Resources to Find an Adoption-Competent Therapist

It’s never easy to reach out and ask for help when your family is struggling. Sometimes, when you’ve recognized the need for help, the struggle becomes about where to find the right kind of help. When parenting an adopted child, especially one adopted past infancy, the typical bumps of childhood quite often have “added layers.” A therapist trained in adoption issues can help you and your child navigate those extra bumps in the road that sometimes accompany adoption.

The following are resources that are reliable supports to help you find the right therapist for your family.

Word of Mouth Recommendations

You can seek “word of mouth” recommendations that come from sources you can trust. Some of those sources might be:

Fellow adoptive and foster parents
Adoption Agency
Family doctor or Pediatrician
Children’s hospital
Adoption clinic
School counselor or guidance team

You might find that conversations with these sources will lead you to other suggestions, and you should be able to compile a sizeable list for your starting point.

Reputable Websites

It’s a bit overwhelming to blindly search online for a therapist. How do you know if a site is reputable or legitimate? How do you find a counselor in your location? The following sites will help and often provide a list of trained therapist by location.

The Center for Adoption Support and Education website – CASE offers a Training for Adoption Competency for therapists, which focuses on 18 areas of knowledge, values, and skills that are critical to adoption-competent mental health services. They provide a directory for therapists that have been trained in their TAC program.
The Karyn Purvis Institute for Child Development– They are well-known for their Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) model of parenting and attachment-building with adopted and foster kids. Their TBRI Practitioner list is updated frequently and searchable by region.
The Child Welfare Information Gateway– This site, run by the US Department of Health and Human Services, offers a wide variety of resources for adoption, foster care, and other child welfare issues. You can search for resources in your area. They also offer this guide to finding and working with an adoption therapist. It includes information on different types of therapy and additional tips for choosing a therapist.
Adopt US Kids– The national organization is known for increasing awareness of the needs of children and teens in foster care, including the need for permanence. To that end, they have a page of supports for adoptive parents, including information on mental health resources.

Interviewing for a Good Fit

Once you’ve narrowed down your list to a couple of therapists who have training that suits your family’s needs, you should schedule an interview. The goal of interviewing therapists is to assess who will be a good fit. If you can manage to schedule a free consultation, by phone, or in-person, that’s a great start.

In addition to the sources listed above, our partner, Creating a Family, has three resources to help you craft a thorough interview to find that great fit.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the search for an adoption competent therapist, especially when the “hard” parts of adoptive parenting keep coming at you. Use these resources as starting points to guide your search. Eventually, you will find that right therapeutic relationship.