Counseling Birth Parents and Relatives

Resources for professionals to assist birth parents in adoption, kinship care, or parenting planning.

Adoption is an Option
Ferre Institute (2001)
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This 10-minute video features birth parents, birth grandparents, and adoptive families discussing adoption. Designed for use with women with unintended pregnancies in clinical, educational, and counseling settings.

Adoption or Parenting: Predictors of Decisions of Mexican Women (PDF - 629 KB)
Stanford University Public Policy Program (2004)
Dissertation on what influences a woman's decision to parent a child or to place him for adoption and what individual characteristics make a woman more likely to choose adoption.

Birthparent Grief: Open Adoption Pocket Guide Book Series
Romanchik (1999)
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Booklet written by a birth mother to help prepare birth parents in open adoptions for the grieving process that might follow the adoption.

Families as Partners in Permanency: A Curriculum for Skills Development
Families Together Project (2000)
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A two-part training program for child welfare workers that describes strategies for involving families in permanency planning and foster care.

Father Involvement in Child Welfare
North Carolina Division of Social Services and the Family and Children's Resource Program
Children's Services Practice Notes, 11(1), 2005
Examines ways that practitioners and their agencies can improve the way they work with fathers.

Information Packet: Babies Born to Incarcerated Mothers (PDF - 134 KB)
National Resource Center for Foster Care and Permanency Planning (2004)
Asserts that mothers who are able to parent should receive additional support services and specialized reunification plans.

The Iowa Mediation for Permanency Project
National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice (2000)
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Final report of a 3-year demonstration project to test the effectiveness of a nonadversarial system for reducing the time children spend in foster care.

Physical Abuse of Women Before, During, and After Pregnancy
Martin, Mackie, Kupper, Buescher, & Moracco
The Journal of the American Medical Association, 285(12), 2001
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Examines patterns of physical abuse before, during, and after pregnancy in a representative statewide sample of North Carolina women.

The Planning Early for Permanence (PEP) Project: Final Report
The Farm, Inc. (2003)
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Outlines the outcomes of a federally funded project to provide concurrent case planning for children in out-of-home placements to achieve permanency as early as possible through family reunification or adoption.

Pregnancy as a Stimulus for Domestic Violence
Burch, Gallup, & Gordon
Journal of Family Violence, 19(4), 2004
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Analysis of data collected from a domestic violence prevention and treatment program.

Safeguarding the Rights and Well-being of Birthparents in the Adoption Process
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (2006)
Findings and recommendations based on a year-long examination and analysis of research, literature, interviews and experiences relating to the rights of birthparents in domestic infant adoption.

What Works in Permanency Planning: Adoption
North Carolina University Chapel Hill School of Social Work (2000)
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Adoptions are most successful when agencies provide comprehensive and accurate information to the adoptive parents. This report also highlights the importance of expedited permanency planning.

	Related Information Gateway Topics Achieving & maintaining permanency Family-centered practice: Working with families Supporting & preserving families Systemwide: Working with families Systemwide: Mental health Systemwide: Screening domestic violence

Updated on March 19, 2010