Placement in Adoptive Families; Characteristics and Outcomes

The Berger Institute worked in collaboration with the Kinship Center in Orange County, California, a large social service agency that provides adoption-related services, on a number of projects. Researchers from the Berger Institute examined the effectiveness of individual and family counseling for adoptive children and their parents. The project assesses factors, such as attachment, school readiness, and family work patterns that influence successful adoption.

 

In collaboration with the Kinship Center, we designed and implemented a client satisfaction questionnaire to be given to parents of adopted children at Kinship Center.  This questionnaire focuses on context-specific aspects of Kinship Center’s services; as these questionnaires are collected, the data they contain will be used to assess and improve the agency’s ability to help adopted children and their families.

 

The Berger Institute and Kinship Center have presented at national-level psychological conferences: the Western Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychological Association. 

Erin Kappenberg and Deborah Silverstein discuss the Kinship Center placement project