Showing titles in Adoption & Fostering

At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. Eventually, with the advent of Google Earth, he had the opportunity to look for the needle in a haystack he once called home.

In the age of fingertip access to answers and a limitless supply of ambitions, where do we find the God who was birthed in dirt and straw? Sara Hagerty found him when life stopped working for her. She found him when she was a young adult mired in spiritual busyness and when she was a new bride with doubts about whether her fledgling marriage would survive. She found him alone in the night as she cradled her longing for babies who did not come. She found him as she kissed the faces of children on another continent who had lived years without a mommy’s touch. In Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet, Hagerty masterfully draws from the narrative of her life to craft a mosaic of a God who leans into broken stories. Here readers see a God who is present in every changing circumstance. Most significantly, they see a God who is present in every unchanging circumstance as well.

Do you want to take a step towards confidence, acceptance, and well-being? This audiobook is my inward look at adoption trauma with some helpful tips that I have used over the past six years to help me overcome the feelings of unworthiness, anger, fear, and rejection that plagued me for 50 years.

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of 15 adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots.

The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children's unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame. With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the 20 complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love.

When Sky and her older sister Avril were taken into care, the social workers knew this was a case like no other. Raised by unhinged parents who hoarded compulsively, creating horrific conditions no child should live in, the two girls arrived at foster carer Louise's home, neglected, malnourished and indoctrinated. Louise had to draw on all of her experience as one of Britain's leading foster carers to rehabilitate and change the course of their lives.

The adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children.

Renowned child-development expert Dr. Karyn Purvis gives you practical advice and powerful tools you can use to encourage secure attachment in your family. You will benefit from Karyn’s decades of clinical research and real-world experience. Coauthor Lisa Qualls demonstrates how you can successfully implement these strategies in your home, just as she did in hers. You will learn how to simplify your approach using scripts, nurture your child, combat chronic fear, teach respect, and develop other valuable tools to facilitate a healing connection with your child.

Louise gets a frantic call to take in a damaged and destructive young girl. Separated from her siblings, Sparkle is hostile and angry. A short while after settling in, Sparkle begins to identify as pansexual. A revolution is underway in the Allen household, with Sparkle's transition motivating all of the young people to explore what becoming an adult means for them.

You can meet Hannah in 1 Samuel, chapters 1 and 2. The Bible says she was "barren", and we know she suffered heartache, anguish, and grief because of her empty arms. Perhaps you do, too. Hannah's Hope is for all who long for a child yet to be conceived, grieve for a baby too soon passed from the womb, or have lived through the no-man's-land of failed adoption. It is intended as a guide to assist you in making wise decisions as you struggle through your grief.

Fourteen-year-old Hannah comes to live with foster carer Maggie Hartley after her mum pleads with Social Services to take her into care, unable to cope with her daughter anymore. Previously a good student, a loving daughter and sister, Hannah is now playing truant, drinking and taking drugs. Angry and mistrustful, it seems that nobody can reach this troubled teenager.

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times best seller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of Zadie. When the young teenage girl, thrown out of her home by her strict Muslim family, is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be. Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie, she is understandably suspicious of the family around her.

Although Jodie is only eight years old, she is violent, aggressive, and has already been through numerous foster families. Her last hope is Cathy Glass. At the Social Services office, Cathy (an experienced foster carer) is pressured into taking Jodie as a new placement. Jodie's challenging behaviour has seen off five carers in four months. Despite her reservations, Cathy decides to take on Jodie to protect her from being placed in an institution.

Identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other’s existence, until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members and tells the girls’ incredible story from their perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life.

The moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn - about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love and protect people beyond our immediate kin.

With a bachelor's and master's degree in education and over 30 years of experience, plus training in trauma sensitivity, author and mother of two, Jennifer Alushan, is ready to give parents and caregivers proven techniques to effectively understand and authentically interact with children so the healing process can begin.

In Caring for Kids from Hard Places, Jayne and David Schooler discuss the reasons behind why children and teens sometimes exhibit potentially disruptive behavior. Together, they offer practical strategies on training, equipping and resourcing staff and volunteers to provide a responsive environment for children with behavioral challenges.

Damian is just seven when he is taken in by foster carer Cathy Glass. His mother, Rachel, loves her three young children dearly, but she is vulnerable, naïve and unable to cope on her own. Cathy sets about helping Damian overcome his eating issues, with the hope that he will eventually return home. But when Rachel’s new boyfriend, Troy, arrives on the scene, Cathy becomes deeply concerned. She soon realises that Damian and his siblings are in great danger.

Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis takes on the heart-breaking case of Megan, a baby born with neo-natal abstinence syndrome and a cleft palate. Addicted to drugs from birth because of her mother's substance abuse during pregnancy, new-born Megan is taken into Rosie's loving care. Rosie is supposed to help Megan find her new permanent home, but it turns out that Megan has already found her 'forever mummy' in Rosie.

Ruth was a ghost of a girl when she arrived into foster mother Maggie Hartley's care. Pale, frail, and withdrawn, it was clear to Maggie that Ruth had seen and experienced things that no 11-year-old should have to, that she's been conditioned to "see no evil, speak no evil". Ruth is in desperate need of help, but can Maggie get through to her and unlock the harrowing secret she carries? Through love, reassurance, and patience, Maggie starts to unravel Ruth's painful past - a past defined by cruelty and abuse.