Wednesday evening sessions available for adoptive or kinship families

Operating on the premise that there’s strength in numbers, a consortium of county departments and agencies has announced the spring schedule for post-adoption and grand-family support groups.

The sessions, which will meet from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the county’s Government Services Center building (601 Westtown Rd., West Chester) on Wednesdays: March 5 and 12; April 2, 16, and 30; and May 14.  Staff will be in the lobby to direct participants to their assigned rooms, a news release said.

Organizers said six discussion/activity groups will run simultaneously in separate rooms: adoptive parents, grand-families (kinship families), teens (age 14-18), boys (age 6-13), girls (age 6-13), and pre-school (age 2-5). The children’s groups include discussion, activities, games, stories and crafts appropriate to each age group; adult groups are open discussions with occasional speakers, the release said.

Any adoptive family that is or has been involved with Chester County’s Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) or Permanency Partners is eligible for the post-adoption group. Other adoptive families can be included upon request to DCYF (610-344-5890). The grand-families group is open to any Chester County family that is headed by grandparents or other relatives who are sharing their home with nieces, nephews, grandchildren or other related children (also called kinship families), according to the release.

For more information and to register, Contact Kathy Boyd – 610-344-5890 or kboyd@chesco.org. Please include the following in your message: daytime phone number and email address and the names and birth dates of each child.