New Jersey Adoption Resource Clearing House

Do you live in New York or New Jersey and are considering adopting an infant? Learn about Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program for New York and New Jersey families during this free webinar! This webinar is the first step for families interested in applying to Spence-Chapin as all webinar attendees will receive a Domestic Adoption Program application. Our team will share details about the adoption program, including the application process, open adoption, demographics of the children in need of adoption, the matching process, options counseling for birth parents, and more!

Bring your questions! The meeting will include ample opportunity to have your questions answered.

Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program is open to residents of New York, New Jersey, and Arizona. If you reside in Arizona, please register for a webinar dedicated to Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program for Arizona families. These events can be found here.

If you are unable to register for this webinar, please contact us to schedule a call to discuss additional pathways to grow your family through domestic infant adoption.

Join us for an evening of connection, community, and discussion with fellow adoptees. Facilitated by Amy Trotter, Director of Post Adoption Services and Elliot Bliss, Supervisor of Adoptee Programs. We are excited to start this new monthly group!

Here are the dates for the upcoming drop-in groups!

• January- Tuesday 14
• February – Tuesday 11
• March – Tuesday 11
• April – Tuesday 15
• May – Tuesday 13

FREE!

Voices of Adoption (V.O.A.) is a virtual space for adopted people 18+ world-wide to join in conversation, meet peers and talk about the topics that are important to them. Hosted by Jessica M. Luciere, transracial adoptee born in Bogota, Colombia, and Manager of Community Engagement at Spence-Chapin, V.O.A. welcomes adopted people of all backgrounds to experience community amongst other adoptees.

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 provide valuable information about the Adoption Tax Credit which is available to families who adopt internationally or domestically. The adoption tax credit can greatly offset the costs of adoption. Feel free to bring your questions as we will save time for Q&A!

This webinar welcomes families who recently adopted through a Spence-Chapin program or who will be adopting internationally or domestically.

The webinar is a great way to learn more about Adoptions From The Hearts Open Adoption Program which places infants directly from the hospital.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Adoptions From The Heart is ONLY accepting applicants who are open to adopting children of all racial backgrounds and heritages. In addition, because we are an open adoption agency and are seeing an increase in the requested number of yearly visits, all prospective adoptive parents must also be open to a minimum of 2 visits a year with the childs birth parents. And while it is not a requirement, AFTH encourages open relationships through direct communication with birth parents, via text/phone and email post placement.

We look forward to connecting with you.

FREE!

Join the National Center for Enhanced Post-Adoption Support for the Adoptive and Guardianship Preparation Train the Trainer Training. The goal of the training is to equip prospective adoptive and guardianship parents with the knowledge, skills, and insight needed to provide a nurturing home for their children. This training consists of four sessions, two hours in length. A certificate will be provided upon completion of all four sessions.

Four Sessions:
Tuesday January 21^st, 2025 Time: 2:30pm-4:30pm EST
Tuesday January 28^th, 2025 Time: 2:30pm-4:30pm EST
Tuesday February 4^th, 2025 Time: 2:30pm-4:30pm EST
Tuesday February 11^th, 2025 Time: 2:30pm-4:30pm EST

Registration is required. This training is limited to ion50 participants, sign up now!

Fee: $100.00

AFTH wants families to make informed decisions when completing their profile keys. Dr. Erin Meyer is an internal medicine and pediatric hospitalist who works in the neonatal intensive care unit. She is also an adoptive mom and can speak from both professional and personal angles. She will be discussing the effects of drug and alcohol use on the newborn during pregnancy, as well as withdrawal symptoms and short and long term effects of exposure.

FREE!

Have questions about how to claim the adoption tax credit? Families Rising’s adoption tax credit expert, Josh Kroll, presents a webinar on the federal adoption tax credit outlining the steps to file. The focus is on filing for the 2024 tax year, but also covers applying for the credit for adoptions as far back as 2019. Josh explains what parents need to do to take advantage of the credit.

Fee: $30.00

Learn the basic 411 on Hospital Placement, including the Who/What/Where/When/How. Additionally, prepare yourself for meeting birth parents and possible extended birth family and the importance of building birth family connection.

NYC Teen Mentorship welcomes adoptees ages 13-18 years old in a group mentoring program that meets once monthly from September to June.

Junior Mentorship welcomes adoptees ages 10-12 years old in this group mentoring program that meets once monthly from September to June.

Fee: $110.00

The Bowen family systems theory concept Nuclear Family Emotional Process describes the basic patterns of emotional functioning among and between members of two successive generations of a family – most often between partners and between the partners and their offspring. These basic patterns result in chronic anxiety. Family tensions come to rest in certain parts of the family such that the more anxiety one nuclear family or relationship absorbs, the less other family members or relationships must absorb. This workshop will explore how at sufficient levels of anxiety intensity, each pattern contributes to the development of one of three categories of clinical dysfunction in a nuclear family: (1) illness in a spouse; (2) marital conflict; and (3) impairment of one or more children.

FREE!

Teen Voices of Adoption (V.O.A.) is a virtual space for adopted teens 13-17 world-wide to join in conversation, meet peers and talk about the topics that are important to them. Hosted by Rebecca Fiore, transracial adoptee born in Paraguay, and Adoptee Advocate. V.O.A. welcomes adopted people of all backgrounds to experience community amongst other adoptees.

FREE!

Do you live in New York or New Jersey and are considering adopting an infant? Learn about Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program for New York and New Jersey families during this free webinar! This webinar is the first step for families interested in applying to Spence-Chapin as all webinar attendees will receive a Domestic Adoption Program application. Our team will share details about the adoption program, including the application process, open adoption, demographics of the children in need of adoption, the matching process, options counseling for birth parents, and more!

Bring your questions! The meeting will include ample opportunity to have your questions answered.

Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program is open to residents of New York, New Jersey, and Arizona. If you reside in Arizona, please register for a webinar dedicated to Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program for Arizona families. These events can be found here.

If you are unable to register for this webinar, please contact us to schedule a call to discuss additional pathways to grow your family through domestic infant adoption.

Our International Team is excited to host this webinar and to share information about adopting from South Africa. Spence-Chapin is proud to have the longest history of any US-based agency of facilitating adoption from South Africa and we work with adoptive families living across the entire United States. The South Africa program welcomes adoptive applicants regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. In this webinar we will discuss common medical and developmental needs of children who are currently living in South Africa and waiting for their forever families. We will provide an overview the adoption process. We look forward to answering any questions you may have about adoption in general and specific questions about adoption from South Africa.

** We have chosen the Go to Webinar Platform to respect that during the exploration phase, some families are not yet ready to share their hopes to adopt with others and in Go to Webinar, your names and faces will not be visible to other participants. But we are always happy to support families in building an adoption community! If you do feel ready to connect with other pre-adoptive or adoptive parents, please let us know and we can facilitate introductions for those who wish to be connected to other families.**

FREE!

Learn how to advocate for adoption assistance programs in your state or province.

In these tight financial times, legislators sometimes seek to cut adoption assistance programs and advocates need to be ready to respond. Even if your adoption assistance program is not under threat, proactive advocacy can help maintain and even enhance these important benefits for children adopted from foster care.

(Please note this session covers how to advocate for the system, if you are interested in advocating for adoption assistance specifically for your family you will want to access the Adoption Assistance Benefits and Eligibility webinarOpens in a new tab.)

Considering adopting? Want to learn about adoption programs at Spence-Chapin?

Join Spence-Chapin staff to learn about the current landscape of international and domestic adoption and the needs of children waiting for adoptive families. We’ll discuss the scope of all Spence-Chapin adoption programs including international adoption (South Africa, Colombia, Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean), and domestic adoption, as well as Spence-Chapins’ adoption services.

Bring your questions! This meeting will include ample opportunity to have your questions answered.

Join us to learn about our Colombia Adoption Program. Our Colombia Adoption Program is open to singles, married couples, unmarried couples, and welcomes LGBTQ+ parents. In this webinar, we will detail the pathways to adopt from Colombia, including pathways available to individuals without Colombian Heritage as well as pathways available to individuals who hold a Colombian Cedula. We will share information about the system of child protection in Colombia and will share photos of some of the children’s homes where children reside while in protective care. We will discuss common medical and special needs of children who are awaiting adoption in Colombia. We will speak about eligibility factors for prospective adoptive parents in Colombia. Bring your questions – we’ll save time for Q&A.

NYC Teen Mentorship welcomes adoptees ages 13-18 years old in a group mentoring program that meets once monthly from September to June.

To learn more about this program and how to join,

FREE!

This event is at 12:30PM Arizona time.

Do you live in Arizona and are considering adopting an infant? Learn about Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program for Arizona families during this free webinar! This webinar is the first step for families interested in applying to Spence-Chapin as all webinar attendees will receive a Domestic Adoption Program application. Our team will share details about the adoption program, including the application process, open adoption, demographics of the children in need of adoption, the matching process, options counseling for birth parents, and more!

Bring your questions! The meeting will include ample opportunity to have your questions answered.

Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program is open to residents of Arizona, New York, and New Jersey. If you reside in New York or New Jersey, please register for a webinar dedicated to Spence-Chapin’s Domestic Adoption Program for New York and New Jersey families. These events can be found on the Events Calendar page of Spence-Chapin’s website.

If you are unable to register for this webinar, please contact us to schedule a call to discuss additional pathways to grow your family through domestic infant adoption.