Beneath the Mask: The Intersectionality of Adolescence and Adoption
Dates: 10/2/26, 10/9/26, and 10/16/26
Time: 12-2pm EST/11am-1pm CST/9-11am PST
Faculty: Debbie Riley, LCMFT
Adolescence is a time when adoptees struggle with an extra layer of challenges related to their identity formation and integrating their sense of self as it relates to their adoption journey. Participants will explore how the typical developmental tasks of the teen years are intensified and complicated by adoption, particularly if teens are being raised by parents of a different race or culture. Participants will gain an understanding of how to assess how adoption influences the developmental process of identity formation, separation from parents, and interpersonal relationships, including birth family connections. Based on the book, Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens, by author and C.A.S.E. CEO Debbie Riley, this training highlights “the six spots where teens get stuck” as key vulnerabilities around the adoption experience in adolescence. Assessment considerations and clinical strategies will be explored for application in clinical practice.
About the Faculty:
Debbie B. Riley, LCMFT, CEO, is co-founder of The Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.), a national leader in mental health services for the foster care, kinship, and adoption community. A nationally recognized adoption expert, author, and public speaker, Ms. Riley has 40 years of professional experience, including health care management, administrative, designing and developing nationally acclaimed adoption-competent training programs, and direct delivery of specialized pre- and post-adoption counseling services. Ms. Riley created a continuum of innovative, culturally responsive, evidenced-informed programs to improve the behavioral outcomes of foster and adopted youth and their families, which have become nationally recognized models.
For over a decade, Ms. Riley has built and implemented a framework for training an adoption competent mental health workforce nationally, and is the founder of TAC (Training for Adoption Competency Curriculum). Through two federal grant awards to C.A.S.E from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Administration for Children and Families, Ms. Riley serves as the PI for the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) and the National Center for Child Welfare Competent Mental Health Services, to improve mental health outcomes for children and families experiencing child welfare systems.
Ms. Riley is co-author of the book, Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens (Riley and Meeks, 2006) and Adoption Specific Therapy, A Guide to Helping Adopted Children and Their Families Thrive (Waterman, Langley, Miranda, and Riley, 2018). She is a contributing author to The Need for Adoption Competent Mental Health Professionals in Transracial and Intercountry Adoptions, Cultural Guidance for Professionals (Fong and McRoy, 2016); Training for Adoption Competency Curriculum in The Routledge Handbook Of Adoption (Wrober, Helder, and Marr, 2020); Adoption as a Diversity Issue in Professional Preparation: Perceptions of Preservice Education Professionals, Adoptions Quarterly (Taymans, Marotta, Lynch, Riley, Ortiz, Schutt, Mallery, Embich, 2008); Adoption Competent Clinical Practice; Defining Its Meaning and Development, Adoption Quarterly (Atkinson, Freundlich, Gonet, Riley, 2013); and Training for Adoption Competency: Building a Community of Adoption-Competent Clinicians, Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services (Atkinson and Riley, 2017).
Beneath the Mask: The Intersectionality of Adolescence and Adoption
This 3-session, 6-hour interactive course is based on the book, Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens, by author and C.A.S.E. CEO Debbie Riley, this training highlights “the six spots where teens get stuck” as key vulnerabilities around the adoption experience in adolescence.
