Greetings!
People keep asking how things are going in our 'new life' at PACT (pre/post adoption consulting and training) and Pavao Consulting and Coaching. People who care, keep wondering how I survived the end of Center For Family Connections (CFFC). The answer is "barely", and still working to survive. So many clients have written, called, texted, emailed...this week I got a sweet little notebook in the mail from a child I had seen only twice with her family for a consult, and in her lovely child handwriting she wrote "Dear Joyce: I'm sorry what had happened. Just keep on dreaming..." As you can imagine, ending CFFC was a very difficult process for everyone involved--and it was my creation, my dream and my 'baby'. The good news is: Riverside Community Care really does care. They have been welcoming, kind, engaging, and eager to have us start a post adoption program there, which is called Riverside After Adoption Consulting and Training or AACT I would be very happy in my new life, if it weren't for a couple of things: First, is that I am making only 1/3 of my former salary and I can't really keep my home and my life with that large a cut. Mary, my assistant, is also only part time and as a single parent, she needs to be full time as soon as possible. Second, is that I had loaned CFFC my entire savings many times in the past 17+ years, and when I had done that- in the past- it was returned to me, but this time things are different. The Board has taken over completely, because I am one of the creditors and it is therefore a conflict for me to vote ect, and so anyone with questions or issues about CFFC should be in touch with Rita Hedgespeth, the Board Chair at: [email protected] I am on the precipice of losing everything, but positive thinking is what we teach our traumatized children, and what the traumatized adults must also focus on. I must keep my chin up, and move forward, for the sake of the families and children that I champion. On to more positive things!!! I am working to build AACT (Riverside After Adoption Consulting and Training) We now have a growing number of people that are trained by me at Riverside. We have Mary Limerick, my assistant, here with me, and Holly Bishop, KC Craig, Ryan Rivard, Nancy Yen, Jen Malloy, Kelley Lane at Riverside, and more to come!!!! With Riverside, we are conducting focus groups at Department of Mental Health (DMH), and gathering information from parents, workers, and youth to ascertain what services, tools, skills would most help DMH to serve this population. We are beginning a huge fundraising initiative to build the AACT program, and we are busy researching and writing grant proposals. Should anyone want to invest in post adoption services for the community- we will be training home-based and clinic workers, DMH workers, and will be working with professionals at residential centers (were 38% of the inhabitants are adopted). If you want to invest in starting something that will be a model program for other communities nationally, simply write a check that is restricted for AACT and send it to/make it out to: Riverside After Adoption at 220 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. If you have a corporate fund or resources that we can apply to, please do that as well or let us know and the amazing grantwriting team at Riverside will take it on. It is lovely to have a large infrastructure with amazing experts working with us to build a pioneering program. I'm sure, at this juncture, that people would prefer to put money into something that will be positive and will help many people by making a difference post adoption. Pavao Consulting and Coaching is slowly building as well. We see families and professionals. We are seeing people pre and post adoption and fertility treatments, we are skyping to students who are out of the country for the summer, we are working with many lawyers from all over the country writing affidavits and testifying on behalf of children and families. There is a clear need for more services around clinically supervised visits, around clinical mediation, and around help with opening closed adoptions. The rise of Facebook interventions in the lives of youth makes searching more of a compulsion and there is even more need for expertise for families and children/youth. The Groups program is sorely missed, and it will be one of the things that we will fundraise to re-introduce in communities at large. Please refer families and professionals our way to PACT. We will do consultations and referrals throughout our network and through Riverside AACT. I am not taking insurance at Pavao Consulting, so that I can run a streamlined office. I do have a sliding scale so that people can afford to access our services and so that we can afford to survive. There will be a hiatus this summer in our 27 years of ARC Summer Intensives, but we hope to resume next year as part of AACT and will keep you posted. We are also building- through Riverside After Adoption- a year-long course for both professionals and parents/adults to be certified in a wide array of post adoption issues and the skills and knowledge needed to serve this population. The course is based on the original course that Gary Mallon and I wrote and taught at Hunter Graduate School of Social Work in NY for four years and that I designed and Kellogg supported here for a year. Keep supporting us in any way that you can as we grow a garden of glorious guides for families and children post adoption through our Riverside After Adoption program, AACT. Sincerely and gratefully, Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao 220 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 617 547 0909 [email protected] | 
