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Adoption Counselor

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To social work consultant Glory To, there is nothing more rewarding than finding a child a permanent home.

"I get to know the families," he says. "Watching a family grow tells me it's worth it."

He recalls one family that he met on a home study shortly after they had moved in to a new house. "I did the home study, and there they were, just the two of them in this beautiful new house with a sense of emptiness. They adopted and suddenly that house became a home," he says.

"Then a couple of years later, the birth mother called our agency. She was pregnant again and requested the same family that had adopted her other child. With two children in the home, that house is full of life, noise, toys and sounds of joy. Looking at how happy that family is is probably the greatest reward of adoption counseling."

Adoption is a family's story, not just an event. Any of the people involved in that family may need some help from a counselor with training in adoption issues. An adoption counselor may also be needed at any time during that family's story.

A birth mother might need help making the difficult decision to give a child up for adoption. Parents may need help understanding and coping if their adopted child is suddenly acting out as a teenager. Is it an adoption issue, or simply being a teenager? An adult adoptee may experience traumatic feelings after finally finding a long-lost birth family.

Adoptive families face many of the same issues that blood-related families do, but they also experience many things that are unique to adoption. For example, special concerns may come up if the adoption involves a child from a different race.

"It is important to identify how that parent will honor the child's difference," says clinical social worker Louise Fleischman. She counsels through Adoptions Together, a private adoption agency in Maryland.

"Sometimes parents are really blind to this. Proper counseling helps avoid rejection and trauma down the road. They must have understanding and they must be prepared to help the child explore his or her different history."

Fleischman and To agree that families who are involved in cross-racial adoptions have to be stronger than other families.

"If people are not really secure," says To, "they aren't prepared to face possible prejudice from other people. One thing I get them to do is imagine a family wedding, with a big family picture. I tell them to imagine one child in that picture who is not blond-haired and blue-eyed, or whatever, and tell me how they feel and how the child may feel."

A family that is right for cross-racial adoption will be able to help the child feel a part of the family anyway. Fleischman says that the adoption issue is more "in your face" for these families.

"It is something they'll have to examine on a daily basis. They may find it's not for them. If they can come to that before the adoption, then we feel we've done them a favor."

Fleischman and To both say adoption counseling forces you to face your own biases. You have to know where you stand on issues surrounding family life. Adoption brings up issues about race, culture, religion, class, poverty and disabilities.

The trend towards open adoption has brought with it many special challenges for adoption counselors. "If you come from an open adoption, you have to constantly renegotiate the openness between the birth and adoptive family," says psychologist Michael Sobol. "How the families dance together will probably change over time."

Adoption counselors will help birth families and adoptive families maintain healthy attitudes towards each other through an ongoing relationship. "'Openness' is a very loaded word," says Fleischman.

"We like to use 'connectedness.' Often, adoptive parents feel threatened because there are a lot of myths. There is a threat of having a child's loyalty go to someone else. Also, birth and adoptive families have to make an effort to understand each other. This may be difficult as they may be in very different places in life," she says.

"Most adoptive families are stable, white, middle-class families. Many birth families are in a bad time of their life. There has to be a basic understanding of each other's circumstances."

Many adoption counselors are social workers who have come to focus on adoption because they have had a personal experience with adoption. Dianne Mathes, an adoption therapist, is herself an adoptee.

She says it is important for a counselor to be able to empathize with clients. She says a counselor has to be able to understand what difference is like, and what it is like if you cannot see someone's difference.

"One does not have to have a personal adoption experience, but it is important to understand and learn how to work with the powerlessness that comes from the experience of being different," says Mathes. "One exercise is to imagine what it might be like to be different than others around you."

Some counselors find that because adoption touches on so many family issues, it evolves naturally out of a more general practice. "I started out as a garden-variety social worker," says Fleischman.

"Adoptive children are over-represented in mental health and social services, but it is not always treated as an adoption issue. A large number of my caseload involved foster care and adoption. It was just a progression."

Fleischman warns that like any therapy job, it can be stressful. "There is a secondary trauma that you may feel if you don't do personal supervision. You might get sucked into a case. You need a good outside life -- whether that be sports or religion or whatever."

Like Fleischman, To says he deals with the stress by relaxing in his spare time. "I play video games and build computers. I watch science fiction. Unlike adoption counseling, the outcome is predictable. I watch and read only stories with happy endings."

Contact

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  • 1-800-GO-TO-XAP (1-800-468-6927)
    From outside the U.S., please call +1 (424) 750-3900

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