Improving Access to Trauma-Informed Adoption Services: Applying a Developmental Trauma Framework

Foster and adopted children often experience multiple traumatic and adverse experiences. A growing body of literature indicates the negative impact of trauma on developmental milestones and brain development, which supports the need to address complex trauma among this vulnerable population of foster and adopted youth. This paper presents an overview of the unique needs of children adopted from the foster care system from the perspective of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), complex trauma, and developmental trauma disorder (DTD). There is an increasing number of evidence-based trauma-focused services and interventions for children and youth. However, many adoptive parents have limited trauma-informed training and limited access to trauma-informed and adoption-competent professionals, particularly long-term supports across developmental stages, making them ill-prepared to meet the needs of children in their care. This paper contributes to the understanding of how access to these trauma-focused services can be increased through new technologies, to better prepare and empower adoptive parents to deal effectively with difficult adoption issues when they arise and to improve outcomes for children and youth adopted from the public child welfare system. Several innovative approaches toward this end include harnessing technology to: (1) improve access to suitable adoption resources, (2) improve mechanisms to track critical events, behaviors, emotions, functional abilities, strengths, etc., in order to determine timely, on-demand contextual services, and (3) extend professional, supportive environments beyond the adoptive family context by proposing the use of technology to build interdisciplinary, virtual community partners.