Living the theory

Today we had a farewell visit with our social worker. It felt so odd, saying goodbye after her having been a consistent presence in our life for the past 21 months. Social workers often cop a lot of flak on the adoption message boards I use, and I don’t doubt that, as with any profession, there are good, bad and average ones out there. I can’t praise ours highly enough though. She’s been there for us through some pretty tough moments, has been a great advocate for us and our children, and has been exactly the right mix of professional yet human. I know some people look forward to the adoption order precisely because it means the end of  social work visits, but I would happily let ours keep coming if she could! I’ve been trying to do a mental tally of how many social workers have been involved with us over our adoption journey so far. I think I’m on seven: There was the social worker who did our initial home visit, who helped us across the first hurdle. We didn’t warm to her ins...

This is a guest post I wrote elsewhere for National Adoption week, but thought I'd reproduce it here since I haven't posted in a while. Trauma is a bit of a buzzword in the adoption community at the moment. The overwhelming majority, if not all, children who are adopted today will have experienced trauma of some kind, be it in person or in utero. The erroneous belief that a stable, loving home is all that is needed to make this go away is starting to give way to a deeper understanding of the effects of trauma, and the fact that whether  they consciously remember it or not, this trauma will have a lifelong effect in several areas of that child's life. "PTSD is a good definition for acute trauma in adults. (However when the trauma occurs in childhood) because children’s brains are still developing, trauma has a much more pervasive and long-range influence on their self-concept, on their sense of the world and on their ability to regulate themselves.” (Bessel van der ...