Numerous reasons cause adopted teenagers to reconnect with their birth family via Facebook, creating new challenges for adoption today and tomorrow. Incorporating theory, practice, anecdotes, metaphors, diagrams, models and case studies, this accessible book, written by an experienced adopter, clearly explains these complex issues. It maps connections between trauma, child development, grief, adolescence, contact, truth telling and parenting styles; offering fresh perspectives and strategies for parents and professionals.

Each adoption is a unique event for the people who are personally involved, or for those who feel connected to the parents-to-be. The adoption period takes you to a new world and can wear you down emotionally if you are not prepared for what can be expected. It is not the regular pregnancy with which some people like to compare it. It is a pregnancy between cold bureaucracy on one side and the daily feelings of vulnerable tenderness on the other. Many books have been written about the ins and outs of pregnancies but there was never a book to prepare oneself for that very special time we call adoption. Geeri Bakker takes you there with her positive attitude and her sense of humor. She takes you along the unpredictable, uncomfortable and sometimes seemingly endless path that is the adoption procedure. THE ADOPTION HANDBOOK teaches adoptive parents-to-be how to face stress in its many appearances during the sometimes dark and winding road that leads to their adoptive child. To illustrate the book, Geeri Bakker shares her own story of the procedures that she and her husband endured when adopting their two children. It is not the (Dutch) procedure that makes this story so touching and at times breathtaking. It is the way that stress burrows into hearts that desperately wish to adopt a child; something that anyone going through an adoption procedure will recognize. THE ADOPTION HANDBOOK helps adoptive parents acknowledge their feelings of stress during their long-term 'pregnancy' and deal with them: facing the main goal, and feeling energetically able, both physically and mentally, to 'conceive' their child when the time is right. It is only normal that pregnant couples gather information to prepare themselves. So now it is time that adoptive parents prepare themselves, as well. For the well-being of this special child, given to you to have, hold, love, cherish, and to let it grow and grow up in your family.

The Foster Parenting Manual is a comprehensive guide offering proven, friendly advice for novice and experienced parents alike. Distilling many years' experience into one book, John DeGarmo combines his own wisdom with that of fellow foster parents. He describes what to expect from the process, how to access help and how to ensure the best care for your child. He tackles thorny issues such as children's use of the Internet and social media, managing contact with birth parents and how to support your child at school. Most importantly, he provides advice designed to help your child feel safe, secure and loved. The Foster Parenting Manual offers seasoned, sympathetic advice that will be valued by foster parents and the professionals who support them.

Innocent is the shocking true story of little Molly and Kit, siblings, aged 3 years and 18 months, who are brought into care as an emergency after suffering non-accidental injuries. Aneta and Filip, the children's parents, are distraught when their children are taken into care. Aneta maintains she is innocent of harming them, while Filip appears bewildered and out of his depth. It's true the family has never come to the attention of the social services before and little Kit and Molly appear to have been well looked after, but Kit has a broken arm and bruises on his face. Could it be they were a result of a genuine accident as Aneta is claiming? Both children become sick with a mysterious illness while, experienced foster carer, Cathy, is looking after them. Very worried, she asks for more hospital tests to be done. They've already had a lot. When Cathy's daughter, Lucy, becomes ill too she believes she has found the cause of Kit and Molly's illness and the parents aren't to blame. However, nothing could be further from the truth and what comes to light is far more sinister and shocking.

There are thousands of grandparents raising their grandchildren in the United Kingdom, the majority as a consequence of parental drug use or mental health issues. This book recounts the real-life stories of grandparent carers who chose to put their own lives on hold so that their loved ones can be properly cared for. Whilst most grandparent carers remain as unsupported informal carers, some seek to formalise their position by becoming Social Services Kinship Carers or achieve legal routes to independent care as Special Guardians or with a Child Arrangement Order. Whether formal or informal, full-time grandparent carers face life-changing futures. Immediate concerns are work, child care, the behaviour of the child, contact with the birth parents and financial support, and there is often no clear path to learning their rights and available support. There is also the challenge involved in balancing their bonds with their adult children while protecting their grandchildren. In this book, grandparents talk in detail about these issues and of how professionals and services have at times helped and not helped. These candid stories also explore how moving to live with grandparents can be experienced by both child and carer as simultaneously a gain and a loss. The stories offer support, and the book also includes professional advice to encourage grandparents to acknowledge their value, accept their limitations, develop realistic expectations about what they can and cannot achieve, and recognise that all successes should be celebrated.

From Torey Hayden, the number one Sunday Times bestselling author of One Child comes The Invisible Girl, a deeply moving true account of a young teen with a troubling obsession and an extraordinary educational psychologist's sympathy and determination to help. Eloise is a vibrant and charming young teen with a deeply caring nature, but she also struggles with a worrying delusion. She's been moved from home to home, and her social workers have difficulty dealing with her habit of running away. After experiencing violence, neglect and sexual abuse from people she should have been able to trust, Eloise has developed complex behavioural needs. She struggles to separate fact from fiction, leading to confusion for the social workers trying to help her. After Torey learns of Eloise's background she hopes that some gentle care and attention can help Eloise gain some sense of security in her life. Can Torey and the other social workers provide the loving attention that has so far been missing in Eloise's life, or will she run away from them too?

A family built, a family lost. Truth Has a Different Shape is a story of the power of compassion, of love and loss, revelations and relationship, and the evolution of self. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Kari O'Driscoll was taught that strength and stoicism were one and the same. She was also taught that a girl's job was to take care of everyone else. For decades, she believed these ideas, doing everything she could to try and keep the remaining parts of her family together, systematically anticipating disaster and fixing catastrophes one by one. Truth Has a Different Shape is one woman's meditation on how societal and familial expectations of mothering influenced her sense of self and purpose, as well as her ideas about caretaking. As an adult, finding herself a caretaker both to her own children and to her aging parents, O'Driscoll finally reckons with the childhood trauma that shaped her world. Adoption, loss, and divorce defined her approach to motherhood, but in Truth Has a Different Shape, O'Driscoll finally pushes back. This memoir tracks her progress as she discovers how to truly care for those she loves without putting herself at risk, using mindfulness and compassion as tools for healing both herself and her difficult relationships.