Post-Adoption Services

A Comprehensive Approach for Parents of Children from Difficult Beginning

Ever Feel Like You Are Drowning With Your Hair On Fire?

The Attach Place was built just for you. We have created this program to help you with things you didn't quite realize you were getting into before you signed on that adoption line. With the right kind of support, you can begin to parent your child through an adjusted lens for their specific neurodiversity needs. Oh, yeah, we are all about you thriving at the same time, too. We believe we are all #bettertogether.

What you can expect?

When you come here, you can expect trauma-informed and experienced care. Together, we will develop a customized, comprehensive treatment plan for healing the wounded heart of your traumatized child from difficult beginnings.

Change is possible. Hope is at hand.

First, we begin with a comprehensive assessment and intake to evaluate your situation and family needs.

In this first session, we discuss and agree upon an individualized treatment plan for your family; and we will establish a schedule for parents to learn the best, brain-based strategies for regulation, connection, and loving correction for children experiencing attachment, neglect, and other abuse trauma.

Assess for referral to neurobehavioral movements specialist, play therapy, art therapy, grief therapy, and/or sandtray therapy.

If there is significant dysregulation in you or your child, then we may suggest Neurofeedback to lay the groundwork for success in future attachment and trauma therapies.

Secondly, we solidify and schedule treatment interventions.

Possibilities and Options

1. Theraplay Approved Practitioners (4-6 week cycle for each parent
2. Theraplay Practice Home Program
3. Coherent Narrative Therapy
4. Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
5. EMDR for Traumatized Children and Parents
6. Sibling Psychoeducation/Therapy
7. Online Love Matters Parenting 101 Core Course
8. Learn to Stop-Yelling 101
9. Join Love Matters Parenting Society Membership, a self-paced learning community of Therapeutic Parents
10. Join Love Matters Parenting Facebook Groups
11. Listen to Love Unmuted Podcasts
12. Advocacy for Individualized Education Plan (IEP) Support on school sites, as needed

Finally, on-going Therapeutic Parent Coaching will be scheduled.

Our goal is to continuously assess and bust parenting blocks, troubleshoot problem spots, detect attachment challenges in the parent/child relationship, and deepen your knowledge of therapeutic parenting principles that will last you a lifetime.

You are invited to participate in:
1. Free Monthly Love Matters Adoptive Parent Support Group
2. Love Matters Parenting for Adoptive Parents Blog
3. Online Love Matters Parenting Society Membership, self-paced learning community of Therapeutic Parents
4. Love Matters Facebook Support Group
5. Love Unmuted Podcast with Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Post-Adoption Program FAQs

What exactly is the treatment process?

Attachment challenge and Complex Developmental Trauma can be treated in a number of ways. As a matter of fact, there are so many approaches to this difficult set of symptoms that most parents are confused, frustrated, and overwhelmed when trying to find help for their child and their family. Many families have gone from one therapy approach to another, and another until their child is treatment averse and the parents are angry, exhausted, and hopeless.

Assessments for trauma, attachment, neurodevelopmental movements will be conducted.
Foremost, parents are the change agents in this treatment process. Treating the parents’ Posttraumatic Stress (also known as, Post-Adoption Stress) symptoms, depression, and anxiety is essential and must come before all else.
Parents are educated and trained in attachment parenting, therapeutic parenting techniques, and the neuroscience of attachment and complex trauma on developing brains.
All family members are supported to develop affect regulation skills. Neurofeedback is an excellent resource for correcting the fear-based brain of attachment challenged children and parents who are shaken in the parenting process.
Parents are coached to practice radical loving and firm structuring in order to create a safe environment for their child to begin the healing process.
Interventions, such as those used in Theraplay(c), and Trust-based Relational Intervention(c), are taught and encouraged to help the child bond and feel safe in the presence of caregivers.
Caregivers are encouraged to join The Love Matters Parenting Society annual membership for ongoing therapeutic parenting education and parent support.
The child is supported to attach with parents and to develop a coherent narrative with his/her parents in order to make sense of the past, ground in present reality, and prepare for a future of attached, loving relationships.
Attachment-based Therapy is used to create safety, attunement, family cohesion, and a lasting connection.

How much does it typically cost?

We wish we could say it was free because you deserve that if you are struggling with an attachment challenged child. However, we must charge a fee for our services. Again, the cost is highly variable and dependent upon the intensity and duration of treatment. Services can be calculated by an hourly rate or a monthly fee may be negotiated for a bundle of services at a reduced rate. Most families need a bundle of diverse services, so we are open to negotiating a reasonable extended payment plan. We will also work with insurance companies, post-adoption assistance programs, victim compensation programs, counties, mental health agencies, and state entities in order to get your child and family the help needed.

The California Victims of Crime Board (formerly CALVCP) may pay for our services. You do need to apply for this funding at http://vcgcb.ca.gov/victims. Your child’s social worker can help you with this process and there are advocates to help, too. Contact jen@attachplace.com for more information.

How long does treatment take?

The length of the treatment for children with attachment-challenge and complex developmental trauma is highly variable. Here are some of those variables: age of the child, degree of abuse and the number of attachment disruptions in the first two years of the child’s life. Other organic disabilities, degree of bonding between the parents and the child, amount of prior failed treatment strategies, and the ability of the parents to maintain regulated emotional states in the presence of their attachment-challenged child’s dysregulation: all of this will impact treatment length and success.

Since parents are the primary change agents in the life of their child, direct therapeutic interventions may take 6 months to 2 years or longer. Therapeutic parenting will be ongoing throughout each developmental milestone into adulthood.

In one of our first sessions with Ce, she told us that before we could work on our trauma and attachment-challenged child, we needed to work on me (Mom). I believe I may have audibly gasped. Work on “me”? I’M fine. I’M not the problem. I was oozing righteous indignation. Then came D-Day, when our parenting skills were failing us, and my mind desperately grasped for Ce’s pearls of wisdom. With no loss of life, limb, sanity, or self-respect, we witnessed a profound moment of therapeutic parenting success; our epiphany. What we’ve learned from Ce is that it isn’t about us not being good parents, or the right parents; it is about how to be this traumatized child’s parent. Ce’s daily blogs have been invaluable lessons on how to effectively, lovingly engage a traumatized child when they’re melting inside, and her calming words have had a way of talking me down from my ledge—reminding me that “love matters.”

Kim P.

Adoptive Mother