Working with adult adopted clients and adoption related issues
10 December 2024

Programme

Working with adult adopted clients and adoption related issues

This event is tailored for BACP members looking to increase their expertise in working with adult adopted clients and parents (in England) who have been through the adoption process as adopters or adoptees. The event will explore sessions such as changes in regulations, lived experiences, and what’s next for BACP in supporting our members after the Ofsted reforms in this area. This event aims to increase knowledge and up date you on the latest developments in adoption counselling.

This event is aimed at all counsellors and practitioners who’d like to commence working with adult adopted clients now or in the future or continue the therapeutic relationship if adoption related issues arise in therapy.

The event aims to increase knowledge and update on the latest developments in adoption counselling. The change in guidance is for those working in England but theoretical content may be of interest to those working across the nations.

The event also aims to offer insights into the lived experience of an adoptive client and what these changes may mean for clients in the future. This may offer useful insights for non-members who are parents of an adopted client.

The event will include 3 presentations followed by a Q&A session after each presenter.

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Programme

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9.30am - 9.40am	Welcome & Introductions
9.40am - 10.40am	Working therapeutically with adult adoptees: themes and reflections, presented by Dr Hannah Ryan
10.40am –10.50am	Break
10.50am –11.50am	Working with adoption, presented by Gillian Bruce
11.50am –12.00pm	Break
12.00pm –1.00pm	'Bearing the unbearable': Helping adopted clients make sense of their stories, presented by Alison Roy
1.15pm	Event close

This programme is subject to change.

Presentation information

Working therapeutically with adult adoptees: themes and reflections

9.40am – 10.40am

This session will explore the nuances and complexities of the psychology of adoptee trauma and prepare participants for common therapeutic presentations amongst adoptees. There will be a focus on creating a space to think about relevant therapeutic skills and reflect on ethical dilemmas relevant to working with adoptees, such as limits of professional competence.

Dr Hannah Ryan is a Clinical Psychologist at Adoption UK, where she currently serves as the clinical lead for the Adults Affected by Adoption pathway. This pathway provides core clinical services, including assessments, trauma-informed therapy, and peer support, to both adult adoptees and birth parents affected by historic adoption practices that took place before 1976, for which the Welsh government has issued a formal apology. In her clinical work, Hannah adopts an integrative approach, drawing on models such as Internal Family Systems (IFS), Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), and Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT). She believes that sincere validation and authentic understanding are fundamental to building strong therapeutic relationships, and she is deeply committed to learning from the lived experiences of adoptees.

Working with adoption

10.50am – 11.50am

The session aims to help counsellors to understand the range of issues that adopted clients may present with and offer some ideas of how to approach these.

Adoption is a complex issue and no two adopted clients will have the same difficulties. In this session Gillian will share the range of issues and the factors involved that can heighten or lessen the issues of adoption.

Gillian will share research findings into the lifelong impacts of adoption, from her own experience and wider research so that the Biopsychosocial impacts can be recognised in counselling sessions and thereby managed effectively. Whilst not recognised in the DSM5, adoption is understood to be childhood developmental trauma by those in the field.

Many adoptees operate ‘in the fog’ until the problems can’t be denied any longer. Gillian will report her experience of working with adoptees on retreats, support groups and private client work, along with her own lived experience and life impacts.

Gilli Bruce is an adult adoptee, Integrative Counsellor and Coach. She worked for many years as a training consultant in the field of business management, working across the UK and Europe delivering training presentations. She also trained as a coach and found that sessions often moved into deeper waters that she didn’t feel qualified to support, so decided to train as a counsellor. Gilli qualified as an Integrative Counsellor in 2022 and now works in private practice alongside volunteer counselling for the Mind Halton Mental Health Centre.

Gilli worked with PAC UK for a year with birth mothers who had to relinquish their babies and now specialises in working in sessions with adult adoptees, often from a ‘Forced Adoption’ background, who are at varying stages of their journey. She runs support groups for Adoption Matters and PAC UK, writes for Howtobeadopted.com and is a partner in Adoptees-in-Alliance – running adoptee retreats.

'Bearing the unbearable': Helping adopted clients make sense of their stories.

12.00pm - 1.00pm

This session will explore how to work with narratives and stories brought by adopted clients to the therapeutic relationship. There will be an opportunity to reflect on the feelings that are engendered through hearing stories about early loss, neglect and trauma central to the adoption narrative and how creating space for these stories to be told and “gathered up” can potentially reshape them and shift negative core beliefs for our clients.

Alison Roy is a Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist, Counsellor, clinical supervisor, author, specialist consultant and trainer.

In her work with individuals, families and groups she focuses on the deep significance of early attachments and the impact of trauma and loss on the personality. As the co-founder and previously the Clinical Lead for the CAMHS and East Sussex specialist adoption service – AdCAMHS, she has learned much from those who have experienced significant losses, traumas and challenges in their lives. Previously she was the Director of Communications and Bulletin magazine editor for the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP).

She has also written a book about adoption, a chapter about education through the arts and contributes regularly to the press and mainstream media.

Her specialist areas of interest are adoption, working with trauma and traumatised systems and the environment.