Today introduced us to a new set of Social Workers, one of which, is our Social Worker.
Today's first exercise was 'How we got our name and what our name means to us', which led onto the subject of how, unless there is a very good reason (safety of the child for example), adoptive parents are unable to change the first name of the child.
Adoptive parents can add middle names, and the child's surname changes at adoption.
Legally, from placement to adoption, the child must be known by his/her birth name.
The was followed on by an exercise on 'Identity' in which we had 4 cards to write:
a) Our Name
b) A significant Person
c) A safe place
d) A hobby/how we spend our day.
Then we had to discard one of the above.....this first discarding wasn't too difficult, but when it came to the 2nd one it got a lot harder....
All this is designed to help us see how a child could feel, moving in with us and feeling as if he/she has lost everything it knows.
Our next exercise was designed to help us to understand the importance of 'Protecting History' Keeping Information safe and secure for the child to read and have access to, so that his/her history is not hidden. Photos and information about their birth family, details of why they needed to be adopted, etc etc.
Some of this information may need to be given in a 'child friendly' format, depending upon the reasons for adoption.
We spent the rest of the day covering 'The Joy of Parenting' which covered parenting skills, and positive parenting.
This evening we have no homework and no forms to fill in :-)
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