Purpose of this guide
This guide is designed to help child welfare professionals lead conversations while watching When
We Have Each Other: Teen Adoption Stories. It offers practical strategies to spark reflection, encourage
open discussion, normalize mixed feelings, and center youth voice and choice.
Who is the guide for?
This guide supports child welfare professionals and partners who facilitate small-group sessions
and individual conversations with resource families.
How to use this guide
Designed for conversations with:
- Youth: Guide thoughtful conversations with young people experiencing foster care who may
feel hesitant about adoption. - Families: Facilitate small-group conversations with foster and pre-adoptive parents engaged
in foster care or the adoption journey. - Professionals: Lead discussions with caseworkers, supervisors, and practitioners supporting
teens in foster care, and families parenting or considering foster care or adoption.
Goals
These sessions are designed to support reflection and emotional processing rather than evaluation
or persuasion. Conversations should acknowledge and normalize complex emotions such as hope,
uncertainty, grief, and commitment, while centering youth perspectives and lived experiences.
The topics are complex and personal, and the discussion questions are meant to be flexible. Facilitators
are encouraged to prioritize conversation depth and quality rather than the number of questions.
The facilitator’s role is to listen, validate experiences, and hold a supportive, respectful space.
- Youth: Prioritize choice and emotional safety, especially when engaging directly with young people.
- Families: Encourage realistic expectations, patience, and a consistent focus on youth perspectives.
- Professionals: Promote self-awareness and honest reflection on system challenges while
keeping discussions grounded in strengths, growth, and possibility
The goal is thoughtful reflection in an emotionally safe space. The goal is thoughtful reflection in an emotionally safe space.