Permanency Tip of the Week: Permanency in the Classroom
As many children start a new school year this week, it is important for us to examine the role that Permanency can play in the classroom. For many youth in foster care, school has not been the stable part of their life like it is for most children. Too often, they have changed through multiple classrooms and schools causing more disruption and losses – both personal and academic. As we seek out Permanency for our Youth in foster care, let us look to apply the same principles in the classroom. Who can the youth count on at school to be there to support and journey with them in an unconditional way? Building that relationship will take time and effort on the part of the adult, the youth and all of us in our supportive / caregiving roles. Just as Permanency in a family yields amazing results, so too does Permanency in the Classroom – Let’s go and get it and sustain it!
Permanency Story of the Week: Twelve Years Later: The First Day of School
Parenting was hectic from the start, even before baby Katie came home. Her foster family never intended to adopt, so our relationship with them was friendly and collaborative. On Sundays, we said goodbye to her…There was never silence. We never slowed down enough to allow the quiet raging of our thoughts to come closer. After fourteen trips to Missouri, Katie came out of foster care and into our arms…The sounds of love and renewed hope for life filled every room.
The sun has shifted; it is past noon. Still I sit here and type. There is no preschool pickup today. There is no waking a baby from her nap to drag her to get her big sisters. There is no snack to prepare or television to argue about. There is just the silence, and the clicking of the keyboard.
I imagine my oldest, bravely learning the new world order of middle school, the business of changing classes and meeting hundreds of new people. I think of my middle, my brilliant, thoughtful impossible middle, oblivious to the social jockeying of the other third-grade girls as she sits happily alone and reads and reads and reads. And I can hear the tango music as I picture my tiny baby girl dancing her way through kindergarten until she comes back home to me. I can’t wait.
Current Permanency related articles:
Nonprofit aims to combat negative stereotypes of foster kids
Together We Rise – A nonprofit organization is working to alter negative stereotypes of children in foster care. The group is attempting to make adoption-day photos, the pictures taken of new families on their first day together, go viral. “By sharing families’ adoption-day photos, they aim to flip the script on the conversation about the foster system by sharing success stories,”
Advocates for Families First Offers Free Webinar on LGBT Youth
On September 23 at 1 p.m. eastern (noon central, 11 am mountain, and 10 am pacific) Advocates for Families First is hosting a free webinar: Improving Safety, Permanency, and Well-Being for LGBTQ Youth. This informative webinar is for anyone parenting or providing services for children and youth in relative care, foster care, or adoption. Included will be an overview of what we know about: 1) LGBTQ youth in out-of-home care; 2) the impact of family rejection; 3) their struggle for inclusion and safety when in care; 4) lack of affirming resource families; 5) double-standards applied to behavior, sexuality, etc.; 6) the essential role of support and affirmation in helping youth thrive; The session is presented by Ellen Kahn, director of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Children, Youth & Families Program.
Child Welfare Ideas from the Experts, #11: Increase Adoption of African-American Males
Research shows that a youth who ages out of foster care into adulthood is at high risk of experiencing the worst social outcomes ( homelessness, jail, or both) and face unique challenges in the pursuit of good social outcomes (college graduation and employment, for example). And African-American males in foster care find themselves on the aging-out path at a rate that surpasses any other demographic.
Guidelines for Social Worker Safety in The Workplace”
In the wake of the tragic death of Vermont child protection worker Lara Sobel, CASCW would like to take a moment to discuss workplace safety and the implications of secondary traumatic stress for workers and their supervisors in the field. The field of social work can be challenging and can impact us emotionally and physically. There is no time better than now to have these important conversations around safety and personal well-being in an effort to support each other and strengthen our child welfare communities.
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has published a training tool titled Guidelines for Social Worker Safety in The Workplace. NASW hopes these guidelines will assist in the development of agency policies and practices that will enhance the safety of social work professionals. Social workers can also use these guidelines to improve both professional and personal well-being and keep the conversation going.
Lincoln Child Center’s Project Permanence
Project Permanence is a wraparound program for youth as young as 2 years old and as old as 20, designed to support “permanently placed foster youth in their transition out of a group home or other temporary placements into stable family homes with caregivers committed to a life-long permanent relationship,” according to the agency website. The program, funded by the Department of Children and Family Services, also “supports foster youth who are at-risk of losing their permanent placement.” Approximately 80 to 90 percent of the families who have gone through the Project Permanence program since 2007 remain together at least six months after the program in stable placement.
How Adverse Childhood Experiences Impact Health and Well-being
In the early 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felliti began noticing that many of his patients who were having extreme illnesses in their adult years had adverse childhood experiences. Much of his research is outlined in “Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal” (2015) by Donna Nakazawa.