Oh So Conspicuous

Earlier I mentioned that we would most likely have to continue with online classes for some or all of our remaining training hours. Our social worker recommended Adoption Learning Partners, a so-far wonderful resource that has some general and some very specific classes for those folks adopting or already created adoptive families. You go through a series of slides with audio, some ask you to make notes within the application during the session, and then you are asked five short essay questions at the end to ensure you did take in the important aspects. A pass is not automatic – your notes/answers are sent to ALP and someone reviews your course before releasing a certificate. The certificate has our names, the course, and how many hours it counts for.

The first online course we completed was Conspicuous Families (1.5 hours) because it touched on a few things that we have been thinking about.

We will be the definition of a conspicuous family if/when we are matched with a child. All the children in the South Africa program eligible for adoption are Black. In fact, all of the children placed with our local agency are Black, so even if we had not chosen international adoption, D and I knew we needed to educate ourselves on what it meant to be a transracial family.

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Toddler Training

This weekend D and I attended our first training session for our adoption. Our local agency requires 10 hours for all home studies. They prefer that as much of the training as possible be done in-person vs. online seminars, which are also available. We would also like to do our training in person because we can ask more questions, hear back from other prospective adoption parents, etc. The local agency warned us that their international-specific classes tend to get cancelled due to low enrollment, but did recommend a toddler-centric class since that is the age range we’re looking to be approved for. We enrolled immediately and got quite a bit out of it.