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PESI 2025 Play Therapy Summit: Play Therapy for Adoptive Children and Families: Navigating the Seven Core Issues in Adoption to Create Healthy Self-Expression, Attachment &Trauma Healing
June 5, 2025 @ 2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Adoption introduces unique emotional and behavioral complexities that significantly shape a child’s needs and experiences. For clinicians working with adopted children, understanding the Seven Core Issues in Adoption—loss, rejection, guilt/shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and mastery/control—is essential for effective intervention.
Join Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, PsyD, a licensed psychologist, international/transracial adoptee, and adoptive parent, alongside Sabra Starnes, LCSW, a transracial adoptee and adoptive mother with over 24 years of experience as an adoption therapist, as they bring unique perspectives and extensive expertise in adoption-related issues. They’ll offer vital insights and practical tools to address these seven core issues within the context of play therapy.
You’ll learn how various adoption types—foster, domestic, kinship, and international; same-race and transracial; open, semi-open, and closed—can shape the content and dynamics of your play therapy sessions and influence how children express themselves and navigate their relationships.
Attendees will leave with actionable insights, enriched therapeutic techniques such as bibliotherapy, backstory exploration, Theraplay and more, and discover a deeper empathy for the unique experiences of adopted children.
Don’t miss this session to enhance your clinical skills and support the well-being of adopted youth and their caregivers in meaningful ways. Register through the PESI website.