UCLA TIES for Families is an interdisciplinary, university-based program established in 1995 to promote the successful adoption, growth, and development of special needs children from age 0 to 21 in foster care, especially those with prenatal substance exposure. The program is located in Los Angeles, California on the UCLA campus and works in close collaboration with the public child welfare and mental health systems. The program employs an innovative model of intervention to reduce barriers to the adoption of these children and support their successful transition into permanent homes with stable, nurturing families.
Services are available free of charge to adoptive families of children who are placed and referred by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. The TIES model includes a nine hour program of preparation for adoptive parents, assessment of individual children’s development, and pre-placement consultation with prospective adoptive parents by a multi-disciplinary team regarding the child’s mental health, medical, and educational needs. There is a comprehensive array of intervention services available to children and families, including adoption-specific psychotherapy for new families in transition, individual and family therapy, home-visiting, psychological testing, monthly parental and child support groups, short-term weekly therapy groups for children and teens, parenting skills training, infant mental health, and parent mentoring.
TIES for Families also provides training at the local, state, and national level on the adoption of children with special needs and on the lessons learned from serving this population over the last 20 years. Training is offered to prospective and current adoptive parents, child social workers in public welfare, and professionals in the legal and mental health systems. Longitudinal research is being conducted on the effectiveness of the project and the developmental outcome of the children and their families.
The postdoctoral program consists of professionally supervised, comprehensive clinical training experiences that includes fellows carrying a caseload of infants, children, teens, and parents with weekly individual and weekly group supervision to cover treatment planning, psychological testing, psychodiagnostic assessment, consultation, and professional development. Fellows will spend 65% of their time providing professional psychological services. Fellows attend weekly case conferences with a multidisciplinary team to discuss treatment cases. Fellows conduct monthly and/or weekly group therapy with children and parents. Fellows also provide psychological testing and develop proficiency at interpretation and write-up, in addition to continued development of the basic skills of testing administration and scoring.
The following postdoctoral fellow tracks are available for the upcoming training year:
- Clinical (1-year)
- Clinical-Research (1-year)
- Infant Mental Health (2-years)
Clinical postdoctoral fellows provide the following services to children and families:
- Child, adolescent, and family psychotherapy utilizing evidence-based approaches (e.g. Child Parent Psychotherapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Managing and Adapting Practice, Attachment Regulation and Competency, PEERS, Reflective Parenting Program, Seeking Safety, UCLA TIES Transition Model)
- Group therapy, aimed at fostering attachment and better supporting both children and families adjusting to the specific circumstances of adoptive placement
- Involvement in the Infant Mental Health program, including developmental assessments, home visiting, and parent-infant support groups
- Therapeutic home visiting to strengthen parent-child attachment, support parents through the child welfare and court systems, and provide interactive guidance about developmental, emotional and behavioral issues of infants and toddlers
- Participation in clinical trial of ADAPT, a manualized adoption-specific intervention for older children being adopted from foster care and their parents
- Interdisciplinary, comprehensive psychological evaluations
Clinical-Research postdoctoral fellows split time providing clinical services mentioned above (60%) while engaging with the research team on a collaboratively identified clinical research project (40%).
Infant Mental Health postdoctoral fellows provide the clinical services mentioned above, with an emphasis on meeting the needs of infants and toddlers and their foster/adoptive families
