Contact: Adam Wendt, IRIS Educational Media, (877) 343-4747 awendt@irised.com

  Pat Walsh, Vox Public Relations Public Affairs, (541) 434-7021 pwalsh@voxprpa.com

Online Program Helps Adoptive Parents Achieve Success

IRIS Educational Media is developing an online training resource for adoptive parents

EUGENE, Ore. — Being a parent is demanding, but parents of adopted children face a whole different set of challenges, ranging from questions about a child’s birth family to identity struggles to attachment concerns. To help parents confront these tough issues, IRIS Educational Media (IRIS Ed) is creating the “Education Center for Adoptive Parents Online” (ECAPO). This Web-based training program equips pre-adoptive and post-adoptive parents with the skills to handle adoption-related issues within their families.

“Being an adoptive parent can take special skills that are often counter intuitive,” said Adam Wendt, project director of the program. “It is important to educate yourself on how to advocate and ‘normalize’ the adoption experience, allowing for a healthy environment for you, your child and your community.”  

An instructional media development firm based in Eugene, Ore., IRIS Ed began laying the groundwork for the ECAPO program by developing and evaluating an introductory component. Findings indicated improvements in adoptive parents’ knowledge and self-efficacy, as well as a significant improvement in communication skills when talking about adoption. The next phase of the program’s development will include the creation of additional modules that address specialized topics, such as communication about adoption-related issues with extended family, the outside world and school staff.

The Education Center for Adoptive Parents Online project is funded by a grant (Grant #2R44HD056646-02A1) from the National Institute of Health and Human Development. The grant serves to fund the development and evaluation of an adoptive-parent training program focusing on topics that blend general and adoption-specific skills. This program will provide more than 10 hours of training through tools and activities that include interactive multimedia lessons, video segments, skill-building exercises, and networking opportunities to connect with trainers, experts and other adoptive parents.

For more information on the development of the ECAPO program, visit  http://www.irised.com/research/current_projects/education_center_for_adoptive_parents_online

About IRIS Educational Media
IRIS Educational Media (IRIS Ed) is a development and behavioral research firm based in Eugene, Ore. The firm was founded in 1999 with the intention of bringing research-based professional development media to K-12 school staff and all educators, including teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, direct support staff, parent educators and parents. IRIS Ed collaborates with leading educators and researchers on important topics to create video-based curriculums on DVD and online.