This interactive webinar will explore best practices in creating community support systems for adoptive families of all types. A focus on action steps your family can take in finding the best in person and online support groups for your families, along with how to maintain your families connections to them, will be discussed. This webinar will also explore the importance of connecting your families to other adoptive families, and advise you on what to do if your child is hesitant in forming connections with other adoptees. A special focus on the difference between types of connections will be offered, along with an explanation of how to help adoptees from specific cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds feel more connected to their social worlds. This session will be followed by a Q & A with Tony Hynes, adoptee, author, and advocate.

Tony was adopted by his parents Mary and Janet in the mid 1990s. His family faced a custody battle with his birth family, who felt Mary and Janet, two white women, were not the right people to raise him. Tony writes about his experiences growing up as both a transracial adoptee and as a child growing up in a same sex headed household in his memoir “The Son With Two Moms.” Today, Tony is an advocate for families like his, and serves on the Board of Directors for Rainbow Families, an organization devoted to promoting the rights of LGBTQ Families everywhere. He also has been invited to be a speaker at several conferences on adoption throughout the nation, especially those involving transracial adoptions. In the fall of 2016 Tony was awarded a full scholarship to begin his PhD studies in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County where he has begun work on his dissertation, which focuses on racial connectedness among transracial adoptees. Tony co-facilitates the Transracial Adoption Group (TAG) at FamilyWorks Together along with Master Clinical Trainer, Erica Moltz, MA, NCC.