PACT’s online support platform for parents and carers of children affected by early childhood trauma has been given a new name.
The Adopter Hub was developed by PACT in 2017 to support parents of adopted children. But in the five years since, the Hub has grown and evolved and now also supports foster carers, special guardians, virtual schools and education and social care professionals.
After a period of consultation with users and partners, the wider platform is to be renamed CATCH – Children And Trauma Community Hub.
PACT Chief Executive Natausha van Vliet said: “When The Adopter Hub was launched, we set out to provide online resources, webinars, webchat and forums to help provide information, learning and support for our adoptive families.
“Since then, we have developed content to support foster carers and special guardians, social care practitioners and also teachers working with looked after, or previously looked after children, in schools. We now have thousands of pages of resources on our website and hundreds of webinars covering all sorts of topics from behaviour, mental health and therapeutic parenting techniques to sleeping, County Lines and cultural identity.
“We now partner with 38 different adoption agencies, local authorities and schools who have seen the value of this support for their own parents, carers and staff.
“We needed a new name for our platform to reflect the wide range of users who now use The Hub and I’m delighted we have our new name of CATCH.
“Many parents and professionals tell us how helpful they find resources on The Hub to help improve their skills and knowledge when supporting or caring for children who have experienced early life trauma as a result of abuse, neglect or loss.”
Existing Adopter Hub users have been reassured that they will retain their user accounts with the same login details and will still have access to the same resources as they do now. Adoptive parents will still see The Adopter Hub name on their homepage. Other users will see their own sections of the site and be signposted to relevant resources that might be of interest to them.
Minor changes are being made to the Hub already but the main switchover to www.catchconnect.org will be on 9August.
PACT has been building and strengthening families since 1911. PACT creates families through adoption services and provides lifelong adoption support, it empowers women who face multiple disadvantages to make positive changes to their lives through its Alana House Community Project and it supports children to heal from the trauma of domestic abuse through its Bounce Back 4 Kids programme.
For more information or to request a demo of CATCH please contact the team at catch@pactcharity.org
