'Cake' programme taken to international adoption event
12 Jul 2010
Adoption UK takes ‘Cake’ to an international stage.
Adoption UK will this week tell an international audience about the impact of its parent support programme ‘It’s a Piece of Cake?’ on adoptive families.
Chief Executive Jonathan Pearce is due to give a workshop at the Third International Conference on Adoption Research (ICAR3) in the Netherlands this week.
He will tell his audience of researcher’s working in the field of adoption all over the world: “Adoptive parents are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
“The role of adoptive parents in ‘reparenting’ and being ‘therapeutic parents’ must be valued by all those working in adoption.”
Speaking alongside Julie Selwyn of the Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies and Adoption UK Trainer Teresa Keane, the workshop will provide an overview of Adoption UK, its work and its values, before explaining how the ‘It’s a Piece of Cake?’ programme works.
Delivered to parents in six modules over six months, with built-in time for reflection and practice of new ideas, the programme begins with Expectations, Realities and Loss, then moving on to cover Attachment, Claiming and Belonging and Trauma and Adaptive Behaviour.
Jonathan, Julie and Teresa will then discuss the findings of a 2005 evaluation of ‘It’s a Piece of Cake?’
The parents who had been through the programme suggested that ‘It’s a Piece of Cake?’ taught them more about child development, attachment theory and specific techniques. It also built their confidence, increased their understanding of their child and broke the cycle of blame, anger and guilt that many adoptive families experience.
The evaluation also showed that local authority managers funding the programme believed that it reduced the number of adoptive placements that broke down.
To find out more about Adoption UK’s ‘It’s a Piece of Cake?’ programme visit www.adoptionuk.org/training_cake