Adopting: Sound Choices, Strong Families. Patricia Irwin Johnston, $29.50

If you’ve been struggling with infertility issues, are a single person or a partner in a same-sex family, chances are adoption has come up in your thinking about a means of building your family. Perhaps you’ve thought a little, perhaps a lot. Adopting: Sound Choices Strong Families offers expert guidance, insight and key understanding about adoption as a genuine, practical means for growing a family–perhaps even yours.

Written to help prospective adoptive parents like you make smater, more thoughtful decisions about adopting a child, this guide will challenge you and move you step-by-step through the process of adoption through the lens of the deeply personal and emotional obstacles everyone feels during this decision-making process.

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men: a New Dimension in Family Diversity. David Brodzinsky & Adam Pertman, Editors, $46.95

The practice of adoption has changed dramatically over the past half century, with profound implications for children and families. Perhaps the most remarkable and controversial transformation during this time has been the growing willingness of adoption professionals to place children with sexual-minority individuals and couples. Yet, despite considerable research showing that lesbians and gay men can make good parents, they continue to experience difficulties and barriers in many parts of the country in their efforts to adopt and raise children. Indeed, while progress in this area has been significant, it has been impeded by the homophobia and heterosexist attitudes of adoption professionals and the judiciary; by numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about parenting by lesbians and gay men, and by a lack of adequate guidelines and training for establishing best practice standards in working with this rapidly growing group of adoptive parents.

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men explores the gamut of historical, legal, sociological, psychological, social casework, and personal issues related to adoption by sexual-minority individuals and couples. Leading experts in a variety of fields address — and often shatter — the controversies, myths, and misconceptions hindering efforts by these individuals to adopt and raise children. What makes this book all the more valuable is that it provides insights and specific recommendations for establishing empirically validated best practices for working with an important sector of our society, for treating all prospective and current parents fairly and equally, and, perhaps most importantly, for increasing a still largely untapped resource for providing families for children who need them.

The Adoption Constellation: New Ways of Thinking about and Practicing Adoption.  Michael Phillip Grand, $19.95

The Adoption Constellation provides an in-depth analysis of the foundational principles of our cultural and psychological understanding of adoption. Grand surveys the literature on adoption and stigma, demonstrating that the experience of adoption cannot be divorced from a community's assessment of the status of this family form. Integrating the cultural and psychological factors influencing the experience of adoption, the social construction of narrative identity is used to capture the lived experience of members of the adoption constellation. Core themes such as loss, rejection, grief, intimacy, and mattering are described. The book concludes with an analysis of alternatives beyond conventional adoption as a basis for permanency, and a suggested set of political strategies for opening up adoption records.

Adoption Medicine: Caring for Children and Families. Editors Patrick Mason, Dana Johnson, Lisa Albers Prock, $70.95

The all-new Adoption Medicine: Caring for Children and Families brings together contributions from leading child health professionals for practical advice and field-tested guidelines on the full panoply of challenges adoptees and their families are most likely to face. Look here for practical how-to guidance on helping adoptive parents prepare; conducting pre- and post-adoptive health evaluations; optimizing adoptees' personal growth and development; addressing emotional and behavioral problems of puberty and adolescence; identifying and accessing educational and community resources; and much more.

Real-life examples illustrate key counseling and treatment approaches, techniques, and recommendations.

• Need-to-know "basics"
• Pre-adoption considerations
• Post-adoption essentials
• Ongoing adoptee health and well-being

Adoptive and Foster Parent Screening: a Professional Guide for Evaluations. James Dickerson & Mardi Allen, $46.95

Adoptive and Foster Parent Screening meshes the best of psychology and social work experience into a definitive guide for screening adoption and foster home applicants.

Assessing Adoptive and Foster Parents: Improving Analysis and Understanding of Parenting Capacity. Joanne Alper & David Howe, $32.95

Assessing prospective adoptive and foster parents is an extremely complex task, and one that happens within a pressurised time frame. Currently, assessments draw substantially on interviews with prospective adopters and foster carers. Too often, they generate a lot of information but lack meaningful analysis and understanding of parenting capacity. Children with histories of trauma, loss and hurt need to join families in which parents exhibit the ability to be good at relationships, able to manage their own stress and bond with the child in their care. In this book, leading experts including Dan Hughes, Jonathan Baylin, Kim Golding and Julie Selwyn combine the latest findings from neuroscience with research on what makes good assessments. Together, they provide guidance and recommend tools for making thorough, analytical and effective assessments which will ensure the best possible chance of placement success.

Assessing Adoptive and Foster Parents is an invaluable source of knowledge and practice guidance for social workers undertaking assessments of parenting capacity of children who have experienced neglect or trauma.

Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity and Transnational Adoption.  Barbara Yngvesson, $21.50

Since the early 1990s, transnational adoptions have increased at an astonishing rate worldwide. In Belonging In an Adopted World, Barbara Yngvesson offers a penetrating exploration of the consequences and implications of this unprecedented movement of children, usually from poor nations to the affluent West. Yngvesson illuminates how the politics of adoption policy has profoundly affected the families, nations, and children involved in this new form of social and economic migration.

Building the Bonds of Attachment: a DVD Presentation with Daniel Hughes. $76.95

Produced from a recent workshop given by Dan Hughes on his Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy model, this DVD is for parents and professionals who live and work with adopted, foster or biological children who have trauma-attachment disorders. 185 minutes.

Also available: Building the Bonds of Attachment: an Audio CD Presentation. Daniel Hughes, $20.00

Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children. Daniel Hughes, $72.95 (book)

A Child’s Journey through Placement. Vera Fahlberg, $33.95

Children who are cared for in an out-of-home placement are in need of support and stability. This classic text offers information and advice for professionals and carers on how to help these children, who will often have attachment difficulties.

Vera Fahlberg shares her experience and expertise, outlining the significance of attachment and separation, the developmental stages specific to adoptive children and providing guidance on minimizing the trauma of moves. The book also features practical advice on case planning, managing behavior and direct work with children, and throughout are case studies and exercises which provide opportunities for further learning.

A readable, compassionate and practical text, A Child's Journey through Placement provides the foundation, the resources, and the tools to help students, professionals, parents and others who care to support children on their journey through placement to adulthood.

Facilitating Meaningful Contact in Adoption and Fostering: a Trauma-Informed Approach to Planning, Assessing and Good Practice. Louis Sydney & Elsie Price, $25.95

Most children who are fostered or adopted have some level of contact with their birth family, whether face-to-face or by letter,  yet most of the time the psychological impact of contact on the child isn't considered. This book explores what attachment, neuroscience and trauma tell us about how contact affects children, and shows how poorly executed contact can be unhelpful or even harmful to the child. Assessment frameworks are provided which take the child's developmental needs into account. The authors also outline a model for managing and planning contact to make it more purposeful and increase its potential for therapeutic benefit. The book covers the challenges presented by the Internet for managing contact, unique issues for children in kinship care, problems that arise when adoptive parents separate and many other key issues for practice.

Brimming with practical advice and creative solutions, this is an indispensable tool for social workers, contact centre workers, and other professionals involved in contact arrangements or the therapeutic support of fostered and adopted children.

Finding Families, Finding Ourselves: English Canada Encounters Adoption from the Nineteenth Century to the 1990s. Veronica Strong-Boag, $49.95

Finding Families, Finding Ourselves traces the history of adoption in English Canada from the nineteenth century to the 1990s. Relying on public records rather than interviews, historian Veronica Strong-Boag examines how childrearing, class relations, gender, religion, ethnicity and race, Aboriginal-settler contact, international exchanges, and (re)connection shaped and informed the thinking and practices of adoption as they emerged over the years. Her research looks at diverse sources including legislation, the popular media, royal commission reports, biographies and autobiographies, and fiction and poetry — providing an unexplored vantage point from which to assess the overall development of adoption as a central and all too often under-appreciated institution in English Canada.

Handbook of Adoption: Implications for Researchers, Practitioners and Families. Rafael Javier, et al, $93.95

This extensive resource is designed for researchers, practitioners, students and families interested in learning more about working with adoption triad members (birth parent, adoptive parent and adoptee). It w will be particularly relevant in counselor training programs that emphasize developing clinical skills with a variety of clients.

How Do We Feel about Adoption? The Adoption Club Therapeutic Workbook on Feelings and Behavior. Regina Kupecky, illustrated by Apsley, $17.95

Written for counsellors and therapists working with children aged 5-11, as well as adoptive parents, this workbook is designed to help children to explore their feelings and behavior. It is one of a set of five interactive therapeutic workbooks featuring The Adoption Club written to address the key emotional and psychological challenges adopted children often experience. Together, they provide an approachable, interactive and playful way to help children to learn about themselves and have fun at the same time. Also in this series:

The Confusing World of Brothers, Sisters and Adoption: The Adoption Club Therapeutic Workbook on Siblings. Regina Kupecky, illustrated by Apsley, $17.95

Friends, Bullies and Staying Safe: The Adoption Club Therapeutic Workbook on Friendship. Regina Kupecky, illustrated by Apsley, $17.95

Let's Learn About Adoption: The Adoption Club Therapeutic Workbook on Adoption and Its Many Different Forms. Regina Kupecky, illustrated by Apsley, $17.95

Who We Are and Why We Are Special: The Adoption Club Therapeutic Workbook on Identity. Regina Kupecky, illustrated by Apsley, $17.95

Keeping Your Adoptive Family Strong: Strategies for Success. Gregory Keck & L. Gianforte, $22.95

Welcoming a new child into the home through adoption is a life-altering experience-for the child, the parents, and everyone else in the family. Expectations and realities often differ dramatically, and adjusting to the change can be difficult and emotionally painful.

Since the majority of children available for adoption today are in the system as the result of abuse and neglect, parents must acknowledge the fact they these young innocents will carry their trauma with them into their new homes. A willingness to address the not-so-easy, didn't-see-that-coming aspects of adoption is the first step toward building a strong family. 

A valuable resource for parents and professionals, this book provides useful strategies for facing the challenges posed by adopted children. The inclusion of real stories from real people adds heart and encouragement, offering hope for the future of the entire family.

Most adopted children and their families will, sooner or later, encounter the challenges of dealing with unresolved attachment issues or early traumatic experiences. New Families, Old Scripts is an accessible introduction to understanding these challenges and helping children and their families to develop a shared language and understanding of one another. The accessible combination of theoretical approaches and practical advice makes New Families, Old Scripts an ideal resource for social workers and adoptive or foster parents.

Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience after Trauma and Neglect. Deborah Gray, $29.95

Adopted children who have suffered trauma and neglect have structural brain change, as well as specific developmental and emotional needs. They need particular care to build attachment and overcome trauma.

This book provides professionals with the knowledge and advice they need to help adoptive families build positive relationships and help children heal. It explains how neglect, trauma and prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol affect brain and emotional development, and explains how to recognize these effects and attachment issues in children. It also provides ways to help children settle into new families and home and school approaches that encourage children to flourish. The book also includes practical resources such as checklists, questionnaires, assessments and tools for professionals including social workers, child welfare workers and mental health workers.

This book will be an invaluable resource for professionals working with adoptive families and will support them in nurturing positive family relationships and resilient, happy children. It is ideal as a child welfare text or reference book and will also be of interest to parents.

Nurturing Attachments: Supporting Children who are Fostered or Adopted. Kim Golding, $33.95

This valuable tool for parents and adoption professionals presents an accessible overview of attachment theory and a step-by-step approach to developing resilience and emotional growth.

Nurturing Attachments Training Resource: Running Parenting Groups for Adoptive Parents and Foster or Kinship Carers. Kim Golding, $158.95

Nurturing Attachments Training Resource is a complete group programme containing everything you need to run training and support sessions for adoptive parents, as well as residential, foster, or kinship carers. Based on attachment theory, this rich resource provides an authoritative set of ideas for therapeutically parenting children along with all the guidance you will need to implement the training.

The training resource includes theoretical content and process notes for facilitators, and a range of activities supported by a CD-ROM with photocopiable reflective diary sheets, activity sheets and handouts. It is structured into 3 modules with 6 sessions per module. Module 1: Provides an understanding of attachment theory, patterns of attachment and an introduction to therapeutic parenting. Module 2: Introduces the House Model of Parenting, providing guidance on how to help the children experience the family as a secure base. Module 3: Continues exploring the House Model of Parenting, with consideration of how parents can both build a relationship with the children and manage their behaviour.

Supporting Development in Internationally Adopted Children. Deborah Hwa-Froelich, $42.95

This is the evidence-based resource professionals need to fully understand the development of children adopted from abroad, make appropriate recommendations and referrals, and choose interventions that ensure the best outcomes. Professionals working with internationally adopted children will get in-depth, research-based chapters on 7 key aspects of development for children adopted from abroad:

• physical growth, health and motor development
• social-emotional development
• cognitive development
• self-regulation, attention and memory development
• hearing, speech and feeding development
• pre-linguistic, receptive and expressive language development; social communication development.

With the clear and helpful referral indicators in each chapter, it's much easier for professionals to make educated decisions about whether a child needs further assessment. And the diverse case studies and lists of key points make the book's critical takeaways easy to remember and implement. A must-have for a wide range of professionals— including early interventionists, educators, SLPs, therapists, pediatricians, and social workers— this book is the key to appropriate services that ensure the best outcomes for children adopted from abroad.

Thinking Psychologically about Children Who Are Looked After and Adopted: Space for Reflection. Kim Golding, Helen Dent, Ruth Nissim & Liz Stott, editors, $75.99

Assessment, intervention and living with children who are looked after or adopted all require an understanding of psychology and its application. Informed by research, practice and psychological theory, this volume provides an overview of the area and considers the context for helping children change and develop. It goes on to describe in detail the techniques and approaches used by clinicians, and explains how interventions can be developed and adapted for children and young people living in residential, foster and adoptive care. With its multi-disciplinary approach, Thinking Psychologically about Children Who Are Looked After and Adopted will appeal to all professionals involved in the care and education of placed children. It will also be of interest to policy makers and lecturers and students of social work.

Understanding and Meeting the Nine Most Important Emotional Needs of Foster and Adopted Children. Bryan Post & Juli Alvarado, $25.95 DVD 40 minutes

By meeting these nine basic emotional needs you will see a reduction in disrupted placements and an increase in families and children feeling supported. The systems for children in care must have up to date knowledge of the experiences of children the challenges that these families face. This 40 minute educational DVD workshop will help social workers in providing more effective support to the families they work with.

When Adoptions Go Wrong: Psychological and Legal Issues of Adoption Disruption. Lita Linzer Schwatz, $18.50

When Adoptions Go Wrong examines the psychological and forensic aspects of adoption with an emphasis on how negative events can affect children and the families that choose to adopt them and how to prevent those events from happening.

Working with Adoptive Parents: Research, Theory, and Therapeutic Interventions. Edited by Virginia Brabender & April Fallon, $61.00

Working with Adoptive Parents gathers the current research and best practices on successful interventions in working with adoptive families and translates it into practical applications for therapists to use with this population. The book’s strengths-based perspective shows how the adoptive parent might beneficially approach the tasks of parenting and how human service professionals can work with the adoptive parent. With a focus on increasing understanding and cultural competence around adoptive parents, the authors help mental health professionals work effectively with the particular needs of adoptive children and their parents.