Ampersand families recruits and supports permanent families for older youth, and champions practices in adoption and permanency that restore belonging, dignity, and hope.

Adoption , Children & Youth , Foster Care

During fy18, we supported 39 youth placed for adoption or finalized intoadoptive families. In addition, our team identified families who accepted guardianshp for three youth, each of whom have significant physical and/or developmental disabilities and who had not achieved adoption prior to their 18th birthday. Thirty-two prospective adoptive parents completed pre-adoptiontraining with us, and 22 families had home studies completed. During fy18, weexpanded our post-placement support services, and are proud to have minnesotas first practitioner certified by the child trauma academy to complete neurosequential model of therapeutics (nmt) trauma assessments. We continued our family check-in retreats and worked towards securing comprehensive medical, mental health, behavioral, neurological/fasd and trauma screening for youth. During fy18 we worked closely with wilder research to design a study to explore outcomes and return on investment for the adoption services we have delivered during our first 10 years.