Permanency Tip of the Week: Adoption Series – Week 3 – I Want to Be Adopted, but I Do Not Want to Leave My Family
Finding Permanency outside a child’s family of origin should NEVER come at the expense of relationships with the family of origin. Too often, the legal termination of parental rights is applied to the relationships as well. No matter how attached the Youth becomes with the parent(s) who adopted them, those parents will never be the ones who brought them into the world. That biological, social, and cultural bond must be honored and celebrated to the greatest extent possible. There are case-specific issues that need to be addressed regarding the nature and scope of the relationships with the family of origin; however, Adoption should never the reason why these relationships are severed.
Next week, we will address what happens when reunification occurs after an Adoption disrupts.
Permanency Success Story of the Week:
Never Quite Winner Has Been a Father Figure to More Than 60 Children and Youths
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) – Guy Bryant is a community coordinator at New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, where he helps monitor young people who have been discharged from foster care. He has been at his job for 42 years.
But Bryant goes above and beyond his job duties. Over the last 13 years, he has fostered more than 60 children and youth at his home, becoming the father figure many of them never had, instilling in them a sense of confidence in their abilities and potential, and never giving up.
“I tell my kids all the time that your success is my reward. I want them to have what everybody else in America has,” he says. “I don’t think what I do is special. I think it’s something that has to be done. This is the path that was chosen for me and I just walked down it.”
For his extraordinary service to his community, Bryant is a winner of AFSCME’s Never Quit Service Award.
Permanency Related Articles:
Back to Normal Not Good Enough for Parents, Kids Pulled into Foster Care System
Youth Today – The child welfare system is destroying families and leaving children to languish in foster care. The problem is rampant nationwide. In Missouri, Jesse Lake is fighting an uphill battle to keep her children against the head of the agency trying to sever her legal relationship to them so that she may adopt them herself…
“Normal” removed children for issues often related to poverty or lack of access to sound legal counsel. In many cases, parents without adequate housing and/or drug addiction or mental health issues who had their children removed and placed into foster care were denied. Or they were never offered the legally required services available to help them improve their circumstances to meet the requirements for reunification in a timely manner.
Normal determined the strength of parental “bond” (or lack thereof) between a parent and children based on one hour of in-person, supervised, visitation per week in a small room at a child welfare office. In such an artificial, clinical setting, a parent might be scrutinized for bringing their child’s favorite snack from McDonald’s on the purely subjective basis that it may not be “healthy enough,” thus rendering the parent unfit for further interaction. A father in Oregon was faulted for not preemptively removing scissors from a visitation room that were left by the previous occupants. Judges are routinely asked to determine if a parent’s efforts toward reunification are sufficient to merit increased interaction with their children based on the notes of such arbitrary interactions…
Genentech– The Resilience Effect is our philanthropic initiative to take on childhood adversity in the Bay Area and build lifelong health. Together with our partners, we hope to design, test, and scale the most effective ways to address childhood adversity and strengthen resilience — so that all children can have healthy and vibrant futures.
Robert F Kennedy – Children’s Action Corps – Chat Live
Robert F Kennedy – Children’s Action Corps – Chat live with Charles Shaughnessy, Lara Jill Miller, and the Honorable Leslie E. Harris – Don’t miss this opportunity to hear great show business stories and learn about the juvenile justice system.
Families with Foster Children Juggle Online School, Parenting Challenges
Georgia Recorder – Beth White of Gwinnett County got state approval to become a foster mom in February and welcomed her three foster children shortly before COVID-19 spread to Georgia, spurring school and business shutdowns. She has had to take on the need to manage the three children’s schooling and the meetings with state caseworkers entirely online. The Whites’ foster children are 10, seven and three, and the two younger children have a hard time paying attention to the social workers on their video screen…
The Whites are also trying to balance their own work schedules around their foster children’s needs. “My husband and I are a working family, so we have to work around our schedules, and we understand they have work hours also, but there is an element of difficulty there because we are trying to schedule things in the evenings, or, like this morning, we actually did an 8 a.m. FaceTime with a caseworker just so she could get time with the kids.”
Heading back to school has been a challenge for families all over Georgia. Districts that have opted for face-to-face learning have had to send hundreds of students home under quarantine, and digital learning is an imperfect substitute, especially for working parents. Those challenges can be magnified for the nearly 12,000 foster children in Georgia, who are more likely than their peers to have experienced neglect or trauma.
“Foster parents are really struggling right now,” said John DeGarmo of Jasper County, founder of the Foster Care Institute Dr. John DeGarmo advocacy group. “The kids in foster care, during COVID-19, they’re not getting the services they need, they’re not getting the professional therapy sessions they need, they’re not getting the face-to-face visitation. Instead, they’re doing it online, which is much harder for them. Many of them are not getting the school services they need.” Georgia’s foster care system has faced challenges since before the pandemic, DeGarmo said…
Not Just Another Foster Care Story: Beyond the Headlines with The Imprint
Imprint – Join CNN host Lisa Ling and investigative reporter Karen de Sá, now the editor of The Imprint, for a discussion on covering the complex issues surrounding foster care and youth justice. America’s most vulnerable children, youth, and families often go unnoticed or their stories are oversimplified, but good journalism can make a difference in their lives and the systems that serve them. Find out what The Imprint will focus on under the leadership of de Sá, an award-winning reporter whose work has led to numerous changes in California law and improved institutions. Audience participation will be encouraged during a question-and-answer session.
Date: Thursday, Sept. 17
Time: 1 pm Pacific/4 pm Eastern
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Take care and keep up the Permanency work – Our children, youth, young adults, families, and communities are depending on it!