When Birth Parents Struggle with Addiction, Mental Health, or Intellectual Disabilities

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Are your child's birth parents struggling with addiction, mental illness, or intellectual disability? If so, join us for this discussion with Teresa Bradley, a psychotherapist with over 17 years of experience in addiction counseling and mental health. She is a Master Addiction Counselor, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, and clinical trainer at Amerigroup.

In this episode, we discuss:

Substance Abuse Disorders

• What are some of the challenges that adoptive or foster parents might expect to see when a birth parent is struggling with a substance abuse disorder (SAD) and not able to raise this child?
  • How are those issues different for relative caregivers, like grandparents raising grandchildren?
• At what age should we start talking to the kids in our care about their parents’ challenges with substance abuse? How do we bring it up? How do we decide what to share and when?
• How can parents address that emotional fallout and deal with their own expectations, triggers, or negative feelings about the birth parents’ SAD?
  • For relative caregivers, especially grandparents raising grandchildren, adding layers of guilt, shame, and disappointment.
• How might an open adoption relationship change across a birth parents’ journey through SAD? How should adoptive parents approach openness in their adoption when SAD is a known issue?
• What do you suggest parents or relatives do to process their feelings?

Mental Health Challenges or Intellectual Disabilities

• What are some of the specific challenges that adoptive or foster parents might expect when they are trying to support a child of parents with mental illness or intellectual difficulties?
• How can parents explain a birth parent’s challenges to children? When? How?
• What are some of the questions kids might have but cannot voice?
• How do we address a child’s concern that they will “get” this mental illness without scaring the child?
• Is this a good reason to limit contact with birth parents?
• How might an adoptive or foster parent talk to children and youth about the birth parents’ ability to connect or maintain a relationship?
• When a kinship caregiver has a pre-existing relationship with this birth parent, how do they talk about the challenges and how their relationship changes in light of their struggles?
• What other issues do we need to consider to maintain a relationship with the birth parents while keeping the child safe and feeling cherished and supported?

Resources:

• How Do You Manage Relationships with Birth Parents with Substance Use Disorders?
• Open Adoption
• Working with Birth Parents for the Child’s Best Interests

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Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
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