Adopting Effective Support Group Facilitation

Hello everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us on this AdoptUSKids webinar today. The topic for this webinar is effective facilitation of support groups. So if you're a leader of a group, you're an administrator of an agency that holds groups for parents, or if you're thinking about starting a group yourself, this webinar is definitely for you and we are so excited for you to join. My name is Britt Cloudsdale. I am on the family support team of AdoptUSKids, and I am joined by the wonderful and very experienced trainers Barb Clark and Kim Stevens from the North American Council on Adoptable Children. Both Barb and Kim are experienced adoptive parents themselves and have been training parent group leaders for many, many years, so we're really excited for them to share their expertise with you. Barb and Kim, if you wouldn't mind just saying hi to everyone, and then I'll do some housekeeping for everybody before we get started. All right, I'll go first. This is, my name is Barb Clark. I'm a parent support coordinator at the North American Council on Adoptable Children. I am an adoptive parent. I have four teenagers right now. And I do a lot of work around training parents around the country and Canada and how to lead support groups and that kind of stuff. And I also specialize in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Hey, everybody, this is Kim Stevens. I am also an adoptive parent. We have two birth kids and four who are adopted out of the public child welfare system. All of our kids are grown now, so I can tell you all about Lights at the End of Tunnels. I've been at NACAC now for about 22 years. I started as a board member, and as soon as I was done with my board service, I quickly got on staff because it's my favorite place to be. Encourage you to always look to us for help. We're happy to be there for you. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. So I'll just briefly do some housekeeping before we get into the meat of the webinar. So this webinar is designed to be 60 minutes long, which includes time for questions that you can submit by typing into the questions pod of the GoToWebinar control panel. There have also been some questions submitted ahead of time. I have those, and I will definitely make sure that those get addressed during the webinar as well. I will be monitoring questions while Barb and Kim do the presentation. And so I will voice those questions to the presenters when we come to a natural pause. So if your question isn't immediately asked by me, please know that it's not being ignored. I'm just waiting for them to come to a natural pause in the conversation. Please also use the question functionality if you're having any technical difficulties. We can chat with you to help you if you're having trouble with audio or anything like that. Your line will be muted throughout the course of the webinar, but we do hope that you will participate via typing into chat your questions. And we also have poll questions. questions throughout the webinar that we hope you'll participate in as well. They're really helpful I think to include that interaction. I also wanted to share that you will only be able to see your own questions. You can't see what other folks have typed into their chat pods. So that's the way the webinar platform is designed. It's supposed to be that way and that's why I'll be voicing the questions so that everybody can benefit from their answer. We are recording this webinar and we will share it with you. We'll share it with you next week along with all of the resources that are discussed today. The recording will also be posted publicly both on the AdoptUSKids YouTube channel and at AdoptUSKids.org forward slash publications where you can find a lot of great resources from AdoptUSKids. If we have a lot of questions and we run out of time, we will be sending a follow-up document with answers to your questions along with the recording of the webinar. And finally, please take a moment at the close of the webinar to evaluate this session. We greatly value participant feedback and we regularly use evaluation data to improve our future events. So thank you in advance for doing that. The evaluation will launch automatically as you leave the webinar. Very briefly again, I wanted to mention a little bit about who AdoptUSKids is. AdoptUSKids is a national project of the U.S. Children's Bureau. The project is designed to raise public awareness about the need for foster and adoptive families for children in the public child welfare system. It is designed also to assist states, territories, and tribes to recruit, engage, and develop and support foster and adoptive families. So this webinar falls within that second portion of the webinar. You may be most familiar with AdoptUSKids national adoption recruitment campaign with the tagline You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent or with our photo listing service that features about 5,000 children and teens Who are in need of adoptive homes? AdoptUSKids also has a national adoption and foster care information exchange where we answer questions from Families and link them with the appropriate state to begin the process of fostering or adopting Additionally, we offer capacity building and engagement services to states, tribes, or territories that are in need of any system-specific assistance on any of the topics within our mission. We also have a family support team, which is what I'm a part of, that we offer webinars like this and other resources to the field that guide and encourage systems to build and enhance the support services available to foster and adoptive families. We also offer a minority professional leadership development program for current and emerging leaders of color. the adoption field. Thank you so much for listening to my long intro and we will definitely get things going here. Kim if you would go ahead. Okay, hi everybody. One thing I do want to say is that because this is only an hour and we have more than 160 people on this webinar, if we don't get to your question please feel free to send them forward to AdoptUSKids or to Barb and myself. and we'll be sure to get back to you by email. So here's what we want to talk about today. We want to talk first of all about what effective facilitation looks like and why that is important both for the success of your group in the moment but also for the longevity of your group, the sustainability of that. We want to help build your group facilitation skills. It's a hard thing to do to round up cats and I know being a foster adoptive parent we all can be like rounding up cats sometimes we've got a lot on our minds and a lot we want to take care of so being able to really focus in on what the questions are and what the what the task is at hand is going to be super important we want to give you some strategies for how you can facilitate difficult conversations in groups you know certainly people don't really come to support groups so that they can tell you about how wonderful everything is they're usually coming in times of crisis or in times of need there can often be crying there can be a lot of emotion and it's hard to have some of those conversations but they're really necessary to have in order to sustain adoptive families and the important work that they do and finally we want to talk about how to manage some of the challenging behaviors in groups sometimes groups can become unruly sometimes you have a hard time getting somebody to stay on topic or to even give up their time on the floor. So we're going to talk through some of those issues as well. We're going to have some polling questions that Britt is going to facilitate now. So if folks can please respond to those, we'll give you a little time. This first one who is in the room, select one of the following, kinship adoptive or foster parent, child welfare professional, or both or other. And it looks like most of the folks on the line are a child welfare professional, 65%, and 19% are both. There you go. And now there's a second poll question. Are you currently or currently offering support groups? Looks like everybody's responses are coming in and it looks like a little over a third of you are offering the groups and you are the support group leaders and then there's another quarter of people that are looking to start one. So great you are at the right place at the right time I think. Fabulous. Okay Barb if you can push the screen forward. Just defining what facilitation means. It simply means to make something easier. So in our parent group meetings, what that is sort of interpreted as, it's the art of guiding the group discussion, protecting the structure of the meetings to help the group be as effective, efficient, and productive as possible. And essentially what you're doing as the facilitator is that you are creating a safe space that people will want to come back to. That's why being a good facilitator is so important. Why does it matter? Well, first of all, it's going to keep your group focused and on hand. I mean, and focused on the task at hand. And honestly, I have been in groups where the facilitation was either not present, it was an ad hoc group and nobody was really in charge, or where the facilitation was not very good. And I can tell you, even though they were groups that I wanted to be a part of, I would leave because it felt like a waste of my time after a while. And the other piece of this is that people are finding time in their very, very busy lives to come to your group because they need support. And they really don't have the time, the energy, or the bandwidth to be distracted by process challenges. You want to be able to deliver what they have come for. Barb, that's on to you. Yep, that's me. So understand, you know, keys to facilitation. You know, for many people, facilitation kind of comes naturally, and for some of us, it doesn't. So some of the things that are kind of important when facilitating is understanding group process, structuring the meeting, and then also guiding the discussion. Those are kind of some of the key things that group facilitators need to be keeping in mind. So we need to look at how do groups make decisions? What are the roles of the group members who are in your group? You know, we have I lead I lead many different groups up here in Minnesota where NACAC is based at. And and I you know, a lot of the regulars and stuff like that end up kind of having roles. Like I have one lady who has become the snack lady, like she kind of brings snacks. And so, you know, and then there's one person who's kind of the clown, the funny person who interjects humor. And so. Just kind of starting to understand that and see that you're going to have different roles that group members have that are very kind of unofficial. And then there might be some official ones, too. And then also understanding human dynamics and how that plays into this. You know, I know some groups who once they really get going and stuff like that have actually even done some different kind of personality, not testing, but some of the different activities like true colors or all the various things where. we can understand people's different personality styles and the human dynamics that play into the success or the challenges of a group, for example. So we talk a lot at NACAC about forming, storming, and norming. Sounds very Minnesotan, doesn't it? Especially the way I say it, norming. Anyways, so forming is kind of the whole coming together for mutual concerns, and that's what we see with foster, adoptive, and kinship families is There's so much value in getting together with other parents, other caregivers for living the same life, the same struggles, the same joys, that kind of stuff. So kind of the forming is really, you know, the first and foremost thing that kind of happens in getting people there. And then we've got the storming too. I mean, as Kim was saying earlier, most people aren't coming to support groups because everything's rosy, peachy, and, you know, rainbows and puppies. It's for... often coming because we need support because we're struggling with various things. So the storming, you know, we're here because we're frustrated, we're venting issues, we're looking for validation, for support, that kind of stuff. And then the next thing is kind of the norming, you know, we've got a, and that's really important for the long-term longevity of the group, you know, for people to come back. In a way, it's a normalizing thing in a lot of the groups that I lead. we're always just kind of talking about, you know, this is kind of our life. This is the life of families that are parenting and loving children with trauma histories. And, you know, the outside world doesn't really understand that. And so, you know, there's kind of a real bonding that comes from that. You know, one of the big common things in a lot of the groups I've been leading here in the last month is we're talking about those. beautiful Christmas letters and holiday letters that many families write at this time of the year and how we kind of have some laughs and there's definitely jealousy and things like that but we'll kind of try to make it a fun kind of norming thing for us that you know sometimes those letters don't really fit with some of the struggles that we're having in our life so making things just kind of normalized it's like the new normal is what we always talk about And then again, understanding group process. You know, we can have unbalanced storming. You know, if you have one or more persons who can't let go of an issue and every single month or every single time the group is meeting, you're hearing from that same parent about the same thing. That can really kind of, you know, set a group in a not good direction. Frustration and resentment can grow from that. Sometimes participation. drop so maybe people are still coming but they're being silenced because somebody's just a little bit you know too dominant and that kind of stuff. And then sometimes groups can fail. So it's important that we are looking at that and how some of that unbalanced storming can really become poisonous for a group. So we've got another poll here, not quite yet. One more slide here and then we'll have another, our third and final poll. But proactive facilitators are going to be really dealing with that unbalanced storming when it happens. doing positive-based things like seeking out solution-focused speakers, for example. Sometimes a lot of groups maybe are based on having speakers and presenters, but if we are having a really common thing, a common struggle, let's bring in a speaker. One of my groups here in Minnesota, there's been a lot of discussion in the last probably year in this group, it's parents of teenagers, about case management, like children's mental health case management with which many of our families end up having. And as many of us have experienced, sometimes the case managers are brand new. It's their first job and maybe don't know exactly what they're doing. And then, you know, and so that can be frustrating. But often also parents don't understand what actually should or could a case manager be doing for you. So in next month, we're actually going to have one of our family's case managers is going to come. and speak about that because it has been a kind of a constant frustration that families have been talking about. So, you know, seeking speakers out like that is really good. And then another thing that a good facilitator is going to do is when we do have a parent who's kind of unrelentless and doing in this negative, frustrating, storming kind of cycle, we've got to figure out a way to respectfully interrupt them and kind of redirect it. So, and then also anticipating difficult behaviors. There are groups when I, you know, I can tell when people are walking in the room, what's going to be the challenge tonight, just because I know that maybe one of the parents has called me in the last week or two, or maybe online on our Facebook group, we've seen the issues, you know, various things that are going on there. So sometimes being, anticipatory and those kind of things and heading them off at you know sometimes I've even gone up to a parent before a group starts and I'm like oh man you're in the midst of a really huge crisis and I get that let's let's you and I maybe talk at the end of group or let's get together in the next week or something like that because you know we could spend the whole night talking about what you're dealing with because it's so intense and challenging and I can't imagine how you're dealing with it you know so just kind of being really proactive like that And then addressing issues head-on is also another really important thing for a good facilitator to do. So we're going to launch into another poll here. Hey, Barb. Before we do that, we had a question related to what you were just talking about. So this person has said that sometimes they have a foster parent who dominates the conversation and kind of barely comes up for a breath. So do you have any tips for specifically for interrupting it's hard because she can tell that she really needs to talk and needs some support but so does everyone else so kind of how to manage that yeah totally no that's a really common kind of challenge that we can have in these groups one of the biggest recommendations I have is if this is a regular thing going on that I would try to have a meeting with that parent And maybe it's before or after the group or between the next group or something like that and just kind of acknowledge that, wow, you've got a lot of stuff going on. And I'm really glad you're coming and getting the support that you need. But sometimes it ends up taking too much of the group time and we're not able to hear from other parents. And so, you know, kind of, you know, sometimes doing that and talking with them about it a lot of times. When you do something like that, the parent will be like, oh, I know I have a really hard time not talking or, you know what I mean? Like a lot of times they're kind of self-aware about that. And so I'll be in a, you know, a little bit further on here, giving some different tools that we can give to those parents to try to help them not quite talk as much. But otherwise, as far as, you know, having to interrupt a parent, which definitely I've had to do that multiple different times. And you just kind of have to do it as respectfully as you can and say, you know, okay, you know, Susan, you are talking about something that is so important and, you know, really something that needs to be talked about here. But I think that within our group setting, maybe we're going too far into this. So let's you and I talk at the end of group tonight and figure out a way that we can do some more brainstorming around this issue or something like that. So sometimes just kind of calling it out like that and saying, okay, this is important stuff. Let's talk about it later though so that everybody has a chance. That's great. Thank you, Barb. I'll launch the poll now. Awesome. Thank you. So what we kind of want you guys to do the poll on here is what techniques do you guys use to give structure to your group? Have you set ground rules and shared those and or revisited them? Do you use agendas? Do you have discussion guides? That's actually a thing that we can share with you guys, too, at some point. Kim has done a great job on using. putting together some various discussion guides and like book club formats that support groups can use as well. Do you use presentations or speakers? Have you done a periodic needs assessment? Have you used any of these tools? So it looks like a lot of you guys have used these things. Many of you have ground rules. It's looking like close to 70% or so, over half are doing agendas. over half are doing the presentations and speakers. Needs assessment, about a fourth are doing periodically. So that's good info. Very cool. All right. So now I'm going to hand it back to you, Kim. Yeah. There we go. We're going to talk a little bit now about structuring the meeting. And one of the things to think about is really you do want to be prepared. And I say that as a person who often likes to do things by the seat of my pants. When you're doing something like this, though, you really owe it to the folks that are taking the time out to come to your meeting to make sure that you've got your ducks in a row and you know what you're going to be doing. All the time, I recommend that you solicit volunteers to do anything you can think of. Ask them to bring refreshments, you know, have people sign up. on a month-to-month basis for doing that, ask someone to be a timekeeper, ask someone to do a survey for you. You know, as a support group leader, that there are times when you're not really up for it. And we know at NACAC very well, because we do this, we've been doing training for support group leaders for about, gosh, about 25 years now, that one of the biggest frustrations for a leader is when they have to retire or step. down and they can't find anybody to step in for them. So one of the pieces around facilitation is to always make sure that you're engaging the rest of your members in some kind of a meaningful way so that they realize that they also have that capacity. You definitely want to make sure that you're including them. That way you're sort of thinking ahead to build in your successor. You want to make sure that you set up the room in a good way. I remember a A couple of times, Barb and I have gone to do a training and they've got the room set up like classroom style. And we're going to be doing a training that's supposed to be really interactive and get to people's emotions. If you've got people looking at the backs of each other's heads, you are not going to be having a good conversation. And you are going to find that sometimes people want to be in the back. They're feeling a little bit more shy. So if you can set up the room in advance in sort of a circular or a half circle way. Make sure that you have more seats then you have people coming It makes it a lot harder for people to step to the back and it makes it a lot easier as a Facilitator for you to engage people all the time and to be able to see people see what their reactions are See what's hitting them in certain ways? I absolutely encourage you to have an agenda so that you know what you're doing But make sure that that agenda has time inside of it for socializing Because one of the gifts that you're going to give yourself as a facilitator is to encourage the other members of your support group to connect with each other as well so that you're not doing all of the work all of the time. Really want to think about what the structure looks like in terms of your beginning, middle and end. So we always encourage people to start each group just with a reminder of the ground rules. And we encourage you to periodically ask your members, what should the ground rules be? Things like what's said here stays here. We're going to start on time and end on time, no matter what, in respect for people's very limited time to be here. You're welcome to come in later, but we're going to already have begun. Other ground rules are around only one person speaks at a time. You know. One of the things that's really important is to just understand how people want that support to come. Do they want someone to be coming up with solutions or do they want to just be able to speak about what their issue is? So anyway, you just want to visit those. I encourage you to have them on a flip chart and just sort of out there in the room at all times. That way, if there's something going on, you can flip back to them. In terms of the middle of the support group meeting, that's where you're going to do most of your business. But I also want to encourage you to have. some kind of a ritual or something that is meaningful to your group around your closure. I was just last week with a group of young people who have all got lift experience in the foster care system, and we meet on a regular basis. And one of them said, you know what I really need at the end? I need to leave on a positive note. So can we have a ritual where we thank each other for what we've done? got and what they brought today. And I thought that was lovely as a nice way to just go back out into the world and not have to worry about getting the bends when you're decompressing. So if I can pause you real quick, we have a question related to what you were talking about. What do you do as a facilitator when people do not follow ground rules, like not turning off cell phones or side talking or any of the stuff that you've put out there already? So I very... frankly, but without judgment in my voice, I'll call them on it, you know, and just say, you know, we have just want to remind you that the group came to a shared understanding of what our rules are. And I really want to encourage you to please respect those rules. Now, in the case of a cell phone, like one of the things that I know can happen with families is that there could be an emergency. I get that. But if If there's going to be an emergency, I want you to tell the group ahead of time, I might be getting a call, and then I want to be able to say as a facilitator, please, thanks so much, Sue, for letting us know that. Can you please put your phone on vibrate so it doesn't interrupt? And if you do get that emergency call, would you please take the call out in the hallway? Take the call out. And honestly, if people can't respect the ground rules like Bob said, I'll pull them in. Hey, Kim, we're having a little bit of trouble, or at least I am having some trouble hearing you now. I'm not sure what that is, but if you could speak up a little bit. So I've got the computer right near my face now. Is that better? That's better. Yes, thank you. So as Bob was saying, I just would ask somebody if they can't follow the ground rules, you know, respectfully ask them to have a conversation with you outside of the group. try to get to the bottom of whatever the issue is. Great, thank you. You're welcome. I think that Barb had mentioned surveying the group. I think that's always a good idea to find out what people are interested in. And one of the things that we really encourage people to do is just to try to focus the conversation away from what the problems are and moving towards strategies and solutions. This is done in a really delicate way. Sometimes people just need to be validated. They don't want to get advice. And you can certainly find out from them. But just to try to keep things from kind of digging into that deep hole. And I really do want you to encourage yourselves and encourage the quieter members of the group to join in the conversation at their level. Particularly if I'll see somebody in the group is talking a lot and somebody else maybe hasn't said anything at all. I might pause for a moment and just say, Joe, you've been awful quiet. I wonder what you're thinking about this discussion. It's a nice, gentle way to get people involved. You want to be monitoring who's speaking too much and who's speaking all the time. You want to make sure that the topics that you choose are the topics that are relative to the and relevant to the families that you have coming. And always think about. whether or not you're going to have a guest speaker or do a presentation yourself, particularly if you've just been to a great training or a great conference, you might come back with some fabulous information that nobody had before. And again, always thinking about that guest speaker or that presentation being short enough and concise enough that you have time for networking. Nice. All right. It's also important to be positive. As we know, a lot of people have really kind of negative views of support groups. That's why a lot of people don't want to attend one or, you know, there's just, there's, there's so many just negative perceptions of them out there. And that's because all too often, some of our support groups are, 100% heavy negative venting whining that kind of a thing and so it's really important that the facilitators are able to bring some positivity some light some humor different things like that we've got to try to help our families to reframe how they're looking at some of the situations that kind of stuff so that's important we talked about ground rules and sticking to them that's huge engaging everybody in the first five to ten minutes I feel really strongly about this so most of the groups that I lead are kind of we don't really very often have speakers or presenters or topics or things like that what what I tend to do is we will I will have everybody go around and we're here in the Twin Cities so people are coming from different areas of the you know from suburbs and inner city areas and first second third fourth tier suburbs and that kind of stuff so I will have people go around and say their name, where they live, you know, their family makeup, you know, how many kids they have or something. And then what I'll do also is I'll have them say, is there a topic or something that you want us to talk about tonight here in group? And if not, if you're just here to be here, that's fantastic. But if there's a question or a specific issue you're struggling with, bring that up. And what I do is I have a notebook, a small notebook. that I bring with to each group and it's kind of my notebook that I use for all my messages and that kind of stuff. But I will take attendance in that book. I'll write down everybody who's there and then during that introduction, I will write notes of, okay, this parent wants to talk about guardianship. This parent wants to talk about this specific school issue they're having. This parent wants to talk about truancy court and if anybody else has been there yet, you know, and so So what I say and the reason why we do that is because you guys have probably all been to those kind of groups where the introductions can take over the whole group and parents while they're introducing themselves start launching into all the challenges they're having. And so this is just one way of getting around that and it's actually, I found it to be really effective because then What I'll do then after introductions is I'll kind of be looking at my list of what the topics are. And I also am mentally noting who, you know, I'll even write down the name of the parent who brought up the topic. And when I'm doing that, I know which one or two parents are the ones that talk way too much or something like that. So maybe then I will put their topic as the last one that I go to, for example. I'm just really, really kind of thoughtful in which ones I go to at what point. And so sometimes I'm trying to mix it up a little bit so it's like not the heavy topic after heavy topic. And I'll throw one of the maybe lighter ones in there. So that's one way to kind of engage everybody at the beginning. And then also being aware of yourself and others while you're guiding discussion is really important. And, you know, doing things like. watching body language because we know that 10% of our communication is verbal and 90% is nonverbal. So while the group is going on, you know, be kind of, you know, looking around and just kind of getting that nonverbal feedback from people and making notes and kind of going with the flow according to that. The other thing is that it's important that we understand that conflict is normal, where, you know, there's going to be conflict. We're not always going to agree on everything. but it's just important that we kind of work through it. Remain committed to the group process. That can, you know, that can greatly help too. You know, groups are challenging. They can be really challenging. I mean, most of us remember back in, whether it was in high school or college or whatever, group projects. I don't, I've never met a single person that likes group projects, right? And so maybe professors or teachers, but I don't even understand that even. you know groups are challenging and so if we just kind of remain committed to the process you know things will eventually turn around if we've hit some walls so you know it's talking earlier about the fact you know that there are some tools that we can use with our parents and caregivers to help them understand this this top one here is something that you can kind of teach the group that this is can just be one of the norms or the ground rules or whatever but if we do have a parent that is talking too long You can do this thing where you take your arm, you know, and you raise it above your head and you kind of do that, you know, landing the plane motion with your arm. I don't know how you guys can't see me right now, but I'm doing it really brilliantly, by the way. So you just kind of sit there with them and you just let everybody know, hey, here's one of the things that we're going to have be a norm in our group. And you can actually even have it be where it's not just the group leader that does that, but other group members can also call people out. And so that can just be something and you can share that and say, here, this is just one of the things that we're going to have in our group so that we make sure everybody gets time that they need. So if. If we ever start to feel like somebody is going on a little bit too long, we'll just do this motion. And that just is the sign to kind of wrap it up and to not be offended because we all need that from time to time. I can tell you that my colleagues do that to me. And I'm not offended by it. I know I can get yapping too much. Another one, then, this three-than-me thing is this whole thing that, like, when there was the question earlier about that one. person who talks too much when you do talk with them when you pull them aside outside of the group like one tool that you can give them is to say you know you have you have so much going on and I understand that and I value the need that you're here and that kind of stuff but how about sometimes you have let's have you think about that you don't talk until three other people have spoken so let's say you share something in the beginning and that means you wait three you would let three other people talk before you can talk again. And so I even know some parents that actually even put three things in front of them or in their hands like three pens in their hand and they'll and they'll like set put one you know the pen in the other hand after one person has talked. Like people often are very aware of the fact that they talk too much and then we obviously know those people that don't know that also but if they're not able to self-regulate this is a tool to give them. And then another thing that you can use for, you know, as a ground rule, when we don't want the side talking, there's nothing kind of that annoys me more than during a group, if all of a sudden, two parents are sitting there in a side conversation, while another parents on the other side of the circle is talking. And I call that out really fast, because I just find that to be kind of disrespectful. And I'll just say, hey, you guys, you two, why don't you stay at the end a little bit and talk about this, because I know you're talking about a really valuable resource that you're sharing with each other now. but do it at the end, please. And so what, you know, a little thing that you can say, if you have this as a norm too, is one diva, one mic. So that could be something you could just say to two people. One diva, one mic is just a quick reminder and, you know, and keep moving on. So those are just a few things that I know some group leaders will use to deal with some of that kind of stuff. And then, you know, as I interject real quick, I'm sorry, I was hoping to get you in a pause, but... We had a couple of questions related to a couple slides ago Kim had mentioned discussion guides. And so folks were wondering if those are accessible now and if there's any specifically on topics related to, you know, managing children's behaviors. As I'm sure we all know that that's going to come up a lot in these conversations. I wanted to mention before you guys answer that that AdoptUSKids is in the process of creating a lot of resources for parent group leaders and one of them one of the one of the areas of resources that we're looking to is creating discussion guides for that very purpose but those are not created at the moment in time so they had some questions about accessing that awesome Kim do you want to answer this or hear me yes I can now yes okay great so I I'm now on the telephone I got off somehow. Oh, I'm so glad you called. The discussion guides that Barb mentioned, there's a couple of them that I put together for one of our parent leadership trainings based on some books that I have read that had some great material in them. And I'm going to be sure to send those to Britt so that she can share them with folks. Yes, I can share them out to this entire group if you send them to me. That's great. The other thing, too, that I've seen, somebody had asked if they could get a copy of the PowerPoint. And as well, we're happy to have Brett share that with everybody. Barb, can you tell me what slide you're on now? Because I'm on my computer looking at our version of the PowerPoint and on my phone, so I can keep going. Yep, I'm on leaders are self-aware. So I'll finish this one, and then it's your turn. Okay, great. Thank you so much. You bet. Yeah, so one of the discussion guides that Kim will be sending to Britt so that it can be shared with all of you is based on the Wounded Children Healing Homes book, which is just an awesome, excellent book. And so she put together a great discussion guide that can be used from that. So we will definitely share some of those resources. Another thing I did want to mention is in October, Kim and I and Britt and the whole team, we did a... webinar on parent engagement, how to get parents to your groups, how to keep them coming, all that kind of stuff. And that's available on the AdoptUSKids website and YouTube channels. So that's also, if you weren't on that, you can get that info as well. So leaders, it's important that we're self-aware as leaders because we've got to figure out this balance between what we share and what we don't share about our own struggles. Again, Some of you guys might not be adoptive foster or kinship parents yourself, and so that might not be an issue. But for those of you that are, you've got to find that delicate balance because we don't want the group leaders to be kind of taking over the group with their issues and that kind of stuff. But we also want parents to know we have some of the same struggles. So you've got to find that delicate balance right in the middle of how much you share and how much you don't. It's important that they know that we are humans because I do know sometimes that in some groups, the parents almost start feeling like this group leader has everything together and they're amazing. And how come I can't be more like them? That's what everybody thinks about me. I'm totally kidding. But anyways, it's just important that we find that that balance and make sure that the group does not become our support group for our needs and issues. And with that, I'm going to give it back to you, Kim. Okay. Okay. So, one of the things that, you know, I really want you to think about and to be anticipating is... Oh, we lost you. Are you there? I think we're having trouble hearing, Kim. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. Okay, great, because I haven't changed anything. One thing that I recommend, always have tissues on hand. Crying is okay. I think that crying is very cathartic and it's a normal thing to do. We want to be sensitive to people when they're feeling emotional. But the other thing is that people are going to be coming to the group with viewpoints and experiences that are not comfortable for everybody else in the group. So be aware of that. Be ready to make sure that you're caring for all of your members. And just... Again, I really encourage you to think about co-facilitation. It's really helpful if you have a partner that you can rely on when things get hairy so that if somebody needs some one-on-one attention, one of you as a facilitator can take care of that person while the other one can keep the group going for everybody else that's there. In terms of controversial topics, you know, There can be a million different things that come into the support group that can be controversial. I would actually recommend that as one of your ground rules, or maybe a couple of them, I would recommend politics is not part of the discussion. Leave your political views and viewpoints at home. They don't have a place here. I would also make as a ground rule that all are accepted here. You know, people have different viewpoints about different kinds of... sexual and gender orientation. Hey, Kim, sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry. We have a couple of comments that it's hard to hear again. I'm having an okay time hearing you, but we had a couple of comments that it's becoming hard to hear again. I don't know what I want you to do about that. Would you speak up, I guess? Loudly. The people that were having a hard time hearing, can you just, like, thumbs up if this is better? Unfortunately, my computer won't let me back on GoToMeeting. It says it's worse. Let's see. Barb, would you maybe take over these slides? Yeah, just because we're having a harder time. Sorry, Kim. Thank you so much. All right. So. facilitating some of the kind of difficult discussions and I know there was a question about dealing with difficult behaviors too. You know one of the things that we recommend One of the things that I think parents often forget when we're parenting children with a trauma history is to take into account their developmental age, not their chronological age. And then to also be talking in groups I lead, we talk about the brain all the time. I'm the total brain geek. And, you know, so many of our children have compromised brains or brain injuries from prenatal alcohol or drug exposure, from just in utero trauma, not to mention early life trauma. And so we're always talking a lot about how that impacts the brain and trying to help parents have more understanding in dealing with that. And we also are often talking a lot about how to help parents reframe behaviors. So, like, we'll have a parent sit and talk about a specific behavior that they're struggling with. And as a group, we'll kind of try to brainstorm and figure out, okay, what do we think it is that's causing that behavior? what could be some different ways to deal with it because most parents most of us were parented with consequence based parenting right that's what the vast majority of parenting books teach us and tell us to do and that generally is a very ineffective parenting method with kids with a trauma history in and out of the womb and so so really kind of trying to help parents kind of reframe look at more therapeutic parenting strategies would be my answer on how to talk about the difficult behaviors. Maybe having parents do a book club thing within your support group or a discussion guide around Heather Forbes, Beyond Consequences, Nurtured Heart Approach, things like that. So back to facilitating kind of difficult discussions, making your group a no-judgment zone. Kim was kind of talking about that. I guess she actually talked about both of those things there. We've talked about ground rules. I know this one facilitator who's just masterful at actually kind of going over to a parent if they've been talking too long and kind of just putting her hand on their shoulder. And so, you know, if that's something that kind of fits, that's something that we could do. You know, talking about some sometimes we will say that. let's talk about, you know, let's talk about this at the end of group tonight. I'm happy to stay after at the end, if this is possible. Obviously, it's not always possible, but we can also set up another time to talk about some of the challenges and some of the things that are going on. And the other thing is remembering that your role is to protect the group, even if it means losing a member. You know, I think I shared this in another webinar, but we had somebody, a new parent who came to one of my... one of my really established groups over a year ago and she was a lovely woman but she started raving about this wonderful new method that she was using and how she had gone to this amazing training and we were all like salivating like we were like what is it so we're asking her what it was and it was this whole she had gotten some training from some school psychologist talking about consequences and how if you're strict and consistent with consequences how everything is going to be great And everybody's instantly looking at me, waiting for my response, because they know that I'm kind of of the opposite belief in many ways. Our kids have some of the most severe consequences in the world. They've lost their first families. They probably have trauma history. They've had so many consequences already that for us to be taking away their cell phone or their video game time or whatever. whatever the consequence might be, it is just another loss for them. And so instead, if we can look at a different way of dealing with it. So anyways, I had to kind of respond to that parent and do it in a respectful way and say, generally, that's not a very effective method. Most of us have tried that and it doesn't work. And, you know, she felt kind of awkward. She's never come back. But I did it very respectfully. But, you know, it just really wasn't the right group for her. A successful parent group facilitator. I think this is... Barb, I'm sorry. Could I pause you real quick? Yeah, go for it. We had a couple of questions. So one was, what are your thoughts on parent-led groups, or do you feel a professional in the field is necessary? And I think on our last webinar, Kim had mentioned if it's at all possible doing both of those people combining together in co-facilitation. Would you speak a little bit about that? Yeah, no, it's lovely if we can have a child welfare professional partnering with a parent to do a group. That's, you know, that is great. But definitely we have really found that the most successful groups are ones that have parents leading them. And that is not at all to say that you can't have a successful group if you're a child welfare professional. You also can. But it really is nice if you can partner with the parent also who has. kind of some lived experience in that area. So, you know, it can be either way. It's just... Really more effective often if a professional can partner with a parent to do it together Can you hear me now is this phone better Yes, yes that is back. So the one thing I do want to say about a professional leading a support group I would just advise you if it is a group that is being led by a professional and In particular if it's being led by a professional at the child welfare office and you're finding that you're not getting great participation, you want to rethink that because for a lot of families, that child welfare office can feel a bit triggering. You know, they had to prove themselves in order to become approved as a foster or adoptive parent. But the other piece of it is as well that people worry about being honest if they feel that they might have a consequence from it. just like our kids do. So just, you know, really evaluate that. If you find that you're not getting the attendance, it is possible that people are fearful about going to a group that's led by a professional because a professional, in their experience, has a lot of power over them. Awesome. That's very good. There are a lot of questions, y'all. I just want to reiterate, if we cannot get to all of them, we will send a follow-up document. I absolutely promise. If... Barb, is it okay if I ask you a couple more quick ones, and then we'll try and wrap up, because we are approaching the 60-minute mark. How long would you recommend support groups? How long do you recommend they last? I usually say an hour and a half to two hours. No more than two hours, but most I've found an hour and a half to be kind of people's favorite number. Right, right. Yeah. And have you had this one goes back to the webinar that we did in October. So some folks having some trouble getting foster and adoptive parents to come to support group initially. So I would definitely recommend folks asking questions about that. Check out, I can make sure that everybody has the link to that webinar that happened in October. Barb and Kim were presenters on that webinar as well, and it's specifically about engaging caregivers in support groups. So I would definitely recommend that you check that out. I'm just going to also add another approach that people have found to be successful. is as part of the home study or parent preparation process, they require families to attend one, two, or three support group meetings just to kind of get a sense of what they're like, what they're all about. And once a family goes to that group meeting, they often will come back again because they find that it really is helpful. And we've had a lot of people that have had success with calling their groups. something other than a support group. People don't want to feel like they, you know, some people interpret going to a support group as saying that they are failing or not, you know, up to par. Yep, that's really good advice. So as I said this earlier, but sense of humor is really, really important. We've got to make sure that we laugh at every group, not at the group. at each group session we need to make sure there's laughter. I should rephrase that like that, right? So it's just really important that people aren't just leaving feeling heavier. We need them to leave feeling like they maybe have some new ideas, but also that we were able to laugh. And again, we do it respectfully. We're not laughing at our kids, but you know, as a group facilitator, if I'm feeling like things are getting a little bit too heavy, I might kind of just you know throw something funny in and I shared this in the last webinar But you know some parents talking about some problem that they're having and I'll just say you know something like well that sounds like you need to try a sticker chart or Or you know when they're talking about some you know that the school's complaining about some problem I'll be like when you know why is that a problem that the kid is you know doing whatever they're doing or you know, we'll just kind of make sure that we're interjecting humor because it's just really important so that families are able to laugh. Laugh is a huge self-care method and coming to support groups is self-care. So just getting them there, getting them feeling good with the group is huge. One of my groups, we're actually on, we meet on the first Tuesday of the month, which in January is New Year's Day. And we actually decided we're going to meet at my house and we're going the teenagers that come also go sledding across the hill and we're going to kind of make it a social thing so we just are making sure that we also have fun kind of mixed in with it as well confidentiality is very important making sure that that's an aspect of the group and that we talk about that almost at every group the fact that's what's shared here stays here it's a little mini vegas checking in with the group regularly is important you know, we've got lots of different things here that are, you know, just really important that we're aware of when you're leading a group, but that confidentiality is huge. So I think Britt, oh, another one other thing that I don't think we have written in here that I wanted to mention, I have found that the most effective group leaders are ones that are really intentional about being, becoming aware of and knowledgeable in local resources. So and kind of how your local system of resources works, for example, like how they get an assessment to maybe get case management or how medical assistance works within your state or community or even being aware of who are the local pediatricians or therapists or medication managers who are adoption trauma competent. I think it's really important. We in Minnesota here, one of our big counties actually has community info sessions on waivers, on guardianship, on all these various topics, on social security, all these things. I started going to those free little two-hour community info sessions years ago. Even if it wasn't a resource that I needed at that time for my children, I wanted to better understand them so that I could then help parents in in the groups that I'm leading be able to, you know, understand. Like guardianship is something we talked about a ton last month. So understanding resources and helping our families know how to access them is really another really helpful facilitator thing. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Barb. And we've had so many questions come in. I'm so happy that everybody's so engaged with this topic. I'm so excited about it. A lot of the questions related to, like, there's a lot related to what time of day should we hold webinars or where should we hold them, and all of that was in a previous webinar that we did. I would definitely encourage you to check it out, and I'll make sure that the specific link is included in our follow-up email next week. So I just wanted to mention that really quickly. We are going to be offering more training and resources, as I mentioned before, specifically for parent group leaders. and managers of programs that include support groups. So I don't necessarily think we have time for this right now because we had so many great questions during the webinar. But I would like this group to be thinking about what future training topics would you really like to hear on from AdoptUS kids? How could we best support you? What are you most interested in hearing about and learning about? It sounds like the discussion guides are definitely something a lot of folks are interested in. So with that, will you move to the next? Actually, let's go ahead and move through to the resources. Don't run out of time. At the end of this presentation is all of our contact info as well. I would definitely encourage you to please email me directly or Kim or Barb for if you have any suggestions, ideas, questions about what you can access either through NACAC or through AdoptUSKids. So I did want to mention, I think Kim if you're still on are you able to mention some of these parent group resources very quickly. I'm sorry, Barb. I'm taking it all over the different slides. So the parent group resources that you see, Starting Nurturing and Maintaining Adoptive Parent Group, that guide, Developing Parent-to-Parent Support Network, and Taking a Break, all of those are available online. And they're step-by-step guides, especially the first one is a step-by-step guide. It has lots of reproducible materials in it. The other two also cite different groups that have been quite successful with developing certain programs, and they offer you some advice on how you can replicate their good programs. And then for those of you who are working with kinship families, on the next page there is information from the Brookdale Foundation, the Relatives as Parents program, and the guidebook. which is really helpful because a lot of times for our relative caregivers, the things that we are talking about in a foster or adoptive support group don't really resonate with them or they may resonate to some degree, but the situations are somewhat different, so they kind of need their own resources as well. Great. Thank you so much. And I've also included where folks can access AdoptUSKids resources as well. I put the link into the chat pod of where you can access specifically the Supporting Families webpage. So if you wanted to grab that right now, I would definitely suggest you do that. That's where you can access other publications, tip sheets, and previous webinar recordings, as we mentioned. You'll see right here, this is all of our contact information. Please, please, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. If you have needs for your parent group or your agency in supporting parent groups, we hope this webinar has been valuable to you. Again, if we did not get to your question, we apologize. We wanted to keep this to the 60-minute mark as promised. So we will send a follow-up document. There are a couple of questions, a couple of outlying questions. So we will definitely get those answered and back out to you. Please expect an email from us next week. And thank you so much for joining, everyone.

Hello everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us on this AdoptUSKids webinar today. The topic for this webinar is effective facilitation of support groups.

So if you're a leader of a group, you're an administrator of an agency that holds groups for parents, or if you're thinking about starting a group yourself, this webinar is definitely for you and we are so excited for you to join. My name is Britt Cloudsdale. I am on the family support team of AdoptUSKids, and I am joined by the wonderful and very experienced trainers Barb Clark and Kim Stevens from the North American Council on Adoptable Children.

Both Barb and Kim are experienced adoptive parents themselves and have been training parent group leaders for many, many years, so we're really excited for them to share their expertise with you. Barb and Kim, if you wouldn't mind just saying hi to everyone, and then I'll do some housekeeping for everybody before we get started. All right, I'll go first. This is, my name is Barb Clark. I'm a parent support coordinator at the North American Council on Adoptable Children.

I am an adoptive parent. I have four teenagers right now. And I do a lot of work around training parents around the country and Canada and how to lead support groups and that kind of stuff. And I also specialize in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Hey, everybody, this is Kim Stevens.

I am also an adoptive parent. We have two birth kids and four who are adopted out of the public child welfare system. All of our kids are grown now, so I can tell you all about Lights at the End of Tunnels.

I've been at NACAC now for about 22 years. I started as a board member, and as soon as I was done with my board service, I quickly got on staff because it's my favorite place to be. Encourage you to always look to us for help.

We're happy to be there for you. Awesome. Thank you guys so much.

So I'll just briefly do some housekeeping before we get into the meat of the webinar. So this webinar is designed to be 60 minutes long, which includes time for questions that you can submit by typing into the questions pod of the GoToWebinar control panel. There have also been some questions submitted ahead of time.

I have those, and I will definitely make sure that those get addressed during the webinar as well. I will be monitoring questions while Barb and Kim do the presentation. And so I will voice those questions to the presenters when we come to a natural pause.

So if your question isn't immediately asked by me, please know that it's not being ignored. I'm just waiting for them to come to a natural pause in the conversation. Please also use the question functionality if you're having any technical difficulties. We can chat with you to help you if you're having trouble with audio or anything like that.

Your line will be muted throughout the course of the webinar, but we do hope that you will participate via typing into chat your questions. And we also have poll questions. questions throughout the webinar that we hope you'll participate in as well.

They're really helpful I think to include that interaction. I also wanted to share that you will only be able to see your own questions. You can't see what other folks have typed into their chat pods. So that's the way the webinar platform is designed.

It's supposed to be that way and that's why I'll be voicing the questions so that everybody can benefit from their answer. We are recording this webinar and we will share it with you. We'll share it with you next week along with all of the resources that are discussed today.

The recording will also be posted publicly both on the AdoptUSKids YouTube channel and at AdoptUSKids.org forward slash publications where you can find a lot of great resources from AdoptUSKids. If we have a lot of questions and we run out of time, we will be sending a follow-up document with answers to your questions along with the recording of the webinar. And finally, please take a moment at the close of the webinar to evaluate this session. We greatly value participant feedback and we regularly use evaluation data to improve our future events. So thank you in advance for doing that.

The evaluation will launch automatically as you leave the webinar. Very briefly again, I wanted to mention a little bit about who AdoptUSKids is. AdoptUSKids is a national project of the U.S. Children's Bureau.

The project is designed to raise public awareness about the need for foster and adoptive families for children in the public child welfare system. It is designed also to assist states, territories, and tribes to recruit, engage, and develop and support foster and adoptive families. So this webinar falls within that second portion of the webinar. You may be most familiar with AdoptUSKids national adoption recruitment campaign with the tagline You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent or with our photo listing service that features about 5,000 children and teens Who are in need of adoptive homes?

AdoptUSKids also has a national adoption and foster care information exchange where we answer questions from Families and link them with the appropriate state to begin the process of fostering or adopting Additionally, we offer capacity building and engagement services to states, tribes, or territories that are in need of any system-specific assistance on any of the topics within our mission. We also have a family support team, which is what I'm a part of, that we offer webinars like this and other resources to the field that guide and encourage systems to build and enhance the support services available to foster and adoptive families. We also offer a minority professional leadership development program for current and emerging leaders of color.

the adoption field. Thank you so much for listening to my long intro and we will definitely get things going here. Kim if you would go ahead.

Okay, hi everybody. One thing I do want to say is that because this is only an hour and we have more than 160 people on this webinar, if we don't get to your question please feel free to send them forward to AdoptUSKids or to Barb and myself. and we'll be sure to get back to you by email.

So here's what we want to talk about today. We want to talk first of all about what effective facilitation looks like and why that is important both for the success of your group in the moment but also for the longevity of your group, the sustainability of that. We want to help build your group facilitation skills. It's a hard thing to do to round up cats and I know being a foster adoptive parent we all can be like rounding up cats sometimes we've got a lot on our minds and a lot we want to take care of so being able to really focus in on what the questions are and what the what the task is at hand is going to be super important we want to give you some strategies for how you can facilitate difficult conversations in groups you know certainly people don't really come to support groups so that they can tell you about how wonderful everything is they're usually coming in times of crisis or in times of need there can often be crying there can be a lot of emotion and it's hard to have some of those conversations but they're really necessary to have in order to sustain adoptive families and the important work that they do and finally we want to talk about how to manage some of the challenging behaviors in groups sometimes groups can become unruly sometimes you have a hard time getting somebody to stay on topic or to even give up their time on the floor.

So we're going to talk through some of those issues as well. We're going to have some polling questions that Britt is going to facilitate now. So if folks can please respond to those, we'll give you a little time.

This first one who is in the room, select one of the following, kinship adoptive or foster parent, child welfare professional, or both or other. And it looks like most of the folks on the line are a child welfare professional, 65%, and 19% are both. There you go. And now there's a second poll question. Are you currently or currently offering support groups?

Looks like everybody's responses are coming in and it looks like a little over a third of you are offering the groups and you are the support group leaders and then there's another quarter of people that are looking to start one. So great you are at the right place at the right time I think. Fabulous.

Okay Barb if you can push the screen forward. Just defining what facilitation means. It simply means to make something easier. So in our parent group meetings, what that is sort of interpreted as, it's the art of guiding the group discussion, protecting the structure of the meetings to help the group be as effective, efficient, and productive as possible. And essentially what you're doing as the facilitator is that you are creating a safe space that people will want to come back to.

That's why being a good facilitator is so important. Why does it matter? Well, first of all, it's going to keep your group focused and on hand. I mean, and focused on the task at hand.

And honestly, I have been in groups where the facilitation was either not present, it was an ad hoc group and nobody was really in charge, or where the facilitation was not very good. And I can tell you, even though they were groups that I wanted to be a part of, I would leave because it felt like a waste of my time after a while. And the other piece of this is that people are finding time in their very, very busy lives to come to your group because they need support. And they really don't have the time, the energy, or the bandwidth to be distracted by process challenges. You want to be able to deliver what they have come for.

Barb, that's on to you. Yep, that's me. So understand, you know, keys to facilitation.

You know, for many people, facilitation kind of comes naturally, and for some of us, it doesn't. So some of the things that are kind of important when facilitating is understanding group process, structuring the meeting, and then also guiding the discussion. Those are kind of some of the key things that group facilitators need to be keeping in mind. So we need to look at how do groups make decisions? What are the roles of the group members who are in your group?

You know, we have I lead I lead many different groups up here in Minnesota where NACAC is based at. And and I you know, a lot of the regulars and stuff like that end up kind of having roles. Like I have one lady who has become the snack lady, like she kind of brings snacks.

And so, you know, and then there's one person who's kind of the clown, the funny person who interjects humor. And so. Just kind of starting to understand that and see that you're going to have different roles that group members have that are very kind of unofficial.

And then there might be some official ones, too. And then also understanding human dynamics and how that plays into this. You know, I know some groups who once they really get going and stuff like that have actually even done some different kind of personality, not testing, but some of the different activities like true colors or all the various things where. we can understand people's different personality styles and the human dynamics that play into the success or the challenges of a group, for example.

So we talk a lot at NACAC about forming, storming, and norming. Sounds very Minnesotan, doesn't it? Especially the way I say it, norming. Anyways, so forming is kind of the whole coming together for mutual concerns, and that's what we see with foster, adoptive, and kinship families is There's so much value in getting together with other parents, other caregivers for living the same life, the same struggles, the same joys, that kind of stuff.

So kind of the forming is really, you know, the first and foremost thing that kind of happens in getting people there. And then we've got the storming too. I mean, as Kim was saying earlier, most people aren't coming to support groups because everything's rosy, peachy, and, you know, rainbows and puppies.

It's for... often coming because we need support because we're struggling with various things. So the storming, you know, we're here because we're frustrated, we're venting issues, we're looking for validation, for support, that kind of stuff. And then the next thing is kind of the norming, you know, we've got a, and that's really important for the long-term longevity of the group, you know, for people to come back.

In a way, it's a normalizing thing in a lot of the groups that I lead. we're always just kind of talking about, you know, this is kind of our life. This is the life of families that are parenting and loving children with trauma histories. And, you know, the outside world doesn't really understand that. And so, you know, there's kind of a real bonding that comes from that.

You know, one of the big common things in a lot of the groups I've been leading here in the last month is we're talking about those. beautiful Christmas letters and holiday letters that many families write at this time of the year and how we kind of have some laughs and there's definitely jealousy and things like that but we'll kind of try to make it a fun kind of norming thing for us that you know sometimes those letters don't really fit with some of the struggles that we're having in our life so making things just kind of normalized it's like the new normal is what we always talk about And then again, understanding group process. You know, we can have unbalanced storming.

You know, if you have one or more persons who can't let go of an issue and every single month or every single time the group is meeting, you're hearing from that same parent about the same thing. That can really kind of, you know, set a group in a not good direction. Frustration and resentment can grow from that. Sometimes participation.

drop so maybe people are still coming but they're being silenced because somebody's just a little bit you know too dominant and that kind of stuff. And then sometimes groups can fail. So it's important that we are looking at that and how some of that unbalanced storming can really become poisonous for a group. So we've got another poll here, not quite yet.

One more slide here and then we'll have another, our third and final poll. But proactive facilitators are going to be really dealing with that unbalanced storming when it happens. doing positive-based things like seeking out solution-focused speakers, for example. Sometimes a lot of groups maybe are based on having speakers and presenters, but if we are having a really common thing, a common struggle, let's bring in a speaker.

One of my groups here in Minnesota, there's been a lot of discussion in the last probably year in this group, it's parents of teenagers, about case management, like children's mental health case management with which many of our families end up having. And as many of us have experienced, sometimes the case managers are brand new. It's their first job and maybe don't know exactly what they're doing. And then, you know, and so that can be frustrating.

But often also parents don't understand what actually should or could a case manager be doing for you. So in next month, we're actually going to have one of our family's case managers is going to come. and speak about that because it has been a kind of a constant frustration that families have been talking about.

So, you know, seeking speakers out like that is really good. And then another thing that a good facilitator is going to do is when we do have a parent who's kind of unrelentless and doing in this negative, frustrating, storming kind of cycle, we've got to figure out a way to respectfully interrupt them and kind of redirect it. So, and then also anticipating difficult behaviors. There are groups when I, you know, I can tell when people are walking in the room, what's going to be the challenge tonight, just because I know that maybe one of the parents has called me in the last week or two, or maybe online on our Facebook group, we've seen the issues, you know, various things that are going on there.

So sometimes being, anticipatory and those kind of things and heading them off at you know sometimes I've even gone up to a parent before a group starts and I'm like oh man you're in the midst of a really huge crisis and I get that let's let's you and I maybe talk at the end of group or let's get together in the next week or something like that because you know we could spend the whole night talking about what you're dealing with because it's so intense and challenging and I can't imagine how you're dealing with it you know so just kind of being really proactive like that And then addressing issues head-on is also another really important thing for a good facilitator to do. So we're going to launch into another poll here. Hey, Barb. Before we do that, we had a question related to what you were just talking about. So this person has said that sometimes they have a foster parent who dominates the conversation and kind of barely comes up for a breath.

So do you have any tips for specifically for interrupting it's hard because she can tell that she really needs to talk and needs some support but so does everyone else so kind of how to manage that yeah totally no that's a really common kind of challenge that we can have in these groups one of the biggest recommendations I have is if this is a regular thing going on that I would try to have a meeting with that parent And maybe it's before or after the group or between the next group or something like that and just kind of acknowledge that, wow, you've got a lot of stuff going on. And I'm really glad you're coming and getting the support that you need. But sometimes it ends up taking too much of the group time and we're not able to hear from other parents. And so, you know, kind of, you know, sometimes doing that and talking with them about it a lot of times. When you do something like that, the parent will be like, oh, I know I have a really hard time not talking or, you know what I mean?

Like a lot of times they're kind of self-aware about that. And so I'll be in a, you know, a little bit further on here, giving some different tools that we can give to those parents to try to help them not quite talk as much. But otherwise, as far as, you know, having to interrupt a parent, which definitely I've had to do that multiple different times.

And you just kind of have to do it as respectfully as you can and say, you know, okay, you know, Susan, you are talking about something that is so important and, you know, really something that needs to be talked about here. But I think that within our group setting, maybe we're going too far into this. So let's you and I talk at the end of group tonight and figure out a way that we can do some more brainstorming around this issue or something like that. So sometimes just kind of calling it out like that and saying, okay, this is important stuff.

Let's talk about it later though so that everybody has a chance. That's great. Thank you, Barb. I'll launch the poll now.

Awesome. Thank you. So what we kind of want you guys to do the poll on here is what techniques do you guys use to give structure to your group? Have you set ground rules and shared those and or revisited them?

Do you use agendas? Do you have discussion guides? That's actually a thing that we can share with you guys, too, at some point.

Kim has done a great job on using. putting together some various discussion guides and like book club formats that support groups can use as well. Do you use presentations or speakers? Have you done a periodic needs assessment? Have you used any of these tools?

So it looks like a lot of you guys have used these things. Many of you have ground rules. It's looking like close to 70% or so, over half are doing agendas.

over half are doing the presentations and speakers. Needs assessment, about a fourth are doing periodically. So that's good info.

Very cool. All right. So now I'm going to hand it back to you, Kim. Yeah. There we go.

We're going to talk a little bit now about structuring the meeting. And one of the things to think about is really you do want to be prepared. And I say that as a person who often likes to do things by the seat of my pants.

When you're doing something like this, though, you really owe it to the folks that are taking the time out to come to your meeting to make sure that you've got your ducks in a row and you know what you're going to be doing. All the time, I recommend that you solicit volunteers to do anything you can think of. Ask them to bring refreshments, you know, have people sign up. on a month-to-month basis for doing that, ask someone to be a timekeeper, ask someone to do a survey for you. You know, as a support group leader, that there are times when you're not really up for it.

And we know at NACAC very well, because we do this, we've been doing training for support group leaders for about, gosh, about 25 years now, that one of the biggest frustrations for a leader is when they have to retire or step. down and they can't find anybody to step in for them. So one of the pieces around facilitation is to always make sure that you're engaging the rest of your members in some kind of a meaningful way so that they realize that they also have that capacity.

You definitely want to make sure that you're including them. That way you're sort of thinking ahead to build in your successor. You want to make sure that you set up the room in a good way.

I remember a A couple of times, Barb and I have gone to do a training and they've got the room set up like classroom style. And we're going to be doing a training that's supposed to be really interactive and get to people's emotions. If you've got people looking at the backs of each other's heads, you are not going to be having a good conversation. And you are going to find that sometimes people want to be in the back.

They're feeling a little bit more shy. So if you can set up the room in advance in sort of a circular or a half circle way. Make sure that you have more seats then you have people coming It makes it a lot harder for people to step to the back and it makes it a lot easier as a Facilitator for you to engage people all the time and to be able to see people see what their reactions are See what's hitting them in certain ways?

I absolutely encourage you to have an agenda so that you know what you're doing But make sure that that agenda has time inside of it for socializing Because one of the gifts that you're going to give yourself as a facilitator is to encourage the other members of your support group to connect with each other as well so that you're not doing all of the work all of the time. Really want to think about what the structure looks like in terms of your beginning, middle and end. So we always encourage people to start each group just with a reminder of the ground rules. And we encourage you to periodically ask your members, what should the ground rules be?

Things like what's said here stays here. We're going to start on time and end on time, no matter what, in respect for people's very limited time to be here. You're welcome to come in later, but we're going to already have begun. Other ground rules are around only one person speaks at a time.

You know. One of the things that's really important is to just understand how people want that support to come. Do they want someone to be coming up with solutions or do they want to just be able to speak about what their issue is? So anyway, you just want to visit those. I encourage you to have them on a flip chart and just sort of out there in the room at all times.

That way, if there's something going on, you can flip back to them. In terms of the middle of the support group meeting, that's where you're going to do most of your business. But I also want to encourage you to have.

some kind of a ritual or something that is meaningful to your group around your closure. I was just last week with a group of young people who have all got lift experience in the foster care system, and we meet on a regular basis. And one of them said, you know what I really need at the end? I need to leave on a positive note.

So can we have a ritual where we thank each other for what we've done? got and what they brought today. And I thought that was lovely as a nice way to just go back out into the world and not have to worry about getting the bends when you're decompressing. So if I can pause you real quick, we have a question related to what you were talking about.

What do you do as a facilitator when people do not follow ground rules, like not turning off cell phones or side talking or any of the stuff that you've put out there already? So I very... frankly, but without judgment in my voice, I'll call them on it, you know, and just say, you know, we have just want to remind you that the group came to a shared understanding of what our rules are. And I really want to encourage you to please respect those rules.

Now, in the case of a cell phone, like one of the things that I know can happen with families is that there could be an emergency. I get that. But if If there's going to be an emergency, I want you to tell the group ahead of time, I might be getting a call, and then I want to be able to say as a facilitator, please, thanks so much, Sue, for letting us know that. Can you please put your phone on vibrate so it doesn't interrupt? And if you do get that emergency call, would you please take the call out in the hallway?

Take the call out. And honestly, if people can't respect the ground rules like Bob said, I'll pull them in. Hey, Kim, we're having a little bit of trouble, or at least I am having some trouble hearing you now. I'm not sure what that is, but if you could speak up a little bit.

So I've got the computer right near my face now. Is that better? That's better.

Yes, thank you. So as Bob was saying, I just would ask somebody if they can't follow the ground rules, you know, respectfully ask them to have a conversation with you outside of the group. try to get to the bottom of whatever the issue is.

Great, thank you. You're welcome. I think that Barb had mentioned surveying the group.

I think that's always a good idea to find out what people are interested in. And one of the things that we really encourage people to do is just to try to focus the conversation away from what the problems are and moving towards strategies and solutions. This is done in a really delicate way.

Sometimes people just need to be validated. They don't want to get advice. And you can certainly find out from them. But just to try to keep things from kind of digging into that deep hole.

And I really do want you to encourage yourselves and encourage the quieter members of the group to join in the conversation at their level. Particularly if I'll see somebody in the group is talking a lot and somebody else maybe hasn't said anything at all. I might pause for a moment and just say, Joe, you've been awful quiet. I wonder what you're thinking about this discussion. It's a nice, gentle way to get people involved.

You want to be monitoring who's speaking too much and who's speaking all the time. You want to make sure that the topics that you choose are the topics that are relative to the and relevant to the families that you have coming. And always think about. whether or not you're going to have a guest speaker or do a presentation yourself, particularly if you've just been to a great training or a great conference, you might come back with some fabulous information that nobody had before.

And again, always thinking about that guest speaker or that presentation being short enough and concise enough that you have time for networking. Nice. All right.

It's also important to be positive. As we know, a lot of people have really kind of negative views of support groups. That's why a lot of people don't want to attend one or, you know, there's just, there's, there's so many just negative perceptions of them out there. And that's because all too often, some of our support groups are, 100% heavy negative venting whining that kind of a thing and so it's really important that the facilitators are able to bring some positivity some light some humor different things like that we've got to try to help our families to reframe how they're looking at some of the situations that kind of stuff so that's important we talked about ground rules and sticking to them that's huge engaging everybody in the first five to ten minutes I feel really strongly about this so most of the groups that I lead are kind of we don't really very often have speakers or presenters or topics or things like that what what I tend to do is we will I will have everybody go around and we're here in the Twin Cities so people are coming from different areas of the you know from suburbs and inner city areas and first second third fourth tier suburbs and that kind of stuff so I will have people go around and say their name, where they live, you know, their family makeup, you know, how many kids they have or something. And then what I'll do also is I'll have them say, is there a topic or something that you want us to talk about tonight here in group?

And if not, if you're just here to be here, that's fantastic. But if there's a question or a specific issue you're struggling with, bring that up. And what I do is I have a notebook, a small notebook. that I bring with to each group and it's kind of my notebook that I use for all my messages and that kind of stuff.

But I will take attendance in that book. I'll write down everybody who's there and then during that introduction, I will write notes of, okay, this parent wants to talk about guardianship. This parent wants to talk about this specific school issue they're having.

This parent wants to talk about truancy court and if anybody else has been there yet, you know, and so So what I say and the reason why we do that is because you guys have probably all been to those kind of groups where the introductions can take over the whole group and parents while they're introducing themselves start launching into all the challenges they're having. And so this is just one way of getting around that and it's actually, I found it to be really effective because then What I'll do then after introductions is I'll kind of be looking at my list of what the topics are. And I also am mentally noting who, you know, I'll even write down the name of the parent who brought up the topic.

And when I'm doing that, I know which one or two parents are the ones that talk way too much or something like that. So maybe then I will put their topic as the last one that I go to, for example. I'm just really, really kind of thoughtful in which ones I go to at what point. And so sometimes I'm trying to mix it up a little bit so it's like not the heavy topic after heavy topic.

And I'll throw one of the maybe lighter ones in there. So that's one way to kind of engage everybody at the beginning. And then also being aware of yourself and others while you're guiding discussion is really important.

And, you know, doing things like. watching body language because we know that 10% of our communication is verbal and 90% is nonverbal. So while the group is going on, you know, be kind of, you know, looking around and just kind of getting that nonverbal feedback from people and making notes and kind of going with the flow according to that.

The other thing is that it's important that we understand that conflict is normal, where, you know, there's going to be conflict. We're not always going to agree on everything. but it's just important that we kind of work through it.

Remain committed to the group process. That can, you know, that can greatly help too. You know, groups are challenging. They can be really challenging. I mean, most of us remember back in, whether it was in high school or college or whatever, group projects.

I don't, I've never met a single person that likes group projects, right? And so maybe professors or teachers, but I don't even understand that even. you know groups are challenging and so if we just kind of remain committed to the process you know things will eventually turn around if we've hit some walls so you know it's talking earlier about the fact you know that there are some tools that we can use with our parents and caregivers to help them understand this this top one here is something that you can kind of teach the group that this is can just be one of the norms or the ground rules or whatever but if we do have a parent that is talking too long You can do this thing where you take your arm, you know, and you raise it above your head and you kind of do that, you know, landing the plane motion with your arm. I don't know how you guys can't see me right now, but I'm doing it really brilliantly, by the way.

So you just kind of sit there with them and you just let everybody know, hey, here's one of the things that we're going to have be a norm in our group. And you can actually even have it be where it's not just the group leader that does that, but other group members can also call people out. And so that can just be something and you can share that and say, here, this is just one of the things that we're going to have in our group so that we make sure everybody gets time that they need. So if.

If we ever start to feel like somebody is going on a little bit too long, we'll just do this motion. And that just is the sign to kind of wrap it up and to not be offended because we all need that from time to time. I can tell you that my colleagues do that to me. And I'm not offended by it.

I know I can get yapping too much. Another one, then, this three-than-me thing is this whole thing that, like, when there was the question earlier about that one. person who talks too much when you do talk with them when you pull them aside outside of the group like one tool that you can give them is to say you know you have you have so much going on and I understand that and I value the need that you're here and that kind of stuff but how about sometimes you have let's have you think about that you don't talk until three other people have spoken so let's say you share something in the beginning and that means you wait three you would let three other people talk before you can talk again.

And so I even know some parents that actually even put three things in front of them or in their hands like three pens in their hand and they'll and they'll like set put one you know the pen in the other hand after one person has talked. Like people often are very aware of the fact that they talk too much and then we obviously know those people that don't know that also but if they're not able to self-regulate this is a tool to give them. And then another thing that you can use for, you know, as a ground rule, when we don't want the side talking, there's nothing kind of that annoys me more than during a group, if all of a sudden, two parents are sitting there in a side conversation, while another parents on the other side of the circle is talking.

And I call that out really fast, because I just find that to be kind of disrespectful. And I'll just say, hey, you guys, you two, why don't you stay at the end a little bit and talk about this, because I know you're talking about a really valuable resource that you're sharing with each other now. but do it at the end, please. And so what, you know, a little thing that you can say, if you have this as a norm too, is one diva, one mic.

So that could be something you could just say to two people. One diva, one mic is just a quick reminder and, you know, and keep moving on. So those are just a few things that I know some group leaders will use to deal with some of that kind of stuff. And then, you know, as I interject real quick, I'm sorry, I was hoping to get you in a pause, but...

We had a couple of questions related to a couple slides ago Kim had mentioned discussion guides. And so folks were wondering if those are accessible now and if there's any specifically on topics related to, you know, managing children's behaviors. As I'm sure we all know that that's going to come up a lot in these conversations.

I wanted to mention before you guys answer that that AdoptUSKids is in the process of creating a lot of resources for parent group leaders and one of them one of the one of the areas of resources that we're looking to is creating discussion guides for that very purpose but those are not created at the moment in time so they had some questions about accessing that awesome Kim do you want to answer this or hear me yes I can now yes okay great so I I'm now on the telephone I got off somehow. Oh, I'm so glad you called. The discussion guides that Barb mentioned, there's a couple of them that I put together for one of our parent leadership trainings based on some books that I have read that had some great material in them.

And I'm going to be sure to send those to Britt so that she can share them with folks. Yes, I can share them out to this entire group if you send them to me. That's great. The other thing, too, that I've seen, somebody had asked if they could get a copy of the PowerPoint.

And as well, we're happy to have Brett share that with everybody. Barb, can you tell me what slide you're on now? Because I'm on my computer looking at our version of the PowerPoint and on my phone, so I can keep going.

Yep, I'm on leaders are self-aware. So I'll finish this one, and then it's your turn. Okay, great. Thank you so much. You bet.

Yeah, so one of the discussion guides that Kim will be sending to Britt so that it can be shared with all of you is based on the Wounded Children Healing Homes book, which is just an awesome, excellent book. And so she put together a great discussion guide that can be used from that. So we will definitely share some of those resources.

Another thing I did want to mention is in October, Kim and I and Britt and the whole team, we did a... webinar on parent engagement, how to get parents to your groups, how to keep them coming, all that kind of stuff. And that's available on the AdoptUSKids website and YouTube channels. So that's also, if you weren't on that, you can get that info as well.

So leaders, it's important that we're self-aware as leaders because we've got to figure out this balance between what we share and what we don't share about our own struggles. Again, Some of you guys might not be adoptive foster or kinship parents yourself, and so that might not be an issue. But for those of you that are, you've got to find that delicate balance because we don't want the group leaders to be kind of taking over the group with their issues and that kind of stuff. But we also want parents to know we have some of the same struggles.

So you've got to find that delicate balance right in the middle of how much you share and how much you don't. It's important that they know that we are humans because I do know sometimes that in some groups, the parents almost start feeling like this group leader has everything together and they're amazing. And how come I can't be more like them?

That's what everybody thinks about me. I'm totally kidding. But anyways, it's just important that we find that that balance and make sure that the group does not become our support group for our needs and issues.

And with that, I'm going to give it back to you, Kim. Okay. Okay. So, one of the things that, you know, I really want you to think about and to be anticipating is...

Oh, we lost you. Are you there? I think we're having trouble hearing, Kim.

Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes.

Okay, great, because I haven't changed anything. One thing that I recommend, always have tissues on hand. Crying is okay. I think that crying is very cathartic and it's a normal thing to do.

We want to be sensitive to people when they're feeling emotional. But the other thing is that people are going to be coming to the group with viewpoints and experiences that are not comfortable for everybody else in the group. So be aware of that. Be ready to make sure that you're caring for all of your members. And just...

Again, I really encourage you to think about co-facilitation. It's really helpful if you have a partner that you can rely on when things get hairy so that if somebody needs some one-on-one attention, one of you as a facilitator can take care of that person while the other one can keep the group going for everybody else that's there. In terms of controversial topics, you know, There can be a million different things that come into the support group that can be controversial.

I would actually recommend that as one of your ground rules, or maybe a couple of them, I would recommend politics is not part of the discussion. Leave your political views and viewpoints at home. They don't have a place here. I would also make as a ground rule that all are accepted here. You know, people have different viewpoints about different kinds of...

sexual and gender orientation. Hey, Kim, sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry.

We have a couple of comments that it's hard to hear again. I'm having an okay time hearing you, but we had a couple of comments that it's becoming hard to hear again. I don't know what I want you to do about that.

Would you speak up, I guess? Loudly. The people that were having a hard time hearing, can you just, like, thumbs up if this is better? Unfortunately, my computer won't let me back on GoToMeeting. It says it's worse.

Let's see. Barb, would you maybe take over these slides? Yeah, just because we're having a harder time. Sorry, Kim. Thank you so much.

All right. So. facilitating some of the kind of difficult discussions and I know there was a question about dealing with difficult behaviors too.

You know one of the things that we recommend One of the things that I think parents often forget when we're parenting children with a trauma history is to take into account their developmental age, not their chronological age. And then to also be talking in groups I lead, we talk about the brain all the time. I'm the total brain geek. And, you know, so many of our children have compromised brains or brain injuries from prenatal alcohol or drug exposure, from just in utero trauma, not to mention early life trauma.

And so we're always talking a lot about how that impacts the brain and trying to help parents have more understanding in dealing with that. And we also are often talking a lot about how to help parents reframe behaviors. So, like, we'll have a parent sit and talk about a specific behavior that they're struggling with.

And as a group, we'll kind of try to brainstorm and figure out, okay, what do we think it is that's causing that behavior? what could be some different ways to deal with it because most parents most of us were parented with consequence based parenting right that's what the vast majority of parenting books teach us and tell us to do and that generally is a very ineffective parenting method with kids with a trauma history in and out of the womb and so so really kind of trying to help parents kind of reframe look at more therapeutic parenting strategies would be my answer on how to talk about the difficult behaviors. Maybe having parents do a book club thing within your support group or a discussion guide around Heather Forbes, Beyond Consequences, Nurtured Heart Approach, things like that. So back to facilitating kind of difficult discussions, making your group a no-judgment zone. Kim was kind of talking about that.

I guess she actually talked about both of those things there. We've talked about ground rules. I know this one facilitator who's just masterful at actually kind of going over to a parent if they've been talking too long and kind of just putting her hand on their shoulder. And so, you know, if that's something that kind of fits, that's something that we could do.

You know, talking about some sometimes we will say that. let's talk about, you know, let's talk about this at the end of group tonight. I'm happy to stay after at the end, if this is possible.

Obviously, it's not always possible, but we can also set up another time to talk about some of the challenges and some of the things that are going on. And the other thing is remembering that your role is to protect the group, even if it means losing a member. You know, I think I shared this in another webinar, but we had somebody, a new parent who came to one of my...

one of my really established groups over a year ago and she was a lovely woman but she started raving about this wonderful new method that she was using and how she had gone to this amazing training and we were all like salivating like we were like what is it so we're asking her what it was and it was this whole she had gotten some training from some school psychologist talking about consequences and how if you're strict and consistent with consequences how everything is going to be great And everybody's instantly looking at me, waiting for my response, because they know that I'm kind of of the opposite belief in many ways. Our kids have some of the most severe consequences in the world. They've lost their first families. They probably have trauma history.

They've had so many consequences already that for us to be taking away their cell phone or their video game time or whatever. whatever the consequence might be, it is just another loss for them. And so instead, if we can look at a different way of dealing with it.

So anyways, I had to kind of respond to that parent and do it in a respectful way and say, generally, that's not a very effective method. Most of us have tried that and it doesn't work. And, you know, she felt kind of awkward. She's never come back.

But I did it very respectfully. But, you know, it just really wasn't the right group for her. A successful parent group facilitator.

I think this is... Barb, I'm sorry. Could I pause you real quick? Yeah, go for it. We had a couple of questions.

So one was, what are your thoughts on parent-led groups, or do you feel a professional in the field is necessary? And I think on our last webinar, Kim had mentioned if it's at all possible doing both of those people combining together in co-facilitation. Would you speak a little bit about that?

Yeah, no, it's lovely if we can have a child welfare professional partnering with a parent to do a group. That's, you know, that is great. But definitely we have really found that the most successful groups are ones that have parents leading them. And that is not at all to say that you can't have a successful group if you're a child welfare professional. You also can.

But it really is nice if you can partner with the parent also who has. kind of some lived experience in that area. So, you know, it can be either way. It's just... Really more effective often if a professional can partner with a parent to do it together Can you hear me now is this phone better Yes, yes that is back.

So the one thing I do want to say about a professional leading a support group I would just advise you if it is a group that is being led by a professional and In particular if it's being led by a professional at the child welfare office and you're finding that you're not getting great participation, you want to rethink that because for a lot of families, that child welfare office can feel a bit triggering. You know, they had to prove themselves in order to become approved as a foster or adoptive parent. But the other piece of it is as well that people worry about being honest if they feel that they might have a consequence from it. just like our kids do.

So just, you know, really evaluate that. If you find that you're not getting the attendance, it is possible that people are fearful about going to a group that's led by a professional because a professional, in their experience, has a lot of power over them. Awesome. That's very good. There are a lot of questions, y'all.

I just want to reiterate, if we cannot get to all of them, we will send a follow-up document. I absolutely promise. If... Barb, is it okay if I ask you a couple more quick ones, and then we'll try and wrap up, because we are approaching the 60-minute mark.

How long would you recommend support groups? How long do you recommend they last? I usually say an hour and a half to two hours.

No more than two hours, but most I've found an hour and a half to be kind of people's favorite number. Right, right. Yeah.

And have you had this one goes back to the webinar that we did in October. So some folks having some trouble getting foster and adoptive parents to come to support group initially. So I would definitely recommend folks asking questions about that. Check out, I can make sure that everybody has the link to that webinar that happened in October.

Barb and Kim were presenters on that webinar as well, and it's specifically about engaging caregivers in support groups. So I would definitely recommend that you check that out. I'm just going to also add another approach that people have found to be successful.

is as part of the home study or parent preparation process, they require families to attend one, two, or three support group meetings just to kind of get a sense of what they're like, what they're all about. And once a family goes to that group meeting, they often will come back again because they find that it really is helpful. And we've had a lot of people that have had success with calling their groups.

something other than a support group. People don't want to feel like they, you know, some people interpret going to a support group as saying that they are failing or not, you know, up to par. Yep, that's really good advice. So as I said this earlier, but sense of humor is really, really important. We've got to make sure that we laugh at every group, not at the group.

at each group session we need to make sure there's laughter. I should rephrase that like that, right? So it's just really important that people aren't just leaving feeling heavier. We need them to leave feeling like they maybe have some new ideas, but also that we were able to laugh. And again, we do it respectfully.

We're not laughing at our kids, but you know, as a group facilitator, if I'm feeling like things are getting a little bit too heavy, I might kind of just you know throw something funny in and I shared this in the last webinar But you know some parents talking about some problem that they're having and I'll just say you know something like well that sounds like you need to try a sticker chart or Or you know when they're talking about some you know that the school's complaining about some problem I'll be like when you know why is that a problem that the kid is you know doing whatever they're doing or you know, we'll just kind of make sure that we're interjecting humor because it's just really important so that families are able to laugh. Laugh is a huge self-care method and coming to support groups is self-care. So just getting them there, getting them feeling good with the group is huge.

One of my groups, we're actually on, we meet on the first Tuesday of the month, which in January is New Year's Day. And we actually decided we're going to meet at my house and we're going the teenagers that come also go sledding across the hill and we're going to kind of make it a social thing so we just are making sure that we also have fun kind of mixed in with it as well confidentiality is very important making sure that that's an aspect of the group and that we talk about that almost at every group the fact that's what's shared here stays here it's a little mini vegas checking in with the group regularly is important you know, we've got lots of different things here that are, you know, just really important that we're aware of when you're leading a group, but that confidentiality is huge. So I think Britt, oh, another one other thing that I don't think we have written in here that I wanted to mention, I have found that the most effective group leaders are ones that are really intentional about being, becoming aware of and knowledgeable in local resources. So and kind of how your local system of resources works, for example, like how they get an assessment to maybe get case management or how medical assistance works within your state or community or even being aware of who are the local pediatricians or therapists or medication managers who are adoption trauma competent. I think it's really important.

We in Minnesota here, one of our big counties actually has community info sessions on waivers, on guardianship, on all these various topics, on social security, all these things. I started going to those free little two-hour community info sessions years ago. Even if it wasn't a resource that I needed at that time for my children, I wanted to better understand them so that I could then help parents in in the groups that I'm leading be able to, you know, understand. Like guardianship is something we talked about a ton last month. So understanding resources and helping our families know how to access them is really another really helpful facilitator thing.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Barb. And we've had so many questions come in. I'm so happy that everybody's so engaged with this topic. I'm so excited about it.

A lot of the questions related to, like, there's a lot related to what time of day should we hold webinars or where should we hold them, and all of that was in a previous webinar that we did. I would definitely encourage you to check it out, and I'll make sure that the specific link is included in our follow-up email next week. So I just wanted to mention that really quickly.

We are going to be offering more training and resources, as I mentioned before, specifically for parent group leaders. and managers of programs that include support groups. So I don't necessarily think we have time for this right now because we had so many great questions during the webinar.

But I would like this group to be thinking about what future training topics would you really like to hear on from AdoptUS kids? How could we best support you? What are you most interested in hearing about and learning about? It sounds like the discussion guides are definitely something a lot of folks are interested in. So with that, will you move to the next?

Actually, let's go ahead and move through to the resources. Don't run out of time. At the end of this presentation is all of our contact info as well.

I would definitely encourage you to please email me directly or Kim or Barb for if you have any suggestions, ideas, questions about what you can access either through NACAC or through AdoptUSKids. So I did want to mention, I think Kim if you're still on are you able to mention some of these parent group resources very quickly. I'm sorry, Barb. I'm taking it all over the different slides.

So the parent group resources that you see, Starting Nurturing and Maintaining Adoptive Parent Group, that guide, Developing Parent-to-Parent Support Network, and Taking a Break, all of those are available online. And they're step-by-step guides, especially the first one is a step-by-step guide. It has lots of reproducible materials in it.

The other two also cite different groups that have been quite successful with developing certain programs, and they offer you some advice on how you can replicate their good programs. And then for those of you who are working with kinship families, on the next page there is information from the Brookdale Foundation, the Relatives as Parents program, and the guidebook. which is really helpful because a lot of times for our relative caregivers, the things that we are talking about in a foster or adoptive support group don't really resonate with them or they may resonate to some degree, but the situations are somewhat different, so they kind of need their own resources as well. Great. Thank you so much.

And I've also included where folks can access AdoptUSKids resources as well. I put the link into the chat pod of where you can access specifically the Supporting Families webpage. So if you wanted to grab that right now, I would definitely suggest you do that.

That's where you can access other publications, tip sheets, and previous webinar recordings, as we mentioned. You'll see right here, this is all of our contact information. Please, please, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. If you have needs for your parent group or your agency in supporting parent groups, we hope this webinar has been valuable to you.

Again, if we did not get to your question, we apologize. We wanted to keep this to the 60-minute mark as promised. So we will send a follow-up document. There are a couple of questions, a couple of outlying questions. So we will definitely get those answered and back out to you.

Please expect an email from us next week. And thank you so much for joining, everyone.

Transcript for:Adopting Effective Support Group Facilitation

Transcript for:
Adopting Effective Support Group Facilitation