New Jersey Adoption Resource Clearing House

FREE!

The Parenting Adolescents Series, focusing on the specific challenges and “stuck spots” for adolescents adoptees and strategies for parents to support their teens, will be held via Zoom on Wednesdays (Sept. 28th, Oct. 5th, Oct. 12th, Oct. 19th, Oct. 26th, Nov. 2nd) from 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST. The series will lead off with a webinar and then subsequent parent support group meetings.

This event is free thanks to funding from the Jockey Being Family Foundation!

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. If you register for the first session you will be automatically registered for all 6 sessions. Please note this webinar will not be recorded.

Lost Sparrows Trauma Conference is designed for foster/adoptive parents, teachers, or anyone who works with children.

The biennial Together for Families Conference is a unique virtual event that connects various stakeholders from across the U.S. and Canada in the Family Support and Strengthening Field to focus on best and promising practice for supporting families’ advancement.

Call-In Instructions Will Be Emailed After Registration

This webinar will explore the history, traditions and themes of adoption in communities of color and particular to adoptive families headed by people of color. Topics covered will include talking about adoption when families “match,” developing strategies for building and maintaining connection with first families, addressing and challenging stereotypes and preconceptions about adoption, and navigating the complexities of those misunderstandings within our own communities. This webinar is appropriate for BIPOC community members as well as professionals working with them.

The Zoom link for this webinar will be sent out 1 week prior to the live event. All webinars are recorded and shared with paid registrants within 1 week of the event.

Free!

REGISTRATION CLOSES at 11:59 pm the night prior to the call. PT

Monthly virtual support calls will provide a safe space for adoptive parents of color to connect and share their experiences.

This is a group intended to meet the needs of people of color who have built their families through domestic adoption, kinship adoption, international adoption, foster care, same race and transracial/interracial adoption.   This is a free event.  This programming is for adoptive parents of color. Please be respectful of their space.

Participants will have the opportunity to explore topics such as experiences understanding loss and connection, birth/first families and connection, how to talk about difficult conversations, schools and adoption, and other topics of interest to the group.

Free!

This supportive group for first/birth parents will take place as a Zoom call.

Group members will be able to connect, listen and share their experiences of adoption, both private and through the child welfare system. Space will also be provided for participants to explore and share experiences around open adoptions, closed adoptions, recent reunions, same-race adoption, transracial adoption, termination of parental rights, and other topics as decided by the group.

Please remember that this group is for birth/first parents who are related by birth to a child placed in adoption or foster care.  This group is not for adoptive parents.

Are you adopting a family member, or a child that is already known to you, from another country? Maybe you’ve already adopted the child or sibling group abroad and are now being told you need a home study?

Join us for this FREE webinar, facilitated by our home study supervisor, to learn more about the home study process for adopting a pre-identified child from your country of birth. The conversation will include what a home study entails, how to make the most of your home study experience and why a home study assessment is required for families adopting a relative or identified child whom you are already parenting in another country.

Bring your questions! We’ll save time for Q&A.

In this panel event, parents who have adopted through Spence-Chapin’s Colombia and South Africa programs will speak about their experience of parenting through intercountry adoption. They will share what was most helpful to them as they prepared to parent, what their early transition was like as a family, and the joys and challenges that have arisen since placement.

This event is open to individuals nationwide who are interested in adopting from South Africa or Colombia. If you are pursuing adoption from another country, we have supports and services for you too – please contact us at info@spence-chapin.org to learn about our programs and services for families adopting from other international country programs.

Given the continued emergence of an interconnected society, an ever-evolving pandemic, calls for racial and social justice along with heightened polarization across many fronts, building organizational capacity for advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion is more critical than ever. The need for leaders across sectors, and especially within the social sector, to understand and engage the current environment is essential in building an equitable society for all.

During this three-part virtual workshop presented by Social Current, participants will explore their relationships with equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in a safe environment and make progress on developing an EDI action plan for their organizations.

A Virtual Event for Adoption Professionals

Join Youth Communication and educational leaders from around the country as we share strategies that create culturally responsive, learning communities that:

• Help young people heal from experiences with racism, sexism, and other injustices
• Support students to achieve their personal and academic goals
• Uplift teen voices in a world that too often marginalizes them

Educators are playing an increasingly vital role in helping young people develop the social and emotional learning skills to navigate systems of oppression—and change them. This symposium will include a networking breakfast (in-person), a thought leadership panel, and an interactive session framed with a reading of authentic teen-written stories from Youth Communication’s award-winning writing program.

Livestream: Zoom link will be provided for virtual participants

Given the continued emergence of an interconnected society, an ever-evolving pandemic, calls for racial and social justice along with heightened polarization across many fronts, building organizational capacity for advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion is more critical than ever. The need for leaders across sectors, and especially within the social sector, to understand and engage the current environment is essential in building an equitable society for all.

During this three-part virtual workshop presented by Social Current, participants will explore their relationships with equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in a safe environment and make progress on developing an EDI action plan for their organizations.

Spence-Chapin is thrilled to partner with the experts at Your Adoption Finance Coach to provide our families with free access to experts, tools and content that can take the worry out of financing your adoption. In this webinar, we will be joined by Kelly Ellison, adoptive mother and Founder and CEO of Your Adoption Finance Coach. Kelly will answer your questions about financing an adoption and welcomes questions on grants, loans, fundraising events, the adoption tax credit, and more. We welcome you to submit your questions ahead of time via the registration link, and we welcome further questions during the event.

Call-In Instructions Will Be Emailed After Registration

The opposite of being a racist is to be an antiracist. By very young ages, children are thinking a lot about fairness. This makes them natural social justice advocates, which is something you can model and nurture. No matter what your child’s race, learn how to talk with them about all “-isms,” including anti-Black and Brown racism and our history of white supremacy. Remember, silence speaks volumes. All of us, and white people in particular, have to push beyond self-examination into action. For those of us parenting children across racial lines, we must think about how to instill in them not just the horror of racism but the beauty, creativity, resilience, and resistance of their racial heritage. If you haven’t already, join the conversation today. It matters.

The Zoom link for this webinar will be sent out 1 week prior to the live event. All webinars are recorded and shared with paid registrants within 1 week of the event.

An intense appetite for reforming and transforming child welfare services in the United States is yielding many new initiatives. Vulnerable children and families who become involved with child welfare clearly deserve higher quality and more effective services. New policies, programs, and practices should be built on sound evidence. Reforms based on misunderstandings about what the current data show may ultimately harm families. This review highlights 10 commonly held misconceptions which we assert are inconsistent with the best available contemporary evidence. Implications for better alignment of evidence and reform are discussed.

Aligning Your Stars: Adoption & Life Constellations

REGISTRATION OPENS on Friday, September 9th, 2022. 

This event is exclusively for adoptive parents and children & teens who have joined their family through adoption. ♥

Join us as we journey thru the galaxies of those connected to adoption!

On the way we may encounter celestial storms and meteors, but we will persevere and chart the constellations of past and present while building visions of future galaxy exploration.

Early Bird Registration 9/9/22 – 10/14/22 – $70 per registrant

After 10/14/22 – $75 per registrant

Given the continued emergence of an interconnected society, an ever-evolving pandemic, calls for racial and social justice along with heightened polarization across many fronts, building organizational capacity for advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion is more critical than ever. The need for leaders across sectors, and especially within the social sector, to understand and engage the current environment is essential in building an equitable society for all.

During this three-part virtual workshop presented by Social Current, participants will explore their relationships with equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in a safe environment and make progress on developing an EDI action plan for their organizations.

Conference participants have the opportunity to attend numerous workshops, seminars, and panel discussions. Led by professionals and experts in the adoption field – including attorneys, social workers, physicians, adoptive parents, agency representatives, adoptees and educators – the workshops provide up-to-date information as well as a forum for discussions.

Our conference is for those who are considering adoption as a way to build their family, for those who have already adopted, and for those professionals and advocates who are involved in the adoption and foster care fields.

This year, our event is virtual and over three days, and ALL workshops are being recorded. So if you cannot make all days, or if you have a conflict between two workshops at the same time, recordings of workshops will be available shortly after conference to all registrants. There will also be a journal of information about conference speakers and supporters during the conference as well as after the conference.

*This event is open to anyone, and registration includes RECORDINGS OF ALL THE WORKSHOPS.

FREE!

This supportive group for first/birth parents will take place as a Zoom call.

Group members will be able to connect, listen and share their experiences of adoption, both private and through the child welfare system. Space will also be provided for participants to explore and share experiences around open adoptions, closed adoptions, recent reunions, same-race adoption, transracial adoption, termination of parental rights, and other topics as decided by the group.

Please remember that this group is for birth/first parents who are related by birth to a child placed in adoption or foster care.  This group is not for adoptive parents.