What might account for these differences?

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Emotional Capacities

1. Can you express your emotions directly, honestly, and respectfully? Describe how you do that? 2. Parents often live vicariously through their children and see their children as an extension of themselves. How would you handle feeling that other people blame you for your children’s problems, such as poor grades in school or problems with anger management? 3. It is difficult not to react similarly when someone is highly emotional. Can you keep your cool when your children are highly emotional, including being angry at you, destroying property, or harming other persons? How would you keep your cool? 4. Many adoptive children have attachment problems. Can you deal constructively with your emotional responses when your child or children appear to reject you and are loveable with other people? Or one or more of your children does not express affection toward you? Do you understand why an adoptive child might behave in these ways? 5. You realize that losing your cool could result in your acting in ways that might frighten, worry, or threaten your children. Do you know when you are about to lose your cool? 6. What are some of the signs that you are about to lose your cool? What do you do to prevent losing it? Is there someone to take over for you when you are too angry and upset to deal with your children in constructive ways? 7. If you lose your cool with your child and then do something you later regret, can you make amends while also remaining an authoritative parent? How would you explain this to a child? 8. Children need to see parents modeling respectful behavior at home. Can you apologize to your children when you over-react to their behaviors or cause them to worry? Please discuss. 9. Some children available for adoption have emotional problems resulting from abusive pasts. Some children know which buttons to push to set someone off. The emotions that some children evoke in parents are beyond the capacities of parents to cope. What would you do in a situation that stretches your emotional capacity?

Resilience

1. Parents who have successfully coped with, adapted to, and overcome adversities in their own lives often have a deeper understanding of the issues faced by adoptive children? What adversities have you faced and overcome? 2. Can you empathize with the adversities the adoptive children may have experienced? Can you put yourself in their situation and understand how they have felt and why they have done the things they have done? 3. Many adopted children’s behaviors are related to previous traumas. Can you set limits and be an authoritative parent even when you empathize with their difficult pasts? 4. Do you admire other people, including children, who have survived adversities and manage to go on? Describe someone who has done that and what you admire most about him or her.

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Family and Social Networks Teamwork

1. Do you have friends and family members who can help with childcare, transportation, and more extended care when you want to take a vacation or travel? What kind of planning and organizing would you have to do in order for them to help? 2. Do you have a partner, a friend, or a family member who would take over if you want time away from your child or children on the spur of the moment? 3. Do you think you will have good working relationships with school personnel, medical doctors, and other service providers? Do you feel comfortable sharing personal information with them, asking them questions, and challenging their decisions? Give some examples of why this might happen. Give some examples of what you might do when thing are not going well.

Maintaining Contact with Biological Families and Other Persons Important to the Children

1. Children thrive when they are free to talk about their biological families and other persons important to them. How will you deal with children’s desires for such conversations? 2. Children often do much better in adoption placements when they have contact with members of their biological families, such as parents, grandparents, and siblings, and other persons important to them. How will you help children maintain these contacts? If such contacts are dangerous or somehow threaten children’s well-being, how will you deal with that? 3. Letters, pictures, and other mementoes from the children’s past can help children develop a positive identity. Will you keep such mementoes and share them with the children at appropriate times. How will you do this? 4. Biological families are important to adopted children for many reasons. Do you think you have capacities for talking with your adoptive children about their biological families in ways that are fair, balanced, and kind?

Willingness to Deal with Reactions of Others to Your Adoptive Parent Status

1. Sometimes other people make inappropriate comments or ask inappropriate questions about adoptive children and/or parents’ status as adoptive parents. How will you handle inappropriate comments? 2. Sometimes other people give you unsolicited advice about how to handle your adopted children. How will you handle unsolicited advice? 3. Sometimes adoptive parents feel others blame them for children’s challenging behaviors. What kinds of things might your family say? Friends? Professionals? How will you handle your sense that others blame you? 4. How will you handle things if some family members or friends do not support your adoption of your children? 5. Sometimes school personnel and persons in other settings treat children unfairly. What will you do if this situation arises?

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Impact of Adoption on Family Relationships

1. Adoption will change your relationship with other children in your home, if you have them. How do you feel about those changes? How would the other children feel about it? What are some of those changes? 2. Adoption will affect your relationship with your partner. What kinds of changes do you expect? Are you prepared to accept and deal with these changes? Please discuss. 3. Adoption will have an effect on your relationships with your extended family. How does your family feel about adoption? Who in your extended family will be supportive? Please discuss. 4. If there are other children in your family, do they want you to adopt? Why do they feel that way? 5. Have you included the other children in your family in preparations for bringing an adoptive child into your home? What were some of those preparations? 6. Are the other children in your family educated about the issues and behaviors that adoptive children may have? What types of issue have you discussed with them? 7. Are the other children in your family able to cope with the issues and behaviors that the adoptive child may have? How will you help them cope?

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Values, Expectations, and Beliefs Altruism

Altruism

1. Some adoptive parents adopt because they want to do something good for another person. What do you think of this? Have you ever thought this is a reason for you to adopt? 2. Some adoptive parents think that every child deserves a loving home. What do you think of this? Have you ever thought this is a reason for you to adopt?

Realistic Expectations About Yourself and the Children

1. Parents have expectations of their children. Sometimes they are not aware of all these expectations. What are some of your expectations? Can you imagine that you currently are not aware of all your expectations? Please discuss. 2. Parents also have expectations for themselves, often based on their own experiences as part of a family. Parents often do not realize what those expectations are until they are in particular situations. Do you recognize that you have expectations for yourself as a parent? What are some of those expectations? How do you think these expectations will affect your parenting? 3. Often the expectations parents have for themselves and for their children might not be realistic, but based more on a story-book type of family. What are some of the unrealistic expectations you think you might have about your role as a parent and your expectations of your children? How will you deal with these story-book expectations? 4. Do you have capacities for changing your expectations for yourself and for your child or children while maintaining your role as authoritative parent? Give an example of a time you had to change your expectations of yourself and how you handled it. How about an example of a time you had to change your expectations of someone else?

Admiration of the Children

1. Do you have a sense of the resilience that adopted children have? Please discuss. 2. What will you do to show your adopted child that you appreciate the interests, emotional capacities, and activities that have meaning to them? 3. What will you do to provide opportunities for your adopted children to develop their interests, their emotional capacities, and activities that have meaning to them?

Spirituality

1. Do spiritual matters have meaning in your life? Please discuss and provide examples. Note: membership in a specific faith community is not a requirement for adopting children. 2. Do you feel part of a group that provides you with a sense of belonging and support? Please discuss. 3. Some children want to express their faith and spirituality within communities that they prefer. These communities could be different from your own. Please discuss how you would handle this.

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4. Some parents don’t have a faith community themselves. If you don’t belong to a faith community, how will you ensure that your children are part of a faith community if they want to be? 5. Do you do all you can to ensure that difficult situations are handled well? Do you also trust that you will be able to live with whatever might happen in the future? Please discuss and provide examples. 6. Have you experienced hurt and loss? Do you look for something positive to draw from these experiences? Please discuss and provide examples. 7. Do you think you can foster a sense of trust in your adoptive children so that they will do all they can to ensure that a difficult situation turns out well? Do you think you can help them accept whatever does occur? Please discuss and provide examples. 8. Do you see adoptive parenthood as giving you a sense of purpose? Please discuss and provide examples.

Sense of the Future

1. Do you think about and plan for questions/issues your children may have regarding race? What questions might children ask? 2. Do you think about and plan for questions/issues your children may have regarding family of origin? What questions might children ask? 3. Will you make plans for your children’s education? What are some of those plans? What will you do if the children do not share your plans? What will you do if the children don’t have the aptitude to share your plans? 4. Are you willing to make arrangements for the care of your children should you become incapacitated or die? Who would be a good care giver for your children? Who would be in charge of financial issues? What other special arrangements would you make?

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Creating Healthy Environments Play, Hobbies, Sports, and Recreation

1. Children need to have physical activities and hobbies that build their body strength, provide them with an outlet for energy and give them a sense of competence. What hobbies and recreational activities would you share with your child?

Physical Environmen t

1. Sometimes adoptive children require special accommodations, such as a bedroom on the first floor, a fenced-in yard, or vehicle that can accommodate wheelchairs. Are you prepared to make these accommodations? How, for example, would you go about accommodating children who have ADHD?

2. Pretend games, what-if games, and re-enactments, such as talking about and acting out what it was like to say good-bye to biological parents, are important for adoptive parents to know. Are you familiar and comfortable with such games? Do you think that you could create some of these games? Please discuss.

2. Some homes have items that are irreplaceable, such as family heirlooms. Do you believe that children should learn not to touch certain items and you will not remove these items? Or are you prepared to put such items away until you are confident that your children will not damage or destroy them? 3. Children need a space to call their own. Will they have their own bedrooms? Will they have a space in the home where they can put their things and no one else can use them without the children’s explicit permission? Is there a space in the house where children can be alone if they want to? How will you involve children in the decoration of their bedrooms? 4. Children thrive when they have playmates. Are there children in the neighborhood with whom adopted children can play? Are there children in other neighborhoods that the children can socialize with on a regular basis? 5. Children thrive when they have opportunities for recreation. Are there playgrounds and other recreational facilities for children in your neighborhood?

Personal Resources

1. Do you have the resources such as transportation and childcare that enable you to get your children to doctor’s appointments and other services they need? 2. Do you have a job that allows some flexibility in terms of being able to attend to parenting duties such as school conferences and doctors’ appointments? 3. Do you have money or insurance to pay for services?

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When You and Your Family Need Extra Help Willingness to Accept Help in Parenting

1. You may need some help parenting the children you adopt. What do you think about using before and after school child care and respite care? 2. Adopted children may need extra help in handling their emotions and behaviors. Could you accept the help of a professional for such issues? Could you help your child or children accept this help? 3. The strong emotions and memories that adoptive parenting can bring up sometimes requires personal therapy. What do you think of therapy? What kinds of things do you think will happen if you go into therapy? How will you find a therapist who suits you? 4. Sometimes professionals recommend that adoptive parents engage in family therapy with their adoptive children. What do you think of this? Would you be willing to engage in family therapy? Please discuss. 5. Sometimes professionals recommend couples counseling to help you parent adoptive children. What do you think of this? Could you see yourself engaged in couples counseling? 6. Support groups for adoptive parents can be helpful. What do you think about such groups? What kinds of things could you learn in support groups? What would keep you away?

7. There are trainings for adoptive parents. Are you willing to go to these meetings and trainings? What would attract you? What would keep you away?

Preparation to Seek Help in Parenting

1. Are you willing to seek the help that your children and family may require? What kinds of help do you think you might need? 2. Sometimes governmental programs will pay for the help you and your children need. Are you prepared to seek out these services? Please discuss. 3. When problems with adoptive children arise, the best strategy is to seek help and advice from knowledgeable people right away. Describe a situation that might require services. Who are the knowledgeable people you know who could be of help? What makes them knowledgeable? 4. In certain areas of the state, services such as attachment therapy and respite care are difficult to find. How will you handle such problems?

Relationship s

with Service Providers

1. Good working relationships with service providers is important. Service providers include adoption social workers, physicians, and therapists. What kinds of things would you do to keep good working relationships with these service providers? 2. Can you understand the points of view of service providers without losing touch with your own point of view? Talk about a situation where you had to understand the points of view of others while you knew that you also had a valid point of view. 3. Are you willing to negotiate what you want and do not want from service providers in order to get the best possible help for your child? Talk about a situation where you had to do something similar.

IRASS Page 16 of 17 4. After repeated instances of unresponsiveness to requests for services, support, and information, parents may decide that the service providers are doing a poor job. Are you prepared to tell a service provider about your dissatisfaction with the service? How might you do this? 5. Can you be assertive with service providers? Describe a time when you were assertive with someone who was providing you with a service. If you can’t think of an example, please describe a time when you were assertive with someone else about another matter. 6. Are you willing to seek the support of others when you have trouble being assertive with service providers? Who would you ask for help? 7. Are you willing to change service providers if the services are unsatisfactory? How will you do this?

Some Adoptions Don’t Work as Planned

1. Some children may require more supervision or care than you can provide. What will you do if this happens in your family? 2. Some adopted children may never be able to live as independent adults. How do you think you will respond if this happens in your family? 3. Some behaviors of some children can threaten the physical and psychological safety of family members. What will you do if this happens? 4. Some adopted children require out-of-home care. Can you imagine this happening to one of your adopted children? Please discuss. 5. When adopted children go into out-of-home care, they can still be part of their adoptive families. Can you imagine this happening in your family? How do you think you and other family members would respond? What would you do to ensure that a child of yours in out-of-home care is part of your family?

Electronic Books & Articles by Jane Gilgun A NEATS Analysis of Child Physical Abuse (also a chapter in The NEATS: A Child & Family Assessment) A NEATS Analysis of Childhood ADHD (also a a chapter in The NEATS: A Child & Family Assessment) A NEATS Analysis of Children with Sexual Behavior Issues (also a chapter from The NEATS: A Child & Family Assessment) Attachment & Child Development (also a chapter from The NEATS: A Child & Family Assessment) Child Sexual Abuse: From Harsh Realities to Hope Children with Serious Conduct Issues Executive Function & Self-Regulation in Children (also a chapter from The NEATS: A Child & Family Assessment)

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How to Raise a Sex Offender: It’s Easy; Prevention is Hard Lemons or Lemonade? An Anger Workbook for Kids The NEATS: A Child & Family Assessment Young Children’s Catastrophic Fears Children’s Stories Busjacked! Emma & her Forever Person Daddly Loves Me Five Little Cygnets Cross the Bundoran Road Jill’s Warts Patrick & the Magic Mountain The Picking Flower Garden Will the Soccer Star