Adoption Central England (ACE) is celebrating three years as a regional adoption agency supporting families in Solihull, Coventry, Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire to provide children with a loving permanent adoptive home.
In the past year ACE has launched its independent and confidential support service for birth relatives called Family Connexions. The service is available to any birth family member where children in the family have been adopted and supports birth parents through the legal processes involved in adoption and in making necessary life changes.
ACE provides continued support for adoptive families and children. This has recently been further enhanced through their DDP (Dyadic Development Psychotherapy practice) certification. This practice is an approach to preparing and working with adoptive families that is underpinned by an understanding of childhood trauma. This in turn helps adoptive parents to parent their adopted children in such a way that recognises this trauma but also allows for secure and loving attachments can be formed.
Throughout 2020, ACE has faced the challenges of COVID-19 and adapted to new ways of working ensuring adoptive families and children continue to have access to the support they need. Training is now delivered virtually and with an increase in enquiries, ACE has continued to place children with adoptive parents making sure the necessary coronavirus precautions are in place and keeping in close contact with families through telephone calls and online meetings.
To find out more about what it’s like to adopt through ACE, adopter case studies are featured on the ACE Facebook page, providing an insight into the adoption process and what people can expect from the adoption process. Visit the ACE Facebook page @aceadoption.
Solihull Council cabinet member for Children’s Services, Councillor Ken Meeson, said: “Supporting our adoptive children to have a safe and loving home is a key priority for Solihull and ACE has adapted to the challenges presented by COVID-19 to ensure we can continue to support our adoptive families throughout this time.
“ACE has also introduced a new service, Family Connexions, to support birth families throughout the adoptive process alongside being DDP certified.
“As the first adoption service to receive DDP certification it is a great credit to ACE and means adoptive families and children are receiving support and a better outcome. We can be more reassured that all our adoptive parents know what it means to parent ’therapeutically’ and they can be confident that when they contact ACE that social workers have DDP knowledge and will be able to support them with understanding and empathy.”
Liz Elgar, Assistant Director of Safeguarding & Family Support at Herefordshire County Council and chair of the Executive Board that oversee the work of the regional adoption agency, added: “ACE has gone from strength to strength during the three years since it became established. ACE has continually developed its practice to ensure it can provide a quality service for children across the five authorities that make up ACE and has stepped up to the challenges everyone across the sector has faced in the last year due to COVID-19, to ensure services have continued to be provided.”
In order to find the best possible families for children ACE does not set a bar on who can adopt. The service welcomes enquiries from all sections of the community and is particularly looking to recruit more families for sibling groups of 2 or 3 children. Also, older single children usually up to the age of 8 years are waiting for families. There can be many advantages of adopting a sibling group apart from the obvious reward of being able to keep brothers and sisters together. The needs of older children are invariable better known and understood which means that support services may already be in place or can be more readily accessed to help adoptive parents as they start to share their lives with the child.
If you would like to know more adoption please go to the ACE website enquiries@aceadoption.com or contact ACE on 0300 369 0556.
The Family Connexions service can be contacted at: familyconnexions@aceadoption.com