Adoption Education Workshops

The San Mateo County (SMC) Human Services Agency (HSA) is responsible for administering federal, state, and county funded programs that protect our most vulnerable residents, provide safety net services, and provide work supports to help families achieve self-sufficiency. HSA's mission is to enhance the well-being of children, adults, and families by providing professional, responsive, caring, and supportive services. HSA is comprised of various branches such as Economic Self Sufficiency (ESS), SMCWorks (Employment Services), Collaborative Community Outcomes (CCO), and Children and Family Services (CFS).

CFS offers programs to protect the welfare of children, improve the lifelong stability of children and youth, and improve the health and strength of families. CFS helps families understand and solve the issues that lead to child neglect, abuse, or exploitation, and includes services in foster care, childcare, foster youth transition support, and child protection services. As a full-service adoption agency, HSA CFS works with birth parents, adoptive parents, adoptive children, and adult adoptees through the adoptive process.

The adoption experience is unique to each, and some children impacted by foster care or adoption have experienced abuse, trauma, neglect, and early attachment injuries. Adoptees may also experience grief or loss, have anxiety, lack medical information, or have questions about identity. As such, HSA offers adoption support services to both perspective and current adoptive families. Support services include therapy, support groups, education, and workshops/trainings. The goal of these services is to prepare adoptive families for the adoption process; to help integrate the adoptee into the adoptive family; and to strengthen and empower adoptive families in their adoptive journey.

CFS is seeking a qualified providers of adoption related educational/training workshops to aid parents who have adopted or are planning to adopt. The goal is to help adoptive parents better understand how to best meet their child’s emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs. The anticipated term is June 1, 2025 to May 30, 2028 with the option to extend for up to an additional two years. CFS may award multiple qualified providers.

CFS currently contracts with PACT, an Adoption Alliance, to provide monthly adoption workshops during the months of September through May. Attendance may vary depending on the topic, but the general range is 10 to 20 participants. CFS shares a flyer, that has the workshop details, with perspective and current parents who can choose to attend whichever workshop they choose. The current topics include but are not limited to (1) Parenting through domestic adoption; (2) Importance of early intervention and learning differences with respect to adoption; (3) Trauma and attachment; and (4) Parenting, education, and adoption related issues. Typically, workshops are one to two hours in length, but can vary in length depending on topic to be covered.

CFS is seeking a qualified provider to design/provide curriculum and facilitate of pre/post adoption workshops for the months of June through August, or any other additional months requested by CFS. Curriculum should be designed to ensure each attendee increases their understanding of the topics by the end of the workshop. The provider should have knowledge of the adoption process, the impact of foster care/adoption has on adoptive children and families and should have experience working with the foster/adoptive community. In collaboration with CFS, the provider would propose workshop topics and calendar, design curriculum, facilitate workshops, provide workshop flyers for CFS to distribute, and issue pre/post surveys to participants. The survey shall measure participants' increased awareness and knowledge of subject matter presented. Attendees may be bi-lingual or monolingual, and it is preferred that services be made available in a language other than English, such as Spanish (at a minimum), however this is not a requirement.