Center for Adoption Support and Education

C.A.S.E. is a national leader in mental health services for the adoption, foster, and kinship care community. We improve the improve the lives of children who have been adopted or in foster care and their families through counseling, lifelong education, and a growing national network of trained professionals. While every family encounters challenges, families formed through adoption, guardianship and kinship face special issues related to their unique experience. These families often struggle to find mental health professionals who understand the complex loss, grief, attachment and identity issues they may face. C.A.S.E.'s strategic plan completed in May 2021 has two primary goals:

(1) to grow into a national best-in-class demonstration and teaching clinic that provides the very best in adoption-competent mental health therapy while developing C.A.S.E. practices and people.

(2) Expand C.A.S.E.’s National Training Institute into a knowledge center that produces industry-shaping research that improves the practice of adoption competent mental health therapy and advocates for legislation that institutionalizes post-adoption funding, recognizes adoption competence as a sub-specialty, and requires the mental health and child welfare workforce have adoption competent training.

From December 2020 to May 2021, C.A.S.E. completed a comprehensive strategic assessment that looked internally, and externally with participatory input from stakeholders, particularly clients and funders, assessing the organization’s Strategy, Structure, Systems, Staff, Skills, Style (culture), and Shared Values. The board of
directors approved a new strategic direction in May 2021 to grow C.A.S.E.’s clinical and training programs into a National Demonstration and Teaching Clinic and Knowledge Center. To achieve this vision, C.A.S.E. is focused on a two-year transformational plan from 2022-2023 to:
(1) Define and integrate the values of compassion, integrity, excellence, and innovation as the mainstay of
C.A.S.E. culture, decision-making, and style.
(2) Establish a continuous improvement strategy and cycle that applies metrics and high-performance standards to grow C.A.S.E.’s "best-in-class" model and mindset.
(3) Refine, codify, and institutionalize business processes and systems so that C.A.S.E. has superior execution
of programmatic and administrative work, sustainable results, and fidelity in practices over time.
(4) Invest in structural changes, staff, and skills to address organizational challenges due to rapid growth.

Since our founding in 1998, C.A.S.E. has grown and developed a national reputation for excellence as a provider of unique and specialized products and services to meet the mental health needs of the adoptive, foster, and kinship care community. We are guided by a caring, passionate 19-member Board of Directors. With 9 offices and 53 staff, we are the leading provider of adoption competent therapy, education, and training in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. We have served more than 6,800 clinical clients and their families to date.

C.A.S.E.'s capabilities are augmented by our national network of partners and excellent relationships with key stakeholders including families, government organizations, private service providers, research institutes, universities, and donors. Launched in 2009, our nationally-recognized Training for Adoption Competency™ (TAC) Program is the only accredited, assessment-based certificate program for mental health professionals on adoption competency in the country. TAC™ includes 72 hours of training with follow-up case consultation to help practitioners apply what they have learned. C.A.S.E. has 17 partners delivering TAC™ to clinicians in 20 states. Our National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, has trained more than 18,000 child welfare and mental health professionals through specialized web-based curricula.

The adoptive, foster and kinship families C.A.S.E. serves already face complex mental health challenges, but they worsened due to the pandemic. Never before in our history have we seen such a dramatic rise in the severity of symptoms, particularly the increase in depression and suicidal thoughts and attempts in children and teens. We continue to meet families’ needs for more frequent therapy sessions – with 12% more former clients returning to C.A.S.E. for services in 2020 than the year before. We are also offering more group therapy and support groups as caregivers and teens continue to struggle with the isolation of COVID-19. We saw nearly a doubling in demand for financial assistance from clients struggling to cover the cost of therapy due. In 2021, we provided financial assistance to 76 clients and family members.

More organizations and professionals turned to C.A.S.E. for support as we launched our National Training Institute to better promote permanency and well-being for children, provide support across the family life cycle, and enhance the knowledge and skills of professionals. We received accreditation from the Institute for Credentialing Excellence for our Training for Adoption Competency Program. We invite you to join us on our journey to nurture, inspire and empower adoptive, foster and kinship families and the professionals who serve them!