Adoption-Competent Counseling
A video-first training course
Language, identity, grief, and meaning-making across the lifespan
Developed by Renée M. Murphy, with co-researcher Angela Christianson and faculty advisor Dr. Jamie Bower.
Antioch University New England, 2026.
About the course
Adoption begins with a legal event and keeps unfolding across a whole life, touching identity, loss, belonging, and the story a person tells about who they are. Most counseling graduate programs offer little or no training in any of it, which leaves clinicians underprepared for what adopted clients actually bring into the room.
This course provides foundational adoption-competency training grounded in the Adoptee Lifespan Framework, developed through qualitative research with adult adoptees. At its heart are recorded conversations with adoptees themselves: most lessons pair a short teaching segment with an adoptee speaking about the topic in their own words, so clinicians learn to feel the experience and notice their own reactions alongside learning what there is to know. The focus is the clinical work of being with adoptee clients. It is designed for licensed counselors, social workers, school counselors, and graduate trainees, and it holds birth-parent and adoptive-parent perspectives as context rather than subject.
The course is in development. The lessons are under review, and the adoptee conversations that anchor them are being recorded now. If you're an adoptee who'd like to take part, you can sign up here.
The chapters
Each lesson is short: a video, a brief reflection, and a one-page takeaway to download. Each chapter closes with a scenario-based check.
Foundations
Vocabulary, the forms adoption takes, adoption as a lifespan experience, and the Adoptee Lifespan Framework.
Identity and Self
Identity, belonging, and narrative across the lifespan.
Loss and Grief
Ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, and the gratitude bind.
Language and the Clinical Encounter
How a counselor's words shape the work, from intake onward.
Clinical Practice
Differential thinking, formulation across the arc of therapy, the body, and the adoption lens in the modality you already practice.
Complexity and Context
Transracial and intercountry adoption, kinship and family configuration, late discovery, donor conception and NPE, and the system around the client.
Integration and Continued Learning
Where this leaves you, with full references and further reading.
Foundations
Vocabulary, the forms adoption takes, adoption as a lifespan experience, and the Adoptee Lifespan Framework.
Identity and Self
Identity, belonging, and narrative across the lifespan.
Loss and Grief
Ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, and the gratitude bind.
Language and the Clinical Encounter
How a counselor's words shape the work, from intake onward.
Clinical Practice
Differential thinking, formulation across the arc of therapy, the body, and the adoption lens in the modality you already practice.
Complexity and Context
Transracial and intercountry adoption, kinship and family configuration, late discovery, donor conception and NPE, and the system around the client.
Integration and Continued Learning
Where this leaves you, with full references and further reading.
Learning outcomes
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
Access the Course
The course is hosted on our learning platform at learn.adopteeresearch.org. Head there to view chapters, register, and track your progress. Questions about the program or group access? Get in touch.