Identity After Adversity: Practice Support for Adopted Young People with Adverse Early Childhood Experiences

Who this is for

Adoption practitioners and managers (Voluntary Adoption Agencies, Regional Adoption Agencies, Local Authorities, and independent social workers), children’s social care services, children and family social workers, foster carers, kinship carers, designated teachers, and other professionals working with children and families.

Details

This expert-led session will focus on supporting young, adopted people with an emphasis on identity, origins, and how teenagers make sense of their early and sometimes adverse life experiences.

The morning session, with Dr Zoe Webb will focus on the theory and psychological frameworks that guide therapeutic support of young people as they navigate the challenges of discerning aspects of their identity. It will explore how the unique experiences of adopted young people create unique challenges within the formation of their identities. It will offer strategies to help those supporting young people through these challenges including both relational and practical ideas that nurture an affirming environment within which they can allow their authentic and genuine identity to emerge.

In the afternoon, Tanya Killick will share key insights from adopted young people about identity, belonging, and growing up. Drawing on their lived experience, she will highlight what they most want professionals and carers to understand. Topics include the importance of peer connection, how school environments shape confidence and wellbeing, the impact of how early-life information is shared, and the ways different aspects of identity—such as race, culture, neurodiversity, gender, sexuality, and disability—intersect with adoption. The session will focus on practical, meaningful changes that genuinely support young people.

Learning 0utcomes

• Developing a deeper understanding of the theoretical and psychological frameworks that shape how we form our identities.
• Exploring how adoption intersects with multiple dimensions of identity, including sense of self, gender identity, sexual orientation, and wider personal and social factors.
• Learning practical strategies to support young people during this stage of development, including navigating sensitive conversations and fostering an affirming, empathetic environment.

• Understand the importance of peer connection for adopted young people, including its role in wellbeing, identity formation, and resilience, and explore practical ways to create meaningful peer-support spaces.
• Recognise how school experiences shape daily life, and apply young people’s own suggestions for small but effective changes that improve their sense of safety, confidence, and inclusion.
• Improve the sharing of early-life information by considering timing, accuracy, sensitivity, and the emotional impact of gaps, and by developing approaches that support curiosity, trust, and emotional safety.
• Acknowledge the intersections of identity—such as race, culture, neurodiversity, disability, gender, and sexuality—and consider how services can respond more effectively so that young people feel fully seen, understood, and supported.

About the trainers

Dr Zoe Webb

Dr Zoe Webb (BSc, PhD, DClinPsy) is a highly experienced clinical psychologist with over 15 years of working with children, young people, and their families. Following her work within NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, she has been in full-time independent practice since 2015. Dr Webb offers therapeutic support to children, adolescents, and adults, working individually, dyadically, or systemically across a broad range of mental health and well-being difficulties, including anxiety, depression, anger, and self-harm. She has a specialist interest in developmental trauma and attachment. In addition to core training in CBT, systemic, and narrative approaches, she has undertaken advanced training in DDP (certified practitioner), Theraplay, the Dynamic Maturational Model, the Meaning of the Child, CAPA, and EMDR. Dr Webb also provides psychological and cognitive assessments and is skilled in developing comprehensive formulations to support care planning. She delivers training and offers supervision and consultation to professionals, parents, and carers.

Tanya Killick

Tanya is a qualified Social Worker with extensive expertise in adoption, trauma, neurodiversity, and youth participation. As both a professional and a lived experience expert, Tanya brings a unique depth of understanding to her role, blending therapeutic insight with real-world experience from over a decade of working directly with adopted young people, birth families, and adoptive parents.  Tanya leads the nationally recognised Adopteens and Adopt a Change projects at PAC UK, where she has developed innovative, youth led approaches to participation, identity exploration, and peer connection. Her work centers on amplifying the voices of young people and ensuring their experiences shape practice, policy, and professional understanding. Through this work, Tanya has supported young people to create films, deliver training, design resources, and influence systems in powerful and meaningful ways. What Tanya loves most is seeing young people grow in confidence, find connection with their peers, and use their experiences to influence real, meaningful change.

Instructions

A member of staff will be in touch with attendees one week prior to the event to share a pre-event delegate pack.

If you have any questions regarding this webinar, please contact us at [email protected]. We will aim to answer your query within two working days.

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