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The ultimate goal of these activities is to contribute to evidence-based practice in adoption and to provide research-based information that will influence policy at agency, state, federal, and international levels.
The program is located within the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and is affiliated with the interdisciplinary Center for Research on Families.
We seek to advance knowledge about the psychology of adoption through original research and provide research-based information to influence practice and policy.
We connect with and listen to the broad adoption community through our lived experience groups to discover what individuals and groups in the community would like to learn more about.
We share our research and knowledge with the university and the adoption community through training, workshops, events, and webinars that educate communities and future researchers.
We are dedicated to care and support for the community of people with lived experience with adoption, ensuring that our programming and research is ethical and reciprocal.
We are setting up three lived experience advisory groups to learn from (1) adoptees/foster care alumni (2) first/birth parents whose children were adopted or fostered (3) adoptive and foster parents. If you live in Massachusetts or nearby, and would like to share your views and experiences to help shape our research get in touch!
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We have been working with IdeaCo. to launch new branding for the Rudd program. Team members met regularly with the designer to create a shared vision for how we present ourselves. This is core to our mission of communicating with a wide range of audiences.
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This spring we held five webinarsfocused on the needs and experiences of adult adoptees in the USA and UK. Over1000 people attended - just over halfwere from the USA, one third from the UK, and the rest from 36 differentcountries. Nearly 70% of attendees had lived experience of adoption – and threeof our presentation were led by adoptee scholars. Thank you to everyone whojoined these events and to all our speakers!
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