Workgroup Underway

Help parents be a confident and healing voice in their child’s life, through an age appropriate, first of its kind, trauma informed, empowering guide.

Parents needs support to be partners

Why this Matters

Kids process their history best in the day to day life of families, with confident and empowered parents.

However, families are often not trained to have these conversations as kids grow.

Thus, feel out of their depth, so tend to share too much or not enough about the harder part of the Child’s history, leading to feelings of overwhelm or secrecy.

Meet the first-of-its-kind

Conversation Guide

Age-appropriate

Trauma-informed

Empowering to parents

Lifelong Impact on Kids

You’ll Want to Get Involved

Its exciting to create something that SHOULD exist in the world, but doesn’t yet.

We want to partner with:

Foster youth
Child psychologists
Therapists
Social workers
Educators
Adoptees
Birth parents
Foster parents
Adoptive Parents
Invested community members

IN order to:

Help Parents Share The Right Amount
Understand Their Responsibility
Keep Families Together
Build Strong Kids

Help Parents Share The Right Amount

Two of the most important challenges parents confront are how to share adoption information with their children, and how to help them understand… the implications of being adopted.

David M Brodzinsky

Understand Their Responsibility

Finding ways of understanding and integrating this new information into a healthy sense of self is an important developmental task for adopted children, and supporting this process is a critical responsibility for adoptive parents.

David M Brodzinsky

Keep Families Together

Families who are comfortable talking about adoption-related issues are 18% more likely to stay together.

Selwyn, Wijedasa + Meakings

Build Strong Kids

(Kids) who know (their) stories… do better on virtually every measure we have examined: higher self esteem, social competence, and academic competence; lower depression, anxiety, and aggressive behaviors; and a higher sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Robyn Fivush

We Want to Cover

Some Tough Topics

Abandonment
Adoption Disruption
Adoptive Parent Infertility
Alcoholism/Drug Addiction
Conceived through Incest
Conceived through Rape
Death of sibling or parent – illness/accident
Death of sibling or parent – homicide/suicide
DNA/Conception/Sex
Domestic Violence of Parents
Emotional Abuse
Foster Care – Abuse while in Care
Foster Care – General
Harm during pregnancy
HIV/AIDS
Hording
Jail/Criminal History
Neglect
No contact/No information/Missing Information/Not enough contact
Parental Mental Health
Physical Abuse
Poverty
Prostitution
Sexual Abuse
Siblings placed elsewhere
Unknown Birth Father

Volunteering Details

Importance of Position: We are dreaming of creating a unique resource for foster and adoptive parents (and by extension their children). Parents can be embarrassed and awkward when talking to their children about the rough spots in their child’s history. We are creating an age-appropriate, trauma-informed, first-of-its-kind guide to parents through even the hardest of conversations.

Qualifications:

Desire to support POWER OF STORY’s mission, to provide person-centered support for fostered youth and adoptees by advocating for their access to information, the training of parents and professionals, hands-on support for young people, and the completion of Lifebooks and Social Medical Histories.
Interest in developing new curriculum/guide
Education around child psychology, therapy, social work, education, curriculum design, or
Lived experience as a foster youth, adoptee, birth, foster or adoptive parent, or
Professional experience as a child psychologist, therapist, social worker, educator

Reports to: Other workgroup members

Responsibilities:

Maintain a respectful relationship with clients, staff, and other volunteers
Brainstorm ways this guide could function
Conceptualize and create text, scripts, examples
Collaborate with leadership team to determine project scope and timeframe
Other duties as assigned

Compensation: no financial compensation, but lots of benefits (see below)

Benefits of Volunteering:

Give back to youth and young people.
Connect with others who are also passionate about this work.
Volunteering is good for your mind and body.
Volunteering provides career experience + teaches valuable job skills.
Volunteering brings fun and fulfillment to your life.

Volunteer Shifts: Bi weekly 2-hour meetings

Commitment: At least 3 months (expected April 2022 – June 2022)

Next Steps: Join us for a 30-minute virtual information session to learn about the volunteer workgroup, ask your questions and see if it’s the right place for you to get involved.

WORKGROUP underway.