Oliver Palmer, MA, LPCC

My name is Oliver Palmer, MA, LPCC, and I am a mental health therapist who works with individuals and families affected by adoption and foster care. I take a client-centered approach to therapy that involves working with kids to explore their identities and working with their caregivers to understand their child’s unique history and needs. I am particularly interested in working with kids and families in the LGBTQIA+ community and I combine my lived experiences with research to best support these clients.

I believe it is important to incorporate a child’s birth culture and birth family into their lives as much as possible (even when information and access to their birth family is limited) and I love collaborating with kids and their caregivers to figure out how this could look for them specifically. This can sometimes involve challenging White adoptive parents to go outside their comfort zone on their journey to better support their transracially adopted children.

I strongly encourage families to begin talking to their children about adoption early on and to keep adoption and birth family/culture as an ongoing topic throughout their lifespan. I enjoy providing discussion points and resources to caregivers to support them in this goal. I also believe in encouraging caregivers to seek out materials created by adult adoptees to better-understand the lived experiences of adoptees.

My sessions with kids/adolescents/teens involve providing a safe and supportive environment where they can express any kinds of thoughts and feelings they are experiencing. We work together to develop coping skills and can be creative and flexible in our methods for expressing their feelings (e.g. incorporating imaginative play, art, writing, etc).