Post Adoption
Support
Beginnings offers post-adoption support for birth parents who have placed their baby for adoption, adoptive families and their children, or adult adoptees.
It is quite normal to have concerns related to adoption. Adoption is unique to each person and it is important that your counsellor understands the issues. Beginnings has experienced, well-qualified counsellors who are able to help you, or can refer you to qualified professionals.
Post adoption counselling is generally offered on a fee-for-service basis.
Adoption, like parenting, is a journey. Questions and challenges will arise, some of them specific to adoption. We are here to help you.
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Have Questions?
FAQs
Yes. Beginnings considers children placed through the agency as part of Beginnings family. There are several developmental ages and stages where a child’s understanding of adoption sparks questions or a need to know more. Beginnings counsellors will be there to help with these transitional times. Adolescents in particular may have added adoption related identity or separation issues that could benefit from meeting with a counsellor who understands adoption over the life time.
Yes. Birth parents will have the opportunity to continue meeting with their counsellor up to 6 months after placement of their child. Further follow up will be arranged as needed. Counsellors are also available to assist birth parents throughout the first year for with ongoing open contact arrangements.
Most Beginnings birth parents develop a relationship with their counsellor and keep in contact over the years via email, calls and occasional meeting.
Yes. A counsellor can connect a new birth mom with a birth parent who has placed her child for adoption. Peer connections can take the form of face to face or email.
In most cases yes, but it up to the birth parents how much they want to have their parents involved in the lives of their adopted child. The adoptive families are usually eager to have ongoing contact with all members of the birth parents families. The Covenant Agreement can include extended family members in the contact arrangements.
It is an agreement outlining the specific contact arrangements between birth parents and the adoptive couple. The word Covenant means “promise” and implies a commitment on both sides to carry through with the arrangements they are making – for the sake of the child. These agreements are not legally binding, but are considered by Beginnings to be a binding promise to stay in touch.
This is a ceremony that happens at the time a child is placed in the care of an adoptive couple by the birth parent(s). It is an acknowledgment of moving a child from one family to another and honours the role of birth parents in the lives of their children. Each ceremony is unique and reflects what is important to the people attending. Often there is chosen music, a poem or reading, and candle lighting to join the families in their Covenant agreement. Beginnings’ Covenant and Entrustment Ceremony form a foundation for the new relationships created through adoption.
Beginnings can provide information on the definition of a legal parent, and will speak to fathers about their options and rights. If they agree to sign consents for adoption, all forms and papers will be reviewed with him prior to signing. At the time of signing consents for adoption, an appointment will be made with a lawyer familiar with private adoption who will offer independent legal advice and be available for any questions your son may have.
Open adoption involves ongoing communication and contact between the birth parent (s) and the adoptive parents including the child. This can take the form of letters, emails, text messages, phone calls, and/ or visits. The amount of contact is negotiated between the parties and varies from one situation to another. Beginnings believes openness is good for a child as it allows him or her to maintain relationships with important people in his or her life; as he or she grows older, openness allows access to information about his or her origins and background and to any other siblings he or she may have.