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Approximately 50,000 youth are adopted from foster care each year, with an average age of six years. These older children who have experienced early loss and trauma have special needs as they enter permanent placements.
The ADAPT program — a partnership among UCLA’s Health Services and Society Center, UCLA TIES for Adoption and the Center for Adoption Support and Education in the Washington, D.C. area — was created to address these challenges to ensure that adoptive families thrive through child-centered, family-focused and culturally sensitive interventions.
While many adoption-focused mental-health treatments are available in the community, none has been validated in scientific trials. The program’s current study aims to establish the effectiveness of the ADAPT intervention for families adopting older children from foster care.
