Hi Everyone,
This is my first post. I am a single mother of an adopted, older adolescent with significant developmental trauma. Here are my two top issues for us here in Massachusetts and one at the national level:
1. Lack of transition resources including job training, internships and mentoring. We have been using the traditional vocational resources but have found incredible lack of basic trauma knowledge. We've tried 3 programs now including one funded by Department of Mental Health and two by the Rehabilitation Commission; all did not work. My daughter is turning 18 next month and though I am paying for one-on-one transition counseling, this is not sustainable.
2. Lack of clinical experts. To date, we have no clinicians in the metro Boston area with substantial expertise in developmental trauma and attachment. I travel every other month 2 hours one way to see Dr. Dan Hughes with my daughter. Last time I checked there was only one clinician in the entire state trained in NMT by Bruce Perry. I have now spoken out in public settings to the Commissioner of Department of Mental Health and the Commissioner of Department of Children and Families about the horrendous barriers we as adoptive parents with older kids with severe developmental trauma face in accessing real healing for our kids. I have gone as far to ask for a Task Force for Adoptive Parents to no avail.
3. Lack of collaboration between fields of developmental trauma and attachment/adoption. I see a lot of amazing things posted on this website on developmental trauma but rarely are they combined with attachment. For those of us in the trenches this has to change (yes I belong to the Attach.org but their national conference does little to ensure we can find resources in our respective states).
Thank you so much, Gail Merriam