Support for adoptive parents and children
The
Adoption & Special Guardianship Support (ASGS) Team
provides a confidential service to support in Kent to:
- families with adopted children
- children who are subject to Special Guardianship Orders.
The service is for Kent families who adopted children from Kent
or outside Kent after 3 years. If under 3 years,
families need to approach the agency that placed the child for
support. The team works with colleagues in health, education,
housing and benefits etc. to develop a range of services for
adoptive families including:
Sometimes additional help and support is needed, so we also
offer:
- A helpline which is available from 10:00am - 2:00pm on Tuesdays
and Thursdays (01795 566226). We can advise and help
you choose which services would most help you and your
child(ren).
- An answerphone service operating 24 hours a day with calls
returned asap
Our core purpose is to ensure that children and parents get the
support they need.
If you think that you and your child need to see a social worker
and require more help than offered above, you will need to contact
our Contact and Assessment Service.
You may telephone, e-mail or write with your enquiry. Please be
aware that this is a very busy team and it would be helpful
to explain that you need the ASGS Team and
give brief reasons why you are asking for a service and provide the
child's name, date of birth, home address and your own contact
details.
You will find some useful websites on the right of the
screen and please also see our further reading page.
Buddy Groups
We meet all over Kent with parents and
their pre-school children for play, coffee and a chat. Adoptive
parents tell us that this is really useful because they get to talk
to other adopters and their children can grow up knowing other
children who are adopted. In addition, it can be really hard to go
to 'parent and toddler' groups to start with because people are
talking about pregnancy and their ante-natal experiences and
sometimes it's difficult to know what to say about your child. At
the buddy groups, there is no need to explain!
Support group
We run a group once a month during a school morning for
parents of school age children to chat about how things are going.
There is a group either side of the county, please ring us for
details.
Workshops
These can form an important part of your continued support from
us and from other adopters. We run a number of workshops for
parents throughout the year. These cover a range of topics
including 'Telling', 'Keeping your cool', 'making the most of life
story books', 'Parenting adolescents'. These workshops are really
useful and as well as getting some really good strategies for
helping your child through some difficult times, you will meet
other adopters and get a lot of support from them.
New Placement visit
We will visit you when your child first comes to live with
you and talk to you about some of the things we do and invite you
to your local buddy group if your children have not started school.
If you would like us to, we may be able to find you another adopter
locally who you could link with. This can be a real help as it will
be somebody who will understand how you feel and may have a child
of a similar age to your child.
Social Events
We hold 3 events during the year for families. These are
fun days for children and their parents alike and include a winter
party, spring event - this year we are having a teddy bear's picnic
and a beach party.
Newsletter and events
We will let you know what is going on and invite you to
events.
New projects
Our adopters tell us that they would like their children to grow
up knowing other children who are adopted and we know that this
group of children have their own special issues that they sometimes
need to talk about. All children have to struggle with different
issues as they grow up and adopted children have to work a little
harder than some! We are hoping to begin a group for primary school
children where we will have activities and also help them
to talk about some adoption issues. As they grow older, we
know that adolescents are dealing with a lot of things and they
particularly struggle with the issues around their adoption and
might benefit from the opportunity to spend time together talking.
We are hoping to run groups in parts of Kent where the need is
greatest - watch this space for more information.