Who this is for

Adoption Practitioners, Managers, Social Workers (Voluntary Adoption Agencies, Regional Adoption Agencies and Local Authorities), Children’s Social Workers, Support Workers and Independent Professionals.

Details

This practice webinar will explore current themes around multi-cultural adoption with a view of promoting children being placed in multicultural placements. We will consider barriers at local, national and societal levels in making multi-cultural placements and how these can be overcome.

The webinar will consider best practice in assessing and preparing prospective adopters who are able to care for children of different ethnicities to their own. How to support adopters to develop cultural heritage plans as a way to evidence their skills will be discussed, as well as highlighting tools available to families once they have their child/ren placed.

We will focus on how best to support children to develop a positive identity relating to their cultural background over the course of their childhood and beyond. This will include how to support children where pre-birth information is limited or not known, drawing on research from intercountry adoption for how to help children navigate this lack of information and the impact this has on their sense of self.

This practice webinar will look at the challenges for social workers in preparing and assessing prospective carers who wish to parent transracially or trans-ethnically and provide some tips and ideas for ensuring that any assessment is robust.

We will hear from senior adoption practitioners at Yorkshire Adoption Agency.

Learning outcomes

• To consider barriers to multicultural placements and how each worker and Agency can contribute to overcoming these.
• To develop best practice in assessing and preparing prospective adopters to support multi-cultural placements.
• To gain an increased awareness of cultural heritage plans and how these can be used within assessment, matching and post placement.
• To develop effective tools that support adoptive parents to promote their child/ren’s cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
• To consider how we can support children where little or no pre-birth information is known to develop a strong sense of their cultural and ethnic background.

About the trainer

Sarah Clarke

Sarah is the Team Manager for Training & Adoption Support at the Yorkshire Adoption Agency. She qualified as a Social Worker in 2013 at Manchester Metropolitan University, obtaining an MA in Social Work. Sarah is registered with Social Work England. She has previously worked across two Local Authorities in the fields of Child Protection, Fostering and Adoption. After initially being employed as an Adoption Social Worker at Yorkshire Adoption Agency, she has now been with the team since July 2020 and as a Team Manager since October 2022.

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 info@cvaa.org.uk. We will aim to answer your query within two working days.

CVAA accept online payments only. In case you do not have instant access to your company card, we suggest using your personal card instead to book a training event and claim it back with your agency in your expenses. Requesting an invoice to pay for our standard practice events is not possible.