| Meeting | Description of the Meetings and Steps |
| 1 | Welcome to the Group Preparation and Selection Program |
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Acquaints leaders and participants with the Group Preparation and Selection Program of Foster and/or Adoptive Families program and each other. Explanation of the process; discussion of foster care, adoption, and permanency planning; outline and discussion of the roles and responsibilities of foster parenting and adoptive parenting; communication skills building, During Meeting 1, every family receives a copy of a Profile, The Profile gives prospective foster and adoptive families an opportunity to describe themselves in their own words. The Profile becomes part of the information used to help in the decision about fostering or adopting, It also becomes part of the information kept by the agency to help children, birth families and child welfare workers get to know the foster or adoptive family better. The Profiles are returned by Meeting 2, if possible. If absolutely necessary, the family may work on it for an extra week and return if by Meeting 3.
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| 2 | Where the MAPP Leads: |
| A Foster Care and Adoption Experience Overview of a foster care and adoption experience from the perspectives of clients (children and parents), foster parents, adoptive parents, and child welfare workers. Demonstrates the stresses and losses which can lead to foster care placement or adoption; what happens if a foster home placement or adoption does not work out; how families are reunited; how children are moved into adoption; and how some youth in foster care move into independent living. Family Consultations are scheduled after Meeting 2. The consultations are meetings in the homes of prospective foster and adoptive families. They are designed to help the families and the leaders jointly to assess strengths and needs in a family setting. All family members participate and every family has at least two family consultations during the decision-making and learning process. During the family consultation, the family and the leader will agree upon a Partnership Development Plan which states who will do specific tasks and when the tasks will be done, in order to meet one or more needs in the preparation and decision making and mutual selection process.
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| 3 | Losses and Gains: The Need to Be a loss Expert |
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Explores the impact of separation on the growth and development of children, and the impact of foster care and adoptive placement on the emotions and behaviors of children and parents. Examines personal losses (death, divorce, infertility, children leaving home) and how difficult life experiences affect success as adoptive parents or foster parents. Emphasizes the partnership roles of foster parents, adoptive parents, and social workers in turning separation losses into gains.
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| 4 | Helping Children with Attachments |
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Explores the subject of attachment and child development. Focuses on how attachments are formed and the special needs of children in foster care and adoption (especially in the areas of building self-concept and appropriate behavior). Discusses the partnership roles of foster parents, adoptive parents, and child welfare workers in helping children form new attachments.
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| 5 | Helping Children Learn to Manage Their Behaviors |
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Discusses techniques for managing behavior, with an emphasis on alternatives to physical punishment. Topics include special issues in discipline for children who have been physically or sexually abused or neglected. Techniques to be discussed include being a "behavior detective," reinforcement, time out, mutual problem solving, structuring and setting limits, negotiating, and contracting. Emphasizes the partnership among foster parents, adoptive parents and child welfare workers.
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| 6 | Helping Children with Birth Family Connections |
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Examines the importance of helping children in care maintain and build upon their identity, self-concept and connections. Considers issues such as how children's cultures and ethnic backgrounds help shape their identity; the connections children risk losing when they enter care; and why visits and contacts with birth families and previous foster families are important.
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| 7 | Gains and Losses: Helping Children Leave Foster Care |
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Discusses family reunification as the primary case planning goal as well as alternatives like foster care, adoption, and independent living. Examines disruption and its impact on children, families, and agency staff. This meeting also focuses on the partnership role of child welfare workers, foster parents, and adoptive parelts in helping children move home, into an adoptive home or into independent living.
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| 8 | Understanding the Impact of Fostering or Adopting |
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In the previous meetings, we discussed and "felt" what foster care and what adoption are all about. We learned about separation and attachment, how to build and maintain relationships with children and how to support them in working out the emotions they have for the important people in their lives. We've devoted a lot of time to the roles of both the foster parents and the adoptive parents, and the special way they will improve the lives of many children and families. But what will, be the impact of all this effort on the foster families and adoptive families? How will this experience affect their marriage, children, relatives, friends, job, and income? In Meeting 8, we find out!
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| 9 | Perspectives in Adoptive Parenting and Foster Parenting |
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This meeting is open to all members of prospective foster and adoptive families, especially children, grandparents, close friends - anyone who will play a major role in the foster family or adoptive family. This meeting features guest foster families and adoptive families. The guests will talk about their personal experiences in fostering and adopting. Some of the topics include: impact on marriage and family, visiting parents, discipline, searching, helping children with family reunification and making adoptions work. Other panel members may be attorneys, social workers, and birth parents.
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| 10 | Endings and Beginnings |
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The important tasks of this meeting will be to assess group members' strengths and needs as foster parents or adoptive parents. There also will be some time to say good-bye ... the ending. As the preparation/mutual selection process is coming to an end, so begins the transition into becoming a foster family or adoptive family ... the beginning.
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After the last meeting there is a final Family Consultation during which the leader and the parents agree about the family's future role as a foster family, as an adoptive family, or as another kind of child welfare advocate. A Professional Development Plan, developed by the leader and the parents, provides direction far support of the family during the next six months of partnership in the child welfare program.
*Reproduced horn Linda Bayless at al. Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting. Group Preparation and Selection of Foster and/or Adoptive Families, Leader's Guide (Atlanta, Georgia: Child Welfare Institute, 1991.)