Pathways for Blended Families (families who are parenting both adoptive and biological children) – Winter 2022

Pathways is an 8-session curriculum

UPDATE – Eligibility:

Due to our current funding guidelines, outlined by the Ministry, participants must be an adoptive parent (including parents pre adoption finalization) or a foster-to-adopt parent, to attend our free Pathways program.

Please note – we are working to make Pathways available to other parent types (Customary Care, Kinship, Legal Guardian), and hope to be able to offer them soon.  If you would like to be kept in the loop on when these new offerings become available, please be sure to sign-up for our newsletter.

Location: Online via Zoom (The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants closer to the event date; please see below for technical requirements).

Time: Wednesday Evenings; 6:30pm to 9:30pm

Dates: 

• Session 1: January 19, 2022
• Session 2: January 26, 2022
• Session 3: February 2, 2022
• Session 4: February 9, 2022
• Session 5: February 16, 2022
• Session 6: February 23, 2022
• Session 7: March 2, 2022
• Session 8: March 9, 2022

Additional Details

Who: This training is for parents and caregivers where a placement has already occurred.

Cost: FREE! This course is being offered at NO cost to participants thanks to funding from the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.

Technical & set-up requirement: 

• Laptop or desktop computer with functioning webcam and microphone capabilities.
• Strong/stable internet connection with a speed of at least 10mbps
  
• In order to preserve families’ privacy and comfort levels, anyone other than another Pathways participant, should not be in the same room with you while participating in a Pathways Zoom session; this includes children and teens.

Trainer(s):

Cindy Stewart, CYW
[email protected]
Cindy is a mental health professional in private practice. She offers post adoption support to adoptive families and co-facilitates an interracial adoption support group and an adopted teen group. She has child welfare experience facilitating successful foster placements and providing individual counseling to children and youth. She also worked in group homes for eight years with teens and youth. Cindy brings her personal experience as a parent to biological and adoptive children and as an adopted person to her work. Cindy is also a private investigator interested in search and reunion work.

Debbie Burk B.A. Psych 
[email protected]
I have over 30 years of experience working with children, youth and their families.  For the past 15 years I have worked in the Child Welfare Sector as a Children’s worker, Family worker, Adoption worker and Foster Care worker. I am the mother of 5 children and have been living the permanency journey with 2 biological children and 3 stepchildren.  I have always been interested in understanding the impact of grief, loss and trauma on individuals and have shifted my learning to working with people through a trauma informed lens.   

Certificate: A certificate of completion is available upon request.

To see other Pathways offerings in Ontario, click here to go to our events page.

Can’t attend any of these offerings? Click here to be notified about the next round.

Note: Ontario’s PRIDE curriculum is equivalent to The Kinship Center’s Pathways to Permanence 1 curriculum.

Detailed Information about Pathways 2

Click here for detailed information on Pathways 2.

© ACT: An Adoption and Permanency Curriculum for Child Welfare and Mental Health Professionals and Pathways to Permanence 2: Parenting Children who have Experienced Trauma and Loss are copyrights of Kinship Center, a member of Seneca Family of Agencies in California. Through a partnership with Seneca Family of Agencies, Adoption Council of Ontario owns the exclusive Ontario license to ACT and Pathways 2.