[StorkWatcher]

Hoping for some helpful hints here -

I am thinking about offering to volunteer to start an adoptive parent waiting support group for the agency we adopted through. They used to have one that met on a quarterly basis, but when we were on the waiting list, they never had a meeting. I don't know if they had a lack of volunteers or resources or what. I really could have benefited from a group near us, as we had no close friends who had adopted recently when we began our journey. Thank goodness for these forums and for a couple we met who were on our agency's waiting list at the same time!

I have no formal training for leading a group like this - just a feeling of a need to help others and my own experience of going through the adoption process, and I'm sure I can get materials and assistance from the agency's workers. Does anyone have suggestions on what works well in these types of groups, what you'd be looking for in a group or what you needed from this forum, or what things to avoid or concentrate on?

At this time, I'd be focusing on the waiting parents from their first contact with the agency to finalization. I think we could then have a natural progression on to a less formal group of adoptive couples after that point.

Feel free to PM me or post your experiences and suggestions or direct me to sites for resource materials. I'd especially love to hear from those of you who have coordinated a group like this in the past or who had a support group during your wait.