What Does "Adoption Competency" Mean?

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Adoptive parents consistently report that their greatest post adoption support need is “mental health services provided by someone who knows adoption." We often hear parents, adopted persons, practitioners, and researchers say that services need to be “adoption competent” or “adoption sensitive.” Although the terms “adoption competent” and “adoption sensitive” are frequently used, there are not standardized, well-accepted definitions for these terms.

In 2008, the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) began a project to define what “adoption competency” in mental health services really means, to identify the specific adoption competencies that therapists should have, to develop a curriculum for therapists based on the competencies, and to train mental health professionals to be adoption competent in their clinical practices.

As a first step, C.A.S.E. convened a group of nationally recognized experts, including parents, who identified the competencies that mental health practitioners need – the knowledge, skills, and values that they should have. The experts helped to develop a definition of an adoption competent mental health professional. You can find more information on this work on the C.A.S.E. website at http://www.adoptionsupport.org/

The definition that we are currently using is based on what experts think, but we want to hear from you about whether this definition is the right one.