Navigating the complexities of foster care and adoption can bring unique challenges for both parents and children. Whether you're facing attachment difficulties, behavioral challenges, loss or disrupted placement, or the emotional impact of navigating the foster/adoption process, we recognize the deep impact of early life experiences on relationships and emotional well-being to help foster and adoptive families build strong, healthy connections that lead to lasting healing and growth. 

Services at Safe Haven Psychology Center for foster and adoptive families are informed by expert knowledge and specialized adoption-sensitive training from UCLA TIES for Families. 

Read more about the core issues of adoption on our blog. 

You've made it past infancy. Phew! Now comes the toddler years and school age with new challenges. Tantrums. Defiance. Outbursts. Tears. Dysregulation galore. And not just for the child. You might find yourself struggling to find calm or knowing how to support an anxious child. You don't need to face this alone. The expert help of a psychologist can help you find your confidence, joy, and calm so that your child can too! We specialize in working with parents, kids, and families dealing with:

• Trauma

• Anxiety including school refusal

• Tantrums, meltdowns, angry outbursts, and aggression

For others, the trauma happens outside of the home and in broader, systemic ways, leaving you vulnerable. Parents who experience systemic injustice or violence due to their identity face distinct levels of stress on their mental, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual health. The challenges inherent in parenting in the wake of intergenerational trauma can be heightened when also navigating experiences of chronic discrimination. Individuals who currently or previously identify as part of a marginalized group, or experience bias due to, but not limited to, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, age, gender identification, religion, or culture may suffer compounded symptoms from the combined stress associated with their marginalized status and intergenerational trauma.

Similarly, parents who identify as Black, Biracial, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color carry the weight of navigating ongoing systemic racism, often including health disparities and social marginalization, while bearing the cumulative grief and loss of past generations. This is called historical or ancestral trauma and includes the oppressive, violent, or discriminatory experiences inflicted upon individuals, families, and communities of specific cultural, racial or ethnic groups. Raising and protecting children under the legacy of historical trauma creates a disproportionate level of chronic stress for many families of color.

Cycle breaking is hard work. 

Whether your trauma was interpersonal, systemic, or both, you deserve support in your efforts to stop the transmission of trauma to the next generation.