Foster Care Adoption: Transitioning from Foster to Adoption

How can parents help their children transition from foster care to an adoptive home? Host Dawn Davenport, Exec. Director of Creating a Family, the national infertility & adoption education and support nonprofit, interviews Kim Phagan-Hansel, editor of Fostering Families Today magazine and The Foster Parenting Toolbox; and Madeleine Krebs, clinical coordinator at Center for Adoption Support and Education with over 35 years of experience.

Hit the Highlights
  • Why are some children frightened or resistant to moving from foster care to an adoptive family?
  • What type of behaviors are typical of this transition period?
  • Is this transition easier if the child is being adopted by the foster family?
  • Are children being bounced around from one foster home to another as much now as in the past?
  • How can adoptive parents ease the transition with children adopted from the state or from orphanages abroad?
  • How can foster families ease the transition when they are adopting their foster children?
  • How can new adoptive parents reduce their expectations of themselves and of their children? Should they?
  • Is concurrent planning confusing for foster parents/foster families?
  • How to explain to a child why his foster parents do not want to adopt him?
  • Why is it important to talk positively about our child’s birth parents?
  • Should you talk positively about birth parents if they abused your child?
  • When adopting from foster care, how can you maintain an open relationship with your child’s birth family, biological grandparents, siblings, and foster family?
  • What questions should you ask the foster family when adopting a child they have fostered prior to the adoption?
  • What are some things to do the first night and days home when adopting from foster care?

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Image credit: Maryland GovPics

Show originally aired in 2012.