As both an adoption professional and an adoptee, my connection to the world of adoption has always been personal as well as professional. When I first encountered the ACT (Adoption Competency Training) curriculum, I didn't expect to gain much from it. I had learned from many of the experts, some who I follow here on this platform. To be honest, I signed up primarily to meet the requirements for becoming a Pathways to Permanency facilitator. What I didn't anticipate was just how transformative the ACT curriculum would be—both for my work and for my own understanding of adoption, loss, and trauma.
The curriculum, developed to support professionals who work with families caring for children they didn’t birth, offers a powerful framework for understanding the lifelong impact of adoption and fostering. One of its cornerstones is the 7 Core Issues model, which emphasizes the challenges that adoptees and their families face: loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and control. The curriculum integrates these issues with theories of attachment, trauma, and normative developmental crises. This combination provides a holistic lens through which we can better understand and address the experiences of adoptive families.
I found the ACT curriculum deeply integrative. It brought together concepts I had already encountered but placed them into a cohesive framework that could be applied both personally and professionally. It helped me better understand how loss and trauma, particularly those rooted in early life experiences, continue to reverberate across the lifespan, affecting family dynamics in often unseen ways.
What makes ACT especially valuable is its versatility. While focused on adoption and permanency, the core framework can be adapted to various topics that professionals encounter, such as **Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)** or **Autism**. The curriculum's holistic nature allows us to layer on additional knowledge, providing a deeper understanding of the intersection between adoption-specific challenges and other developmental concerns.
In my experience, the ACT curriculum doesn't just equip us with tools to support the families we serve; it changes how we see adoption and permanency altogether. By integrating this framework with other training, such as the Pathways program, we, as helpers, can offer families and children the guidance they need to navigate the complex emotional terrain that comes with adoption. The ACT curriculum, through its focus on loss and trauma, encourages us to become more compassionate and informed practitioners, ready to help families heal and thrive.
#AdoptionProfessionals #MentalHealthAwareness #ProfessionalDevelopment #TraumaInformedCare
