Adoptive families face joys and challenges as their children transition into their home and grow. All parents need support and guidance as they move to new stages of development with their children and there are many resources out there for parents at large. Adoptive parents typically face unique challenges that complicate the typical trials that come up for children. Counseling meets the emotional and mental health needs for the child, parents, and family through a variety of methods but there are circumstances parents face that need more specific guidance. This is where coaching services can meet your needs. We see coaching services as a way to prevent struggles from spiraling into crisis.
What is provided through coaching?
Nightlight’s Coaching Program assigns a trained staff member to support a family over specific challenges or needs that they have. This program is best suited for families that see an area of struggle with their child escalating and feel unsure at how to address it. Your coach will focus on 1-2 specific areas of need, and discuss clear strategies for addressing that need.
The program will begin with an initial call to learn more about your family, assess the issue, and discuss a plan. You will be provided the plan in a document that allows space for you to journal between sessions. Depending on the plan and needs, you will set regular check-in calls over the course of 4-weeks with your coach to discuss how your situation is progressing and make alterations to the parenting strategy plan.
How do we define success in this program?
There are few issues that can be “fixed” or “solved” in a few weeks’ time. The path to healing for children with histories of trauma takes time to truly heal and change inside the child. Our goal is to provide you with a clear plan on how to parent and address the situation you are in with your child and for you to feel confident implementing that plan. Your confidence in parenting your child in the challenges is how we define success.
How much will this cost?
This service is provided by a trained staff member at Nightlight over a 4-week period of time that will include an estimated 4-8 coaching calls. This service is $500 for families that did not adopt through Nightlight and $400 for families that did adopt through Nightlight. If additional coaching calls are needed, they can be added for an hourly rate.
Contact Us
If you have questions or are ready to sign-up for a coach, please contact Heather Sloan, Director of Nightlight’s Post Adoption Connection Center, at heather@nightlight.org or 254-741-1633. She will conduct an initial intake call to assess if coaching services are right for your situation.
What do past clients have to say?
“We felt like our expectations were met. By the end of the program, we saw drastic improvements in the behavior of our [child] and also felt more confident and empowered to better parent our [child].”
“[Our coach] was a delight to work with and brought such valuable experience and knowledge into our coaching sessions. We loved how the program was structured so that we would meet with [our coach], agree upon a plan of action, try it out, and then meet again for debriefing. This gave us time to do trial and error and then be able to process our efforts. It also naturally created a sense of accountability between us. We were encouraged to implement the agreed upon strategies because we knew we would be having a coaching session soon. We only wish that we would have been in this program during the hardest months (months 3-5) of bringing our adopted [child] home. Counseling certainly has its place, but after going through this program, we are convinced that all adoptive parents need to be, at some point, in more of a “coaching” relationship to assist them in their parenting.”
