As we continue to be busy working with prospective adoptive families as they move through this amazing and often challenging process, we have also put much of our energy toward various outreach efforts.
Last week Jenny and Claire attended the “Focus on the Child” statewide adoption conference. It proved to be very interesting. One of the speakers, Hal Kaufman, President of My Adoption Advisor, gave us some great ideas about birth parent outreach we hope will prove successful for AOW families. One of the things Hal emphasized was how the methods of communication and information gathering have drastically changed from one generation to the next. The current birth parent population is part of the “millennial generation” or “net generation”. If a millennial wants to find out information one of first things they do is log on to the internet whether by laptop, phone or PC. To keep up with the trends AOW is considering expanding the waiting families portion of our website by providing a link for each family (who decides to participate) to a blog and/or a short video slide show containing information from your profile. This idea is in its infancy so if you have any feedback, let us know. As always it is up to each family to decide how much information they want to share and how they want to share it. There would be no additional costs to an adoptive parent for these services. AOW would produce the video slide show and help you create a blog. If this all sounds wild—you are probably a Gen X-er. Don’t worry. Jenny scored a 96 out of 100 on the “How Millennial Are You?” quiz so you are in good hands. If you want to find out how millennial you are you can take the quiz too. Just click on the following link: http://pewresearch.org/millennials/quiz/,
We have also been doing a lot of birth parent outreach the old fashioned way—by pounding the pavement. Jenny recently spoke to a group of high school students at Iowa-Grant High School in Livingston and met with staff from Southwest Technical College in Fennimore. In addition she distributed our information to the hospital, university and reproductive center (similar to Planned Parenthood) in Platteville and Dodgeville. We have also been reaching out to other professionals throughout the state such as professors, teachers, social workers, public health nurses, family law attorneys, etc. If you know of any people in your area that would benefit from having AOW’s information please send us their contact information and we will get in touch with them. AOW cannot nor would we ever give outside resources your name or any identifying information unless we have an authorized release of information from you to do so.
Jenny is currently in Green Lake for the Wisconsin School Social Workers Association’s (WSSWA) annual conference where AOW will be the only adoption agency with a display. It will be a great opportunity to connect with middle school and high school social workers who often don’t have a lot of information about adoption and adoption resources.
Lastly, we wanted to let you know that our office will be closed on Thursday November 24th and Friday November 25th to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.
Please know that the lines of communication are always open if you want to ask any questions about AOW, how we operate and what type(s) of outreach we do for prospective birth parents. Further, if you are and AOW adoptive family and are feeling disconnected or anxious during your adoption journey, this is especially when we want to hear from you. Our goal is to match birth and adoptive parents to create successful relationships and help you build your family through adoption.
Thanks for starting a blog AOW! :)
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