Licensed by CT Department of Children and Families
Private, Non-Profit (Working in Connecticut and with Applicants In Other States)
Licensed by CT Department of Children and Families |
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We regret that we are not accepting any new applications at this time.
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Be sure to visit Iris Arenson-Fuller, CPC at www.visionpoweredcoaching.com and also, coming soon, www.expertadoptioncoach.com
A Heartfelt Farewell:
To All of Our Wonderful Clients & Supporters:
It’s time to say our official goodbye. However, I am pretty sure a lot of you will stay in touch with me and I certainly hope so. You know my life’s work has been as much about building relationships as it has been about building families.
Most of you got my newsletter last October 2009, with the invitation to our Farewell Party on November 7th and the difficult news that Thursday’s Child was winding down operations and would be closing some time in 2010. We had an incredible party and since then, have received so many beautiful e-mails, cards, letters, photos of your kids, and even some personal gifts which were not necessary to do, but which touched me deeply. I can’t even begin to tell you what your tributes and remembrances have done to help me get through this ending as I prepare to move on with life. After almost 29 years, you can well imagine that this is quite a milestone and leave taking for me.
Those of you who know me are well aware that this has been my life’s work for a very long time. I began as an adoptive parent and moved into the professional arena out of my passion for helping homeless children and yearning families unite. It would be impossible for me to leave behind that passion, so I expect to remain involved in adoption and assistance work, but just not in placing children for adoption.
I have already detailed in my newsletter many of the reasons that the Board of Directors and I made the decision that we would end Thursday’s Child and would turn in our State license this year and dissolve the corporation before long. We are still in process of doing that, but are wrapping up paperwork and different projects in which we have been involved. I am very pleased to say that at this time all of our cases have been completed. The reasons for our decision have to do with a combination of factors. The atmosphere in the adoption world has changed and there are fewer viable options for adoption, though the world population of parentless and suffering kids is still crying out for help. The regulations intended to protect families, children and birth parents worldwide have helped some things, but have sadly worsened others and have made it almost impossible for small, personalized agencies like Thursday’s Child to survive. One important motivator for me in realizing that it is time to close, is that I am ready to invest more time in building my professional coaching practice now, which you can read more about below.
As I say our final farewell over the next months, I can’t even begin to describe the pride I feel about the work we have accomplished, both in helping to build so many families and in finding so many great homes for needy children. In reviewing the various kinds of overseas assistance we were involved in for so many years in different countries, I am astonished that we were able to do this on such a modest budget. I have also had the fortune to have worked with so many amazing families, fantastic staff, colleagues and dedicated board members. I thank every one of them for being a part of my life. The opportunities I was given to travel and to meet and befriend so many colleagues from other countries is something that could not be matched in too many other professions. Some of these friendships have withstood the test of time and I treasure them and hope they will go on. Though we did not work with a large number of local birth mothers, those we did help will never be forgotten for their love, courage and the impression each one left on me.
I leave you now, realizing that some of you are also saddened by this news. I want you to know that I am very happy with my coaching work and I hope you will read the information below and will take the time to learn more about this work.
Please check this site periodically over the next months to see if there is any more information that needs to be passed on to our loyal clients. The agency phone line (860-242-5941) will be kept in service and I can still be reached by e-mail at tcexecdir@aol.com or iris@visionpoweredcoaching.com.
With love and no regrets,
Iris Arenson-Fuller, Founder, Executive Director
We await further instructions from DCF about how they want records prepared and transported for storage. All records will be stored by the Department of Children and Families. CT law requires that adoption records be stored for 99 years. It is not yet clear on whether the whole adoption file in each case will be stored, or just pertinent parts. International adoptive families already have copies of their documents submitted prior to adoption, including their homestudies, and their documents from the other countries.
In the extreme instance that some international adoptive families have misplaced some original documents and need them, we can make copies but will charge a flat fee of $150 to cover time, costs for copying and postage, as per decision by our Board. Remember that we cannot obtain new “originals”, but can only provide photocopies. This would need to happen before all files were transported to DCF. We are not permitted to provide file information for domestic adoptive families, other than homestudies, which all of our clients had copies of when approved by Thursday’s Child.
Your Support & Interest Requested & Appreciated:
With the agreement of our Board of Directors, I would like to fill you in on my recent career direction. I can tell you that I am as passionate and enthusiastic about this as I have been about adoption work. As some of you already know, I completed nearly two years of training in coaching, some advanced training and graduated as a Certified Professional Coach. I am now a Relationship and Family Life Changes Coach, and my business name is Vision Powered Coaching, which focuses on helping clients with big choices and life passages. Naturally adoption is one of my specialty areas. I help people who want to know more about adoption and/or whose lives have been touched in some way by adoption. I help people build and successfully raise adoptive families. I also help people to claim the lives they want and be happier, if they are dealing with fertility obstacles, pregnancy loss, are adult adoptees or birthparents dealing with loss issues. Please do stop by and visit my new web site which should be operating soon, at www.expertadoptioncoach.com. What a personal trainer does for your body, a personal coach does for your whole life.
I also invite you to visit my blog/website at www.visionpoweredcoaching.com. There you will find many articles on different topics near and dear to me and related to my work, as well as some of my poetry. In addition to working with adoption issues, I help people who have experienced loss in life, or who need help getting through some tough life stages, and who want to reclaim a more positive and productive existence. This could mean widows and widowers, loss of children, loss of relationships, aging issues, dealing with new relationships, improved relationships, and Sandwich Generation issues.
I am happy to say that my coaching practice is poised to grow quickly into a solid and thriving business. Clients are raving about their results, about my talent for understanding them and for helping them reach their personal goals. The insights and compassion I have acquired from years of working in adoption and living through some pretty major life challenges have equipped me with special qualities and skills to use with my coaching clients. I like to say that I coach with a practical heart and I know my clients would agree.
My client base is growing, but in this day and age personal referrals are so important. I am writing to you who know me to ask that you do me the honor of being on the lookout for friends, relatives, colleagues, or clients of yours who currently are dealing with the need to make big life choices or changes and could use some group or one-on-one tools and support. Coaching is NOT therapy and they need to be healthy, motivated people ready to do the work to achieve their goals. In my adoption coaching I function as both a coach and a mentor and can help them in several ways. They will still need to work with a licensed agency but I can help them figure out what type of agency and what type of adoption is best for them and can also provide lots of tips and tools for those raising multi-cultural families. Although I can meet with people in my office sometimes, I can work with people all over the world by phone, so there is no travel time, and geography is not a concern. You may have a friend or relative in Iowa, New Jersey, France or Singapore who is much of a prospect as someone down the street from you. I will be offering teleclasses and telesupport groups too, which will be considerably less costly than one-to-one coaching work.
If you do come across someone you think would be a good match, will you let them know about me, and vice versa? I’d love to chat with them to see if I can help. For that purpose, I offer a no cost half hour to forty-five minute consult. They can email me at iris@visionpoweredcoaching.com
or visit my websites listed above. If I am not the right coach for them, or if we determine they need more than coaching, I have many colleagues who may be better suited and will be happy to refer them.
Thanks for your help! If there’s anything I can do on my end to help you, in any capacity, please let me know.
Warmly,
Iris
Welcome to our web site. If you had an appointment with us at our office, you would sit down in a comfortable chair, be offered a cup of tea or coffee and we would begin the process of getting to know each other. We hope your visit to this site will have some of that flavor. We are a personalized kind of agency, caring very much about the people with whom we work, and with whom we generally develop long term relationships. We hope that you will decide to join our Thursday’s Child Adoption Family soon.
Please take the time to read our information. We are sure that you will appreciate our differences and will want to contact us soon. Don’t forget to click on photos of some of the wonderful children we have placed and to read their families’ stories.
We believe that building a family through adoption is no less exciting and miraculous than creating a family by birth. We do not claim to perform miracles, but ask you to consider allowing us the privilege of being one of the important instruments in your pursuit of your own special miracle.
Who are we? We are an agency founded in 1981, by and for adoptive parents and we are family-centered, caring about the needs of all members of the adoption triad. We are small by design, and dedicated to our cause and to the families and children we serve, here in the U.S. and in many different countries. You will never be just a number, or just paperwork to us. We make that pledge and it will be verified if you speak to those who have been our clients over the years.
If you enter our web site now, you will learn more about us, our services and about some of our families. Hopefully you will also get a sense of what is unique about Thursday’s Child.
Enjoy your visit! We hope this will be the start of the most incredible process you have undertaken, so that you can soon achieve your dream. There are some changes in our focus and direction for 2008 and 2009 that you can read about below. We do hope our material is useful to you.
Summary of Services:
We provide compassionate, caring and comprehensive adoption services to prospective parents from Connecticut and other states.
We work hard to ensure that prospective parents are carefully guided through the complex adoption process and treated as individuals.
We are very proud of the fact that most our staff, board and consultants are adoptive parents AND professionals. Clients have frequently commented on our vast amount of knowledge about adoption. We are often consulted by other organizations on unusual adoption or immigration problems. Our director has nearly 40 years of experience in this field and many of our staff members have 10-20 plus years of experience. Our expertise will lead you competently and lovingly through each step of your adoption, including advice about immigration procedures and help with foreign dossiers. We know that adoption is a lifelong process and we are here to help prepare you for that, with information, support and sometimes humor.
We provide our birthparents, the same warm, thorough and individualized services that we do our prospective adopters.
We do everything possible to connect you with other adoptive families and to
give you helpful information. If you are here in Connecticut, you will meet some of our
families as part of your education and preparation for adoption.
We can supply references and mail or e-mail buddy families.
Excellent resources and networking opportunities for many countries. Watch for information on our new program offerings and updates on existing programs.
Our director has begun building a private Personal Transitions & Career Coaching Practice. Thursday’s Child will now also offer Coaching Services at package rates that will be significantly discounted for clients engaging these services through the Agency. Adoption-related coaching will be available. Specialized areas include:
We invite you to continue your visit with Thursday’s Child. This may well be the first step of your adoption journey! So, please board AIR ADOPTION now and enjoy the rest of the trip.
Visit with some Thursday’s Child families and read Real Adoption Stories.
Read About Homestudies and how to choose an agency. Our links will help you learn some things about other cultures and items of interest to adoptive families.
Please tell us a little about yourself(ves), and what sort of adoption interests you. We will do
our best to contact you soon and/or to send you initial information. We must
have your mailing address and day and evening telephone contact information.
E-Mail: tcexecdir@aol.com or info@tcadoption.org or call 860-242-5941
Have an unusual situation and need some personalized feedback? Please e-mail us.
We are here to help you. If you call, please leave a clear message on our
answering machine and someone will contact you as soon as we can. E-mail
often works best as a first contact.
Please visit with us again soon. Better yet, contact us now. We care about people in all phases and all stages of the adoption experience.
Our Clients Have Adopted From: United States (local and other states), Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, ,Vietnam.
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Thursday's Child, Inc
227 Tunxis Avenue Bloomfield, CT 06002 (860) 242 -5941 Fax (860) 243-9898 Last modified:
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