Webinar: Preparing for and Adjusting to Adoption Part I

Preparing for and Adjusting to Adoption Part I - Preparing for Forever

This free webinar will discuss the range of feelings involved in the commitment to adopt that begins as early as the first thought on adoption. It will also increase awareness of the steps involved in preparing to adopt a “special needs” child from Alabama’s foster care system.

Objectives:

1. Discuss the steps involved in preparing for adoption.
2. Explain the method and reasoning behind each step of preparing to adopt from foster care.
3. Discuss the physical and psychological effects that the family as a whole may experience while preparing to adopt.
4. Provide strategies that can be used during each step of the adoption process that will assist the family in preparing for forever. 

Tuesday, May 21

 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm (CST) 

Click Here to Register Online

1.5 CEUs available for the following:

• Adoptive Parents
• Foster Parents
• Social Workers
• Counselors

CAS is an approved CE Provider NBCC #6459 ABSWE #0039. 

Leslie Hales, LCSW, PIP is the Pre-Adoption Services Coordinator for Alabama Pre/Post Adoption Connections (APAC) at CAS. She is a native of Laurel, Mississippi and completed her undergraduate in social work at the University of Southern Mississippi. She moved to Birmingham in 1999, and received her Masters from University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 2003. Her 13 years of social work experience began with Jefferson County DHR child welfare in preservation, foster care and quality assurance. She then moved to Children's Aid Society and has worked as a Family Support Worker to adoptive families and Coordinator of the Moms and Babies and Project Independence Programs prior to rejoining the APAC team in 2010. She reports her greatest accomplishment has been the adoption of her daughter from foster care three years ago.

Beverly Owings, BA is the Child Specific Recruiter for APAC Pre-Adoption Services. She has worked with Children's Aid Society since 2007 as an AdoptUSKids Specialist and also as a Recruitment Coordinator for the APAC program. Prior to her work at CAS, she was a Family Support Worker with the Elmore County Family Resource Center as a certified instructor of "Parenting the Destructive Teen" where she worked with Youth Enhancement and Family Services with at-risk youth and their families. She has served as the Vice-President of Adoptions with Alababa Foster & Adoptive Parent Association (AFAPA) and in 2008 was appointed by former Governor Riley to serve on the Child Welfare Data Review Committee with the Alabama Department of Human Resources. Beverly and her husband have adopted four children including two teenagers from Alabama's foster care system.