By Megan, PACT’s Adopter Champion Lead
Hi, I’m Megan and for the last six years I’ve had the privilege of leading PACT’s Adopter Champion service – a team of four adoptive parents who have been trained to use our own experiences and what we have learned from professionals to support and empower PACT’s adoptive parents. I have been an adoptive parent for 17 years – my child is now age 23. I am also a birth mother of a 25-year-old.
What does an Adopter Champion role involve?
I have quite a varied role. My main responsibility is organising support for families who need it, from one of our adopter champions. The team don’t just offer a listening ear, but we offer strategies that are tailored to each family and designed to empower parents to make real changes that benefit their child and family.
Depending on the situation, we may also make a Family And Children Therapeutic Support (FACTS) referral for therapeutic intervention, an education support referral, a supporting families referral and signpost parents to our adoption support platform Children And Trauma Community Hub (CATCH) or other organisations or literature that may help them. We also support families who are waiting for the FACTS therapist to begin their support.
In addition, I co-run PACT’s managing aggression in children workshop, assist on PACT’s sensory integration course and run the creating connexions course.
Another area of my role involves looking after the duty spreadsheet. On a daily basis, I log families as they get in contact with the adoption support team, including booking them onto courses, replying to other organisations and creating the list for our weekly supporting families or adoption support team meetings. From this, our PACT families are allocated to the most appropriate support for their needs.
My role also includes working with PACT’s training teams.
What are the benefits of working at PACT?
There are so many highlights from working at PACT. One has to be when a family shares that their child’s behaviour has improved significantly and they no longer need support. This is closely followed by the time I spent with a couple of children during one of PACT’s activity sessions. I pointed out that every child in the room has had a foster carer and has found their family through adoption. Their eyes widened, their jaws dropped and as they gazed around the room, their shoulders relaxed.
Working at PACT is very rewarding – getting to support so many incredible families and work in such a passionate team is amazing.
Over the last five years using my experience as both an adopter and an adopter champion, I have also influenced some of the topics that go into adoption preparation training, post-adoption training and the information that you can find on CATCH.
Find out more about our career opportunities and how you can join the team at PACT.
