If you have completed an adoption homestudy and would like to have your information forwarded to this child's worker, contact us.

KAITLYN (7/98) is a bright child. She loves to read, and recently, she had the opportunity to participate in a reading competition where she did very well. Her love of horses is just as strong as ever, she tells us. In addition to her strong reading skills, another of Kaitlyn’s strength for her adoptive family to encourage and build upon is her academic abilities and potential. Although she is about a year behind in school due to haphazard attendance and the lack of an educational focus in her life prior to coming into foster care, Kaitlyn does not have any learning problems. She will benefit greatly when she has a permanent family that values education and will encourage and praise her efforts, while working closely with teachers and other educators to help her catch up.

Kaitlyn, who came into foster care in late 2004, is legally free for adoption. Because Kaitlyn’s lack of personal safety skills and lack of boundaries continue to be challenging, her adoptive folk(s) must be able to develop a specific safety plan at home and at school that provides a high level of adult (parent or teacher) supervision to help her be successful.

Currently, Kaitlyn is doing really well in therapy. Her treatment program includes individual and group counseling where she is learning good safety skills, strengthening her personal boundaries, working through issues of past trauma, and dealing with her feelings of grief, anger, and rejection. Kaitlyn still benefits from taking medication at times to help her sleep and lessen her nightmares.

It would be a demonstration of love and acceptance for Kaitlyn’s adoptive folks to participate with her in family counseling during her transition into their home, and perhaps for some extended period of time after that.

While Kaitlyn should be an only child, her worker will also consider those qualified families where she would be the youngest of much older siblings (especially sisters) who can model healthy boundaries for her. Kaitlyn also has to have adoptive folk(s) who have a good grasp of the residual behaviors of children who have suffered past abuse. Setting clear rules and limits and following through with consequences for misbehavior will be important, as well as offering her limited choices whenever possible. Such choices can help her to feel a healthy sense of control in her life, which she has not had before. Keys to helping Kaitlyn include having kind, patient, non-judgmental parent(s) who can talk to her in matter-of-fact ways about difficult subjects. Kaitlyn’s heritage is Caucasian and Native American (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), and she will be counting on her adoptive parents to be proud of her heritage and to help her stay connected to her roots.


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