The Barker Foundation

BUNDLE: Barker Infant Adoption

These courses are intended to provide adoptive families with core training concepts. You’ll be introduced to Trust-Based Relational Intervention®, attachment styles, adoption ethics, parenting strategies and ways you can empower your child to trust and heal. This is a 12 course series for a total of 23 hours.  • $320

Barker Bundle: ENROLL NOW

Class 105

Common Medical Conditions

This course will challenge you to think about your understanding of special needs and learn more about how to consider whether or not you are prepared to care for a child with a medical challenge. We’ll cover some common medical conditions and we’ll do our best to provide answers to how to parent a child with special needs. You’ll also hear from families who are parenting a child with a special need and how their life has changed. We’ll leave you with some resources to explore as you consider how to make these very important decisions.

2.5 Hours • $50
Enroll in Class 105

Class 108

Transracial Adoption: Building Cultural Awareness

We are all the same on the inside, but learning to acknowledge, celebrate, and understand cultural differences but “blending” as you become a conspicuous family is a life-long journey. Take some steps with this course in deepening your sensitivity and opening your heart for those who are different from you. We’ll explore transracial adoption and care giving from the point of view of both adoptive parents and transracial adoptees.

1.5 Hours • $30
Enroll in Class 108

Class 113

Supporting Children During Medical Encounters

From surgery to shots at the pediatrician’s office to taking pills, medical encounters of any kind bring their own challenges and potential fears for you and your children. This will course will provide insight on how to prepare yourself and your child for medical encounters, tips for regulation and support during a procedure, office visit or hospital admission, and how to process and recognize success afterwards.

1.5 Hours • $35
Enroll in Class 113

Class 140

First Family Heritage Search

As you build a trusting, life-long relationship with the child who has joined your family through adoption, one of your goals for them is to build a strong and resilient identity. To do this, it’s important to aid in understanding and honoring their birth culture and birth family. What does that look like in international or domestic adoption? Let’s explore together.

2 Hours • $30
Enroll in Class 140

Class 201

The Importance of Playful Engagement

In this class, we’ll discuss how to confront challenging moments through playful interaction, and provide practical tools for daily encouragement for children with a background of trauma. This class also explores ways to make play fun for yourself and your child, and why play can often be difficult for adults.

2.0 Hours • $60
Enroll in Class 201

Class 202

Healing and Healthy Touch

Science, and our own hearts tell us that everyone needs physical affection, but it can be difficult to know how to approach a child when touch has been absent or abusive in their lives. This course offers practical tools based in TBRI for how to be affectionate with a child with a history of trauma and loss, as well as how to recognize and bring healing to sexualized behavior and introduce a child to your family culture of healthy touch. The 40-minute TBRI video, “Healthy Touch” is included in this course.

2 Hours • $60
Enroll in Class 202

Class 206

Nurturing Secure Connections

Every parent and caregiver wonders what is going on in the minds of the children they care for. Actions, behaviors, words, and deeds can baffle the mind of the most caring and rational adult! In this course, we’ll explore the possibility that everything a child does stems from his or her natural desire to learn, explore, and grow, to launch and return to a secure embrace.

2 Hours • $60
Enroll in Class 206

Class 303.1

TBRI: Empowering, Connecting, Correcting Part I

This course provides the practical examples and role-playing needed for parents, caregivers and professionals to learn how to empower children to physically and emotionally attune to a safe caregiver. You’ll come away with the tools and encouragement needed to connect with children in a meaningful, healthy way, while also learning strategies to help them course-correct when things get hard. The first session of the video “Empowering, Connecting, Correcting” is included in this course.

2 Hours • $60
Enroll in Class 303.1

Class 306

Racial Makeup of Families & Identity of Children through Adoption

Families whose children have ethnicities different from their own face unique challenges in family life, community, and culture. Your child’s experience is different from your own—and there must be space for them to express those experiences and feelings. This course will help families discover ways to honor their child’s birth culture as well as the community that they’ve brought their child “home” to join.

2 Hours • $60
Enroll in Class 306

Class 316

Does Anyone See? – When you already live here…and your family adopts!

When you are the ‘resident’ child, and your family adds new siblings it’s a whole life transition for everyone. In this material Dr. Jana Hunsley shares her own family’s story… 7 children adopted in 4 years when she was a teenager!

1.5 Hours • $45
Enroll in Class 316

Class 317

What About My Other Children: Learning to See and Meet the Needs of Adoptive Siblings

Every family is a complex, emotionally interdependent system of individuals. Adding a whole new person(s) with diverse needs, expectations and life experiences can be challenging for everyone! Dr. Jana Hunsley will share from her personal story as well as recommendations for meeting needs and achieving a positive adoption transition for each family member.

1.5 Hours • $45
Enroll in Class 317