Too Many Losses Too Soon: Healing Begins with Being Heard
For children and youth impacted by foster care and adoption, the journey toward permanency can bring hope, connection and stability. But permanency does not erase what came before it.
Children and youth may carry experiences of separation, disrupted relationships and changes in family, community, culture and identity. These losses can be layered, complex and difficult to name, and every child will experience and respond to them differently.
In the October 8 webinar, Too Many Losses Too Soon: Healing Begins with Being Heard, C.A.S.E. CEO and co-founder Debbie Riley, LCMFT, explored how loss and grief can affect development, identity, relationships and mental health. She also shared adoption-competent strategies to help recruiters, social workers and other professionals recognize and respond to children’s grief and loss.
Understanding Ambiguous Loss
One important focus of the conversation was ambiguous loss, a form of loss that may not have a clear ending, or the rituals and recognition that typically accompany grief.
For children and youth impacted by foster care and adoption, relationships can change without disappearing entirely. A child may grieve a birth parent while continuing to have a relationship with them, miss siblings or extended family, lose connections to a community or culture or hold questions about people and experiences that remain an important part of their story.
These losses do not disappear when a child achieves permanency. Grief may surface and resurface at different developmental stages and in different ways.
Understanding what may be underneath a child’s emotions or behaviors can help professionals shift the question from “What is happening with this child?” to “What might this child be carrying?”
From Understanding to Support
Throughout the webinar, Debbie shared strategies professionals can use to create space for children and youth to express difficult emotions and respond in ways that acknowledge rather than minimize their experiences.
At the heart of that approach is a simple but powerful idea: children need to know that the adults around them are willing to hear their stories.
That does not mean having all the answers or trying to “fix” grief. It means listening without judgment or assumptions and recognizing that feelings about loss, family, identity and permanency can be complicated — and can coexist.
Listening to Lived Experience
Debbie was joined by three panelists with lived experience in foster care and adoption, who reflected on loss, grief, identity, being heard, and the supports that made — or could have made — a meaningful difference in their own journeys.
Their perspectives reinforced why lived experience must inform how professionals and systems support children and families. They also underscored a principle central to C.A.S.E.’s work: children and youth need space to understand and make meaning of their own stories, and the adults supporting them need the skills to listen.
Continuing to Build Adoption Competency
For recruiters, social workers, mental health providers and other professionals supporting children and families, understanding grief and loss is not separate from the work of achieving permanency. It is part of the work.
Professionals who want to continue building their adoption competency can explore additional C.A.S.E. resources:
Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens. Co-authored by Debbie Riley, this signature C.A.S.E. resource explores the complex emotional and developmental experiences of adopted adolescents, including loss, identity, relationships and belonging.
Build your adoption competency through NTI. C.A.S.E.’s foundational National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) offers free, web-based training to strengthen the knowledge and skills of professionals serving children, youth and families impacted by adoption, foster care and kinship care.
Achieving permanency is an important milestone. Supporting children and families’ well-being as they navigate all that came before — and all that comes after — is part of the lifelong journey.
Debbie Riley is co-founder and CEO of the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.), a national leader in mental health services for the foster care, kinship and adoption community.
Thank you for your commitment to supporting youth and families. Together, we make permanency possible for every child … no matter their story.
