Hearts & Minds

A 6-week specialist therapeutic parenting programme for adoptive parents led by Clinical Psychologists Dr Jude Courtney & Dr Helen Kirkaldie. It is designed for all adopters, but particularly if you find yourself getting limited rewards from family life, feeling frequent stress or wanting to think about the parenting of your child. The programme will focus on the 8 habits of the thriving adoptive family and will provide you with strategies on how to embed these into your daily family life. The programme will enhance your family’s existing knowledge and enable reflection on the emotional journey that adoption brings.

Suitable For

This programme aims to help you improve your family life or just prevent things from getting any worse. It will also be of particular benefit if you are contemplating or are about to engage in therapeutic intervention, providing a good grounding from which to start therapy. You will need to have had your child placed for 6 months or more. If you parent as a couple, we strongly advise that both parents attend.

Objectives of the Programme

— To give you a thorough understanding of the theory which lies behind therapeutic parenting.

— To understand the neurological changes that parenting brings to you and your children.

— To help you become more confident in therapeutic parenting strategies and learn how to make these become habits in your daily life.

— To give you a sense of hope that you are connecting to your complex child and bring about a more open, emotional engagement with them.

— To help you reflect upon the emotional issues that have arisen from adopting a child who has experienced early trauma and might have developed blocked trust.

— To help you find strategies that protect them from moving into blocked care.

Booking

— Open to all adoptive parents from CCS Adoption, Adoption West and any other agency.

— Please return this Reservation Form to therapeuticservices@ccsadoption.org. Once this form has been received, an acknowledgement email will be sent to you, and you will be placed on our reservation list.

— If you have marked on the reservation form that you wish to fund your place via the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF), we will take receipt of this form as your agreement for us to contact your Local Authority (LA) in order to request that they apply for funding from the ASGSF.

— Once notification of ASGSF funding is received from the LA and confirmed to CCS Adoption, your place(s) on the course will be confirmed via email.