About ASPIRE Framework
About Aspire
ASPIRE was developed to create a deeper, adoptee-centred understanding of the psychological and lived impacts of adoption separation. It brings together adoptee lived experience, research, trauma-informed understanding and years of work exploring adoption through education, film and storytelling.
At its foundation is a simple principle: adoptee experience deserves to be understood in its own right — not interpreted solely through the systems, professions or institutions surrounding adoption.
Our Mission
ASPIRE’s mission is to advance understanding of the lifelong psychological impact of preverbal separation from mother and subsequent adoption-related experiences by bringing adoptee lived experience into meaningful connection with psychological theory, research and evidence-seeking practice.
Through adoptee-informed frameworks, educational resources, workshops, digital tools and future assessment pathways, ASPIRE provides greater language, understanding and opportunities for reflection, while supporting practitioners, researchers, educators and others seeking to better understand adoptee experience.
ASPIRE is grounded in dignity, psychological safety, scientific integrity and respect. It recognises that there is no single adoptee experience and takes a whole-person approach that acknowledges identity, relationships, resilience, strengths and growth alongside experiences of separation and adoption.
Why Aspire was Created
Much of the existing understanding of adoption has developed around placement, adjustment and outcomes. ASPIRE approaches adoption from another direction: beginning with the adoptee and exploring how separation, identity, belonging, relationships and lived experience can intersect across a lifetime.
The aim is not to define every adoptee experience, but to provide language, understanding and opportunities for reflection where experiences have often been difficult to recognise or articulate.
About the Founder
ASPIRE was founded and developed by Heather Waters, an Australian adoptee, filmmaker, author and educator whose work exploring adoption spans more than a decade.
Through Waters Productions, Heather has created award-winning films and publications centred on adoptee experiences and has brought together lived experience, research and trauma-informed learning to examine adoption from the perspective of those who live it.
ASPIRE grew from that body of work and from a recognition that adoptee experiences needed a framework capable of bringing these different strands of knowledge together.
How Aspire Developed
ASPIRE has developed through years of engagement with adoptee stories, documentary filmmaking, research, trauma-informed education and direct consultation with adoptees.
Its development continues through structured workshops, focus groups and collaborative review, ensuring that lived experience remains central as the framework, resources and educational programs evolve.
Dignity
Every adoptee is recognised as a whole person, with inherent worth, agency and the right to their own experience and identity.
Psychological Safety
ASPIRE approaches sensitive experiences with care, recognising that separation and adoption-related experiences may carry different meanings and impacts for different people.
Respect
There is no single adoptee experience. Different perspectives, relationships and interpretations are respected without prescribing what an adoptee should think, feel or believe.
Scientific Integrity
ASPIRE distinguishes between lived experience, psychological theory, established research and areas where evidence is still developing. Claims are not presented as established fact where the evidence does not support them.
Authenticity & Lived Experience
Adoptee voices and lived experience remain central to ASPIRE’s development while recognising the diversity of experiences within the adoptee community.
Strengths & Resilience
ASPIRE does not define adoptees solely through trauma or difficulty. Identity, relationships, resilience, strengths, adaptation and growth are part of a whole-person understanding.
Accountability
ASPIRE remains open to reflection, respectful challenge and revision as knowledge, evidence and understanding develop.
Our Principles
Connect with Aspire
ASPIRE continues to grow through research, education, collaboration and engagement with the adoptee community.