Child Welfare Information Gateway

Children’s Bureau/ACYF

1250 Maryland Avenue, SW

Eighth Floor

Washington, DC 20024

800.394.3366

Email: info@childwelfare.gov

Use your smartphone to http://www.childwelfare.gov

access this factsheet online.

FACTSHEET 

FOR FAMILIES

February 2012

Helping Your Foster 

Child Transition to 

Your Adopted Child 

What’s Inside:

• Talking with children about the 

changes 

• Helping children understand their 

histories and losses

• Helping children cope with trauma

and loss 

• Helping children transfer attachments 

• Conclusion

• Resources

If you’re a foster parent adopting a child, children, 

or youth currently in your care, you’ll need to 

help your child make the emotional adjustment 

to being an adopted child. While you may 

appreciate the difference in the child’s role within 

your family, children and youth may not clearly 

comprehend the difference between being a foster 

child versus being an adopted child in the same 

family. There are specific steps you can take to help 

children understand these changes. 
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This factsheet was written for foster/

adoptive parents, like you, who are helping 

their child transition from foster care to 

adoption. 

Talking With Children 

About the Changes 

The adoption adjustment period can be a 

vulnerable time as children are confronted 

with the reality that they will not return 

to their birth family. While they may have 

seemed fine and even happy through the 

foster/adoption process, children may cling 

to a last hope of reunification. That’s why 

it’s important to engage the child in the 

adoption process and listen carefully to 

what he or she has to say. 

Children often have questions about their 

birth family, and you may need to address 

the status of your child’s birth family. It 

is crucial to tell the truth—even when 

it’s difficult—and to validate the child’s 

experiences and feelings. There are several 

ways adoptive parents and siblings can deal 

with the feelings about birth families that 

may arise and, together, help the adopted 

child or youth integrate and feel secure. 

• Acknowledge that adoption is important 

but that relationships are more 

important. While the names on paper 

might be different, the relationships 

already in place will remain the same. 

• Encourage open discussion about any 

ongoing contact among birth family 

members, the child or youth, and 

members of your family.

• Create regular activities, events, or 

anniversaries to celebrate the adoption. 

Be sure to discuss the plans with your 

child to ensure he or she is comfortable 

with the attention.

• Plan regular events and activities 

where the focus is not on adoption 

but on building family memories and 

relationships. 

• Develop relationships with other foster/

adoptive children, youth, and families. 

Sharing common experiences, challenges, 

and successes will ease the feeling of 

being isolated or “different” (Adoption 

Resources of Wisconsin, 2009). 

Open adoption, in which some kind 

of contact is maintained between the 

adoptive and birth families, may help 

the child adjust to being adopted. 

Maintaining contact with the child’s 

relatives may help a child understand 

the realities of the birth family’s 

situation and ease his or her worries 

about them. By acknowledging the 

importance of that relationship, foster/

adoptive parents build the child’s selfrespect and help the child open up 

about past experiences and start to heal 

old wounds. 

For more information about open 

adoption, visit the Information Gateway 

website: http://www.childwelfare.gov/

adoption/adoptive/contacts.cfm

WHAT IS AN OPEN ADOPTION?
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Children and youth learn best through 

repetition. Conversation about the 

differences between the foster family and 

the adoptive family may need to be repeated 

in a variety of ways. It is best if these 

conversations take place during activities 

that foster bonding and create memories.

• Help the child talk about the perceived 

difference in his or her own words. Ask 

open-ended questions, such as, “How do 

you think being adopted is different from 

being in foster care?” or “What do you 

think the biggest difference is, now that 

you’re adopted?” 

• Help the child draw analogies to 

something in his or her life. For instance, 

you might say, “This is like the time 

when ...”

There are a number of changes in status 

that will affect the child, and these should 

be discussed, depending on the child’s 

developmental level. 

• To help the child understand legal 

differences between foster care and 

adoption, you might talk about how the 

adoption court hearing is different from 

other court hearings during foster care. 

Some parents use marriage as an analogy 

for adoption and say the court hearing 

is like a marriage ceremony, and the 

adoption certificate is like the marriage 

certificate that makes the relationship 

legal and permanent. (Be prepared for 

questions about divorce.)

• Youth might need help in understanding 

the financial differences inherent in 

foster care and adoption. Adoption 

assistance payments might be compared 

to an allowance; older children may be 

able to understand the payments as costs 

to meet the child’s needs (Laws, 2004). 

• To help children understand parenting 

differences between foster care and 

adoption, you might remind the child 

that when in foster care, a permission 

slip signed by an agency caseworker was 

required for field trips, sleeping over 

at a friend’s house, or traveling across 

State lines. After adoption, you can give 

permission for these activities.

Another way to explain the changes from 

foster care to adoption is to talk about the 

roles and responsibilities that different 

parents and agencies play in a child or 

youth’s life. (See diagram on following 

page.)
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Birth parents give 

children life, gender, 

physical appearance, 

predisposition for certain 

diseases, intellectual 

potential, temperament, 

and talents. These aspects 

never change.

State/courts/agencies 

provide financial 

responsibility, safety, and 

security; make major 

decisions; and are legally 

responsible for the child’s 

actions. The court/agency 

plays this role while 

children are in foster care. 

Foster parents provide 

love, discipline, daily 

needs, transportation, life 

skills, values, and more. 

Foster parents play this 

role in the child welfare 

system (Fahlberg, 1991).

Adoptive parents 

assume the rights and 

responsibilities of the 

foster parents and the 

State/courts/agencies. 

Helping Children 

Understand Their 

Histories and Losses

When children or youth spend extended 

periods of time in out-of-home care, 

memories of significant events and people 

can be lost. Children may not have a 

historical sense of self: who they are, where 

they’ve lived, the people they lived with, 

where they went to school, memories 

of favorite items like stuffed animals or 

blankets, and more. This can have negative 

developmental outcomes (Gustavsson 

& MacEachron, 2008). Parents can help 

children review and understand their 

previous life experiences to clarify what 

happened to them in the past and help 

them integrate those experiences so they 

will have greater self-understanding.

Where Is Your Child on the 

Permanency Continuum? 

Children’s answers to the following 

questions will vary depending on their 

developmental stage, but their responses can 

guide you or your child’s therapists or social 

workers in helping your child overcome past 

traumas and achieve feelings of permanency 

(Henry, 2005). 

• Who am I? (question related to identity)

• What happened to me? (question related 

to loss and/or trauma)

• Where am I going? (question related to 

attachment)
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• How will I get there? (question related to 

relationships)

• When will I know I belong? (question 

related to connection and safety) 

For more information about helping 

your child deal with trauma, visit Child 

Welfare Information Gateway: http://www.

childwelfare.gov/systemwide/mentalhealth/

common/trauma.cfm

Helpful Activities and Resources 

Families can help children in answering 

these powerful questions and in 

understanding their unique history in many 

ways. Lifebooks, ecomaps, lifemaps, and 

lifepaths are tools used by foster/adoptive 

parents and adoption professionals to help 

children and youth answer questions about 

how they came to be separated from their 

birth family and where, ultimately, they 

belong. These tools can help children build 

a bridge between foster care and adoption.

A lifebook is an account of the child’s life in 

words, pictures, photographs, and electronic 

documents. While lifebooks can take many 

forms, each child’s lifebook is unique. You 

can assist in creating a lifebook by gathering 

information about a child and taking 

pictures of people and places that are—or 

were—meaningful. Working together on 

a lifebook can bring parents and children 

together. For free lifebook page samples, 

visit the Iowa Foster & Adoptive Parents 

Association website: http://www.ifapa.org/

resources/IFAPA_Lifebook_Pages.asp

• Pictures of the child’s birth parents 

and/or birth relatives and information 

about visits

• Developmental milestones: first 

words, first smile, first steps, etc.

• Common childhood diseases and 

immunizations, injuries, illnesses, or 

hospitalizations

• Pictures of current or past foster 

family and extended family members 

who were/are significant to the child

• Pictures of previous foster families, 

their homes, and their pets 

• Names of teachers and schools 

attended, report cards, and school 

activities 

• Special activities such as Scouting, 

clubs, sports, or camping 

• Faith-based activities

• What a child did when he/she was 

happy or excited and ways a child 

showed affection

• Cute things the child did, nicknames, 

favorite friends, activities, and toys

• Birthdays, religious celebrations, or 

trips taken with the foster family

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN 

A CHILD’S LIFEBOOK

Because a lifebook may contain personal 

and painful information about the child or 

youth’s past, it is not intended to be shared 

outside the family. It’s merely a resource to 

help the child cope with the transition from 
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temporary to permanent care. For more 

information on lifebooks, visit the 

Information Gateway website: http://www.

childwelfare.gov/adoption/adopt_parenting/

lifebooks.cfm

W.I.S.E. UP Powerbooks help children 

answer awkward or difficult questions asked 

by classmates or new friends. Foster care 

and adoption are nothing to be ashamed of, 

but questions like, “Why are you in foster 

care?” can cause added anxiety and stress for 

children and youth. The W.I.S.E. UP series 

helps children understand that they have 

options about how much and what kinds 

of information to disclose when answering 

these questions. The books offer example 

questions and responses. 

• W stands for “Walk away.”

• I stands for saying, “It’s private.”

• S stands for “Share” some information 

about adoption or about one’s own story.

• E stands for “Educate” others about 

adoption with correct facts.

W.I.S.E. UP Powerbooks and similar 

resources can be found at the Center for 

Adoption Support and Education website: 

http://www.adoptionsupport.org/pub/index.

php

An ecomap is a visual representation of the 

principal people and activities in a child or 

youth’s life. An ecomap may have a circle in 

the middle of the page with a stick figure of 

a child in it, along with the question “Why 

am I here?” Lines extend from the circle 

like spokes to other circles representing the 

court, other foster families, siblings, school, 

or to topics such as “things I like to do” to 

represent what and who is important to 

a child and to help the child understand 

how he or she came to live with the foster/

adoptive family. 

Social media sites like Facebook, 

MySpace, and Twitter have changed 

the face of communication today. 

Although statistics are not yet available 

to document the number of adopted 

people and birth parents who find each 

other through these sites, anecdotal 

evidence suggests that it is a growing 

trend. If your child is a regular user of 

social media, you may want to explore 

positive ways to use Facebook and 

other sites to maintain healthy contact 

between your child and his or her birth 

family members. 

SOCIAL MEDIA AND ADOPTION

Lifemaps or lifepaths are visual 

representations to help children understand 

the paths their lives have taken and the 

decision )points along the way. They may 

include stepping stones to represent a child’s 

age and a statement about where and with 

whom they lived at that age.

Meaningful details to include in these 

tools that will help children understand 

their histories describe the child’s birth, 

explain why and how the child entered 

foster care, and clarify how decisions were 

made about moves and new placements. 

If possible, include baby pictures and 

pictures of birth parents. If no information 

is available, children can draw a picture 

of what they might have looked like. 

Statements such as “There is no information 
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about Johnny’s birth father in his file” at 

least acknowledge the father’s existence. 

Honesty, developmental appropriateness, 

and compassion are vital for children 

in explaining difficult and painful 

circumstances that brought them into foster 

care. 

Working with these tools can give your 

child ways to experience and work through 

trauma and feelings of loss and grief.

Helping Children Cope 

With Trauma and Losses 

It may be difficult to comprehend the 

experience of past losses your foster child 

or youth encountered before adoption. 

Your child may still be grieving because 

of losses or lost connections with family 

members. He or she may also suffer from 

trauma related to those losses. There are 

often several stages of grief the child must 

experience before he or she can transfer 

attachment from the birth family to your 

family. Adoption experts acknowledge the 

importance of helping children integrate 

their previous attachments to important 

people in their lives in order to transition 

that emotional attachment to a new family 

(Fahlberg, 1991; Henry, 2005). Integration 

is a way of helping children cope with the 

painful realities of the separation from their 

birth families. 

The five-step integration process below 

was first described by adoption pioneer K. 

Donley (1988). The process is an effort to 

clarify permission messages children and 

youth receive from their birth families to be 

in foster care, to live with new parents, to be 

loved by them, and to love them back.

Five Steps to Help Your Child in the 

Integration Process

1. Create an accurate reconstruction 

of the child’s placement history. 

Creating a lifebook, lifemap, or 

ecomap with a child helps a child 

to see and understand his or her 

own history. 

2. Identify the important 

attachment figures in the child’s 

life. Foster parents might learn 

who these important people are 

by listening to the child talk about 

people from previous placements. 

These attachment figures might be 

parents, but they could be siblings, 

former foster parents, or other 

family members. When adoptive 

families rarely talk about birth 

families, children or youth may feel 

the loss more intensely (NACAC, 

2009).

3. Gain the cooperation of the 

most significant attachment 

figures available. If possible, 

parents should cooperate with the 

birth parents, grandparents, or 

other relative to whom the child 

was attached. Even if the birth 

family is not happy about a child’s 

permanency goal of adoption, there 

is likely one important person (a 

teacher, a former neighbor) who 

will be willing to work with you to 

make a child’s transition easier.

4. Clarify “the permission message.”

It is necessary for children to hear 
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and feel from people who are 

important to them that it is all 

right to love another family. The 

primary person in a child’s life who 

is available to give the child that 

message should be sought out to do 

so.

5. Communicate that permission 

to the child. Whether the 

“permission to love your family” 

comes in the form of a letter from 

Grandma or from the birth parent 

during visits, it is important that 

children hear from that person that 

it is not their fault they are in foster 

care and that it is all right to love 

another family. This “permission” 

will go a long way to helping a 

child relax and transfer his/her 

attachment to the new family.

For more information on helping your child 

adapt to grief and loss, visit Information 

Gateway: http://www.childwelfare.gov/

systemwide/mentalhealth/common/grief.

cfm

During this transition phase, it’s important 

for parents and others working with the 

child to use the following skills (Henry, 

2005):

• Engaging the child

• Listening to the child

• Telling the truth

• Validating the child’s life story

• Creating a safe space for the child

• Realizing that it is never too late to go 

back in time

• Acknowledging pain as part of the process

Helping Children 

Transfer Attachment 

While the integration process is about 

helping the child cope with and accept 

his or her past, the transfer of attachment 

is about moving toward the future. 

Attachment transfer is not an easy process 

but it’s an important part of the transition 

from foster child or youth to adoptive child 

or youth. Children with attachment issues 

have missed several completions of the 

attachment cycle, or what is referred to as a 

disrupted attachment cycle, and it’s critical 

to allow children and youth to experience 

the cycle with their foster/adoptive family 

(Keck & Kupecky, 2002/2009).

The diagrams on the next page, adapted 

from Parents as Tender Healers (PATH)—a 

curriculum for foster parents, adoptive 

parents, and kinship caregivers—

demonstrate the completed and disrupted 

attachment cycles (Jackson & Wasserman, 

1997). 

Relationships and Routines

Relationships and routines are key ways to 

fortify your child’s sense of status within 

your family and begin the process of 

transferring and forming attachment to you 

and your family. Some of these techniques 

include:

• Be aware of the enormous adjustment 

the child is making. You, too, are making 

a huge adjustment but have adult 

perceptions and skills to handle it.
Helping Your Foster Child Transition to Your Adopted Child 

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http://www.childwelfare.gov

Attachment Cycle

Contentment/

Sense of 

well-being

Vulnerability

Communicate 

vulnerability

Vulnerability 

addressed/ 

Care provided

Disrupted Attachment Cycle

Contentment/

Sense of 

well-being

Vulnerability

Communicate 

vulnerability

Vulnerability 

NOT

addressed/Care 

NOT provided

Confusion
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• Balance structured activities with 

unstructured time for conversation, 

especially during the first few weeks. Use 

a prop or gimmick such as a family game 

or talking stick to stimulate conversation 

as needed.

• Hold family meetings with a time set 

aside to evaluate “How are we doing as 

a family?” Encourage honesty and make 

adjustments as needed.

• Work together to create a written 

list of family rules. When everyone 

contributes to creating rules, everyone 

feels ownership of the rules. Discuss 

consequences for breaking the rules, 

procedures for modifying the rules, and 

family rewards for following the rules.

• As holidays or special occasions approach, 

encourage your child to discuss what his 

or her expectations are for the event.

• Incorporate elements of family traditions 

into your celebrations. Be sure to 

describe what celebrations with extended 

family may be like—they may seem 

overwhelming to your newest family 

members. 

Conclusion

On the surface, it may seem easy for a child 

or youth to transition from foster care to 

adoption within the same family, but in 

reality, the internal process—both for a child 

and families—is much more complicated. 

Allowing children to “drift” into adoption 

without acknowledging the significant 

changes may lead to difficulties later. 

You need to help you children consider 

and understand their own histories and the 

reasons why they cannot live with their 

birth families, help them adjust to this loss, 

and help them transfer their attachments to 

you and your family. In helping children, 

families will need to consider each child’s 

needs as they are related to the child’s age, 

health, personality, temperament, and 

cultural and racial experiences. 

Other foster/adoptive parents can be a 

great resource for families. The National 

Foster Care & Adoption Directory has 

a list of foster and adoptive support 

groups in each State: http://www.

childwelfare.gov/nfcad

Suggested Citation:

Child Welfare Information Gateway. 

(2012). Helping your foster child transition 

to your adopted child. Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Health and Human 

Services, Children’s Bureau.
Helping Your Foster Child Transition to Your Adopted Child 

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Information Gateway. Available online at http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_transition.cfm

http://www.childwelfare.gov

Resources

“Adoption Scrapbooks Made Easy” and “Thanks for the Memories,” both by Jenni Colson, 

published in Adoptive Families, offer strategies for developing adoption scrapbooks: 

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=1131 and http://www.adoptivefamilies.

com/articles.php?aid=1305

“Bibliography: Lifebooks for Children and Youth in Foster Care” is a selection of resources on 

creating lifebooks by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Casey Family Services: http://www.

caseyfamilyservices.org/userfiles/pdf/bib-2009-lifebooks.pdf

“Birds, Bees, and Adoption,” by Marybeth Lambe, published in Adoptive Families, offers tips 

for adoptive parents on explaining reproduction: http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.

php?aid=772

Free lifebook sample pages are available through the Iowa Foster & Adoptive Parents 

Association: http://www.ifapa.org/resources/IFAPA_Lifebook_Pages.asp

“Get Talking,” published online in Adoptive Families, provides a number of articles on

how and when adoptive parents should talk with their children about adoption: 

http://adoptivefamilies.com/talking

References

Adoption Resources of Wisconsin. (2009). Moving from foster care to adoption: Changing 

families. A series on adoption and foster care issues. Retrieved from http://www.

wifostercareandadoption.org/library/149/moving%20from%20foster_moving%20from%20

foster.pdf

Donley, K. S. (1988). Disengagement work: Helping children make new attachments. In H. L. 

Craig-Oldsen (Ed.), From foster parent to adoptive parent: A resource guide for workers. Atlanta, 

GA: Child Welfare Institute. 

Fahlberg, V. (1991). A child’s journey through placement. Indianapolis, IN: Perspectives Press.

Gustavsson, N., & MacEachron, A. (2008). Creating foster care youth biographies: A role for 

the Internet. Journal of Technology Services 26(1), 45-55. 
Helping Your Foster Child Transition to Your Adopted Child http://www.childwelfare.gov

Henry, D. L. (2005). The 3-5-7 model: Preparing children for permanency. Children and Youth 

Services Review, 27(2), 197-212.

Jackson, R. P., & Wasserman, K. (1997). PATH: Parents as tender healers. A curriculum for foster, 

adoptive, and kinship care parents. Retrieved from Child Welfare Information Gateway: 

http://library.childwelfare.gov/cwig/ws/library/docs/gateway/Blob/50938.pdf?w=+NATIVE%

28%27recno%3D50938%27%29&upp=0&rpp=10&r=1&m=1

Keck, G., & Kupecky, R. (2002, 2009). Parenting the hurt child. Colorado Springs, CO: 

NAVPRESS. (Original work published 2002). 

Laws, R. (2004). Talking to children about adoption assistance, Adoptalk, North American 

Council on Adoptable Children. Retrieved from http://www.nacac.org/adoptalk/

talkingaboutaa.html

North American Council on Adoptive Children. (2009). Ambiguous loss haunts foster and 

adopted children. Adoptalk. Retrieved from http://www.nacac.org/adoptalk/ambigloss.html

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Administration for Children and Families

Administration on Children, Youth and Families

Children’s Bureau