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Mental Health Counseling

Why Choose The Barker Adoption Foundation’s Counseling Program?

At The Barker Adoption Foundation, we are dedicated to providing compassionate and specialized counseling services tailored to the unique needs of adoptive families. Here’s why our counseling program stands out:

  1. Expertise in Adoption-related Trauma: Our therapists are trained to help families differentiate between trauma reactions and clinical disorders, recognizing the profound emotional impact of adoption-related separations. We emphasize sensitive and informed interventions to support healing and resilience.
  2. Affordable Mental Health Care: We believe that everyone deserves access to affordable mental health care. Our group counseling practice is partnered with numerous health insurance companies, ensuring that families can access specialty therapy without financial burden.
  3. Personal Connection to Adoption: Many of our therapists have personal experiences with adoption, either as adoptees themselves or through unique connections to adoption. This personal understanding enriches our approach and deepens our empathy towards adoptive families.
  4. Comprehensive Counseling Services: Our therapists address a wide range of issues including:
    • Grief and loss related to adoption
    • Trauma, anxiety, and depression
    • Identity development
    • Familial conflict and/or Family Counseling
    • ADHD and learning disabilities
    • Neurodevelopmental issues stemming from prenatal drug exposure
    • Emotional and behavioral dysregulation
    • Search and reunion support
    • Facilitating contact between adoptive families and birth families
    • School and social skills challenges
    • Bonding and attachment therapy to facilitate transitions into adoptive homes
    • Support for pre-adopt families who are waiting for a child

If you’re seeking compassionate and effective counseling services for your family’s unique needs, The Barker Adoption Foundation is here to support you. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you on your adoption journey.

Adoption carries unique implications for adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents.  Themes of grief, attachment, trauma, and questions about culture and identity are common.  These issues can come up at any stage, so adoption competent therapy can be helpful to children, adolescents, adults, and families. The impact of relinquishment and adoption can be vast and unpredictable. Adoption-competent therapy, which emphasizes education, empathy, and tailored support, plays a crucial role in navigating this complexity.

Our Adoption Competent Therapists complete specialized training geared towards supporting those touched by adoption.  They recognize the multifaceted nature of adoption and are able to address relational dynamics, reunion challenges, and more. Our therapists use a trauma-informed lens understanding that early experiences shape implicit memories, even if verbal recollection is absent, such as the primal loss experienced by newborns separated from their biological mother.

Why is adoption competency crucial? Therapists who are not specially trained in adoption may minimize the importance of the adoption experience and may lack depth of understanding of how each unique adoption story and experience may impact a person.   Misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis of mental health conditions are risks when trauma symptoms are mistaken for mental illness, potentially leading to unnecessary medication and the wrong kind of treatment.

Barker Adoption - Parents Swing Child