Learning and knowledge

Are you interested in deepening your understanding of how your adopted child will grow and develop as well as some of the challenges they may face? Adopt South offers a wide range of learning opportunities to pre-order and post-order families to help guide you through your parenting journey.

Face to face and virtual, our workshops and meet-ups are organised at times during the day and evening to meet the needs of family life. To make them accessible to families, our workshops are held in term time school hours, evenings or at the weekends.

Our learning programme is free and available to any family who has:

  • Adopted through Adopt South or one of our local authority partners in the region (Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, or Southampton).
  • Adopted with another agency and matched with a child from one of our local authority partners.
  • Adopted through another agency and currently live within our region.

To find out more about the range of learning, events and social opportunities we offer our families and young people, please explore our Universal Offer or browse our upcoming events.

We combine the latest research in childhood development with practical theories to equip you and your family with the skills to be flexible and responsive to your child's needs. Our programme includes:

  • Sessions on trauma, dysregulation, school transitions and life story work.
  • Therapeutic parenting courses on early childhood development including the basis of attachment theory, the PACE approach, the impact of trauma on a child’s brain and strategies to focus on how to best support your child.
  • Techniques for managing behaviours that may challenge in a way that is supportive and nurturing
  • Talks from guest speakers on mental health, sensory processing and EBSA (Emotionally Based School Avoidance), learning needs and Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA).
  • Innovative learning methods which use Virtual Reality (VR) for parents to experience and explore childhood scenarios in real life settings.

Our learning is delivered by a range of professionals in Adopt South including our experienced Adoption Support Team and our Training Team, who use Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) principles within their work, as well as psychology specialists from our Multi-Disciplinary Team. We also collaborate closely with Virtual School teams within our regional adoption agency partnership, inviting them to share their expertise with our families. Our Adoption Support Guide provides information on all our workshops and learning opportunities.

Parents also have access to a wide range of resources, as well as pre-recorded webinars and online programmes from CATCH, an information community hub. Please contact us for more details on resources available to you.