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Coalition of Adoptive Families (COFAF)
Strengthening Family Ties...
Interview with co-founder, Deborah Miller-Gnann
 This month’s parent group spotlight is on the Coalition of Adoptive Families (COFAF). COFAF was formed to provide education, resources and support to adoptive parents and primary caregivers with the goal of increasing awareness around the challenges experienced by children who have been adopted; in particular where the child is of a different race and or culture than the adoptive family.
Wendi: Deborah, the children you adopted as infants are now a young adult and a teenager. What made you decide to adopt
Deborah: As a single 35 year old professional woman, I knew I wanted to be mother. I was open to adoption and initially looked at domestic adoption. I soon found out that as a single woman; it was pretty close to impossible to adopt babies or toddlers. I started looking internationally, and discovered that many countries would not allow me to adopt because of my age and marital status.
At the time, China was a county that was just beginning to allow foreigners to adopt their children. As a college student I had fallen in love with Asia. I didn’t know much going into it, but knew that you cannot raise a child from a different country or a different culture without feeling some affinity for that part of the world. The other thing that made China attractive to adopt from was at the time, their target group for foreign adoptions were adults 35-50 and they did not discriminate between singles and married couples. I was overjoyed when I was able to adopt my first child, who was 9 months old at the time. When she was 5 years old, I married and we decided to adopt another child. My second daughter, who is also from China, was 16 months old when she was adopted.
Wendi: Deborah, why did you and the other co-founders decide to start COFAF?
Deborah: All the co-founders are adoptive parents of transracial or transcultural children. After adopting, to connect with other families and let our kids see other kids with families like theirs, we all decided at one point or another to join adoptive parent groups organized around our child’s country or region of origin. When our children became teenagers we, like many adoptive families, had a difficult time getting our children to attend culturally based events so we stopped going.
We soon discovered that this was exactly the time when a number of underlying issues that may not have been clear when the child was younger started to show up. We began to realize that because we had not come through the adoptive experienced ourselves, we had a hard time understanding what our children were going through as they became adults. The three of us decided we needed to start doing self-education and share our experience. COFAF was formed as a family centered adoption support group, to educate and help adoptive families, particularly those of transracial and transcultural adopted children
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Wendi: What is the main focus of your group?
Deborah: Our main focus is to “Strengthening Adoptive Family Ties.” through education, resource identification, and support. We learned the hard way that when you become an adoptive parent you are on your own and have to rely on your ability to educate yourself. COFAF looked at post adoption education, resource and support needs of families that adopt and partnered with adviser Barbara VanSlyck to offer several facilitated topic based training and open discussion groups throughout the year. Previous trainings included a group discussion and training presented by the Adult Adoptee Support Group.
Upcoming topics include: Triggers: The sparks that can cause adoption-related stress, Siblings: Does a child’s background or race affect the relationship? Early Trauma and its impact on children and attachment. COFAF is currently in the process of rolling out a member’s only online clearinghouse to help adoptive parents find resources vetted and rated by other adoptive parents. In the future COFAF also plans to support parents by offering Parent-to-Parent Peer Mentoring. Similar to a buddy system, parents are matched with veteran parents who have already been through similar experiences. COFAF is also in the process of putting together an Ann Landers type publication to answer, from a parent’s perspective, common and not so common pre and post adoption questions.
How do parents attend classes and meetings?
Meeting: Monthly
Location: The Columbus School of Chinese
1550 Old Henderson Rd., Suite N162, Columbus OH 43220
Contact : Deborah Miller-Gnann, Fil Folden, Rebecca Nelson
COFAF4U@gmail.com http://cofaf.org/ 
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RUSSIAN STUDY TOUR
Members of the Autonomous Non-profit Organization, Center for the Development of Innovative Social Services ‘Partnership for Every Child’ (P4EC) are in Columbus January 11-17, 2015 to learn about foster care in the United States
Established in 2009 and building on the work of the Russian branch of the INGO EveryChild since 1994, P4EC has led the way in developing and replicating models of professional foster care which are successfully keeping children in their own families or preventing them from entering residential care unnecessarily.
OFCA was asked to present on building, sustaining and connecting parent support groups.
Organizations and families presenting are:
IHS
OFCA
Primary Parent Advocacy Group
The Village Network
ODJFS
Caring for Kids |
The Russell family
CORTC
FCCS
Licking County
The Merringer family
PCSAO |
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Ideas in Shared Parenting
By Dot Erickson-Anderson
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"The relationship a primary parent has with the foster parent has a significant impact on the successful outcome for the child in care. Many agencies have an “ice breaker” meeting where the primary parent interacts with the foster parent within the first few days of placement for the purpose of setting a respectful, nonjudgmental and supportive atmosphere for both families.
This meeting can be scary for the primary and foster family. The foster family is generally comfortable with the agency staff that sets up this meeting. Having a parent advocate/partner to assist the primary parent to feel comfortable is helpful.
The parent partner is an individual who is not a child welfare worker, has met with the primary family prior to the “ice breaker” meeting, and has experienced being serviced by child welfare themselves in the past. When the primary parent feels accepted by this individual, who then walks with them through this meeting, a balance and positive tone can produce a better result.
If your agency does not have a program to develop parent partners for primary families, advocating for parent partners is one area where you can successfully impact a more successful outcome for the children who are served in your agency."
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Public Children Services Association of Ohio (PCSAO) compiled the following bills introduced in the 130th General Assembly that impact child welfare directly or indirectly. The 131st General Assembly convenes January 5, 2015. Be informed. Be involved.
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Your Voice Matters!
Take time to review Ohio Administrative Code Rules currently posted for pre-clearance. Review and comment on all pending changes at http://www.ohiorulereview.org/
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Advocacy Training
Quick Tips to Effective Advocacy for Yourself & Others
Be respectful
It is important to be respectful to other groups, individuals, and causes in your advocacy. You do not have to put one group down to raise the needs of a specific group. If you send the message that other causes and issues aren't important (or as important), you alienate potential allies to your cause.
Speak to strengths
When advocating for yourself or others, speak to their strengths. It's true that social justice advocates are often advocating for problems to be fixed. But it is vital to speak to the strengths of the human beings involved. Why? Because humans beings are deserving of dignity. Second, people are psychologically more likely to support a cause where people are spoken of positively, as survivors, and as heroes.
Don't lose hope
You never know how the seeds you have planted with your message will grow. Don't get discouraged. Even when the change wanted isn't made or your bill doesn't pass, the time you spent educating still made a difference
Click here for more tips on Better Advocating
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