Permanency Tip of the Week: What do I Receive from the Permanency Relationship?
One thing all of us focus on is what we receive from our relationships. Challenges for many of our Youth in this area are three-fold: 1) Youth who have experience inter-personal abuse, neglect and trauma have relationship experiences that can skew their view of what they can expect to receive from a relationship; 2) Many of their relationships have been largely conditional in nature (caregivers, staff, providers, etc.); 3) Developmentally, it is normal for all youth to largely view many aspects of life, including what they receive from relationships, through a short-term lens. These factors can represent significant barriers to the development and sustain permanent relationships. Guiding Youth in healing from their past, experiencing progressively more unconditional relationships, and slowly lengthening the lens through which they view relationships is critical to enhenhancing Permanency for our Youth.
Permanency Success Story of the Week: Fostering Great Ideas: Celeste – A Bright Note!
Fostering Great Ideas – Meet Celeste, a 22-year who lived in foster care since age 14. While residing in a foster group home, she received a mentor through Fostering Great Ideas’ Life Support mentoring program. Her mentor saw something in Celeste she couldn’t see in herself – potential. The mentor took Celeste on college trips and introduced her to the S.A.T. The mentor, also a foster parent, invited Celeste to move in with her family. For Celeste, this was too much. She wasn’t ready to believe in herself or trust that someone cared about her. She ran away, back to the group home. But, her mentor stayed and continued to work on the relationship.
Over 6 years, Celeste learned to trust that this mentor would not leave. Celeste began to think of her mentor as family, even calling her Mom. In fact, this commitment became permanent – the mentor and her family are adopting Celeste, at the age of 22. Celeste, now a mom of a beautiful two-year-old girl, is thriving. She has learned to trust in herself and to build solid relationships with others…
Permanency Related Articles:
U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging Committee – Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ranking Member Bob Casey (D-Pa.) introduced the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act to create a federal task force charged with supporting grandparents raising grandchildren.
Approximately 2.6 million children are currently being raised in grandfamilies, and experts say this number is rising as the opioid epidemic continues to devastate families and communities across the country…The Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act would create a federal task force charged with developing and disseminating information designed to help grandparents raising grandchildren to navigate the school system, plan for their families’ future, address mental health issues for themselves and their grandchildren, and build social and support networks…Last year, Generations United, a leadership organization focused on supporting intergenerational families, released a report, Raising the Children of the Opioid Epidemic: Solutions and Support for Grandfamilies, which found that after years of decline, the numbers of children in foster care are increasing and pointed to the opioid epidemic as responsible for this trend.
Foster, Adoptive Parents Find an Oasis in New Online Membership Community
Chronicle of Social Change – As foster and adoptive parents, Mike and Kristin Berry understand intimately what a lonely journey it can be parenting children with difficult early childhood beginnings. In 2012 they launched their blog, Confessions of an Adoptive Parent, to be a voice for foster and adoptive parents around the world, and have since augmented that with their Honestly Adoption Podcast. The couple’s newest venture: A limited-enrollment online community meant to provide around-the-clock support and resources to adoptive parents.
Complex Trauma – Never Give Up: A Video by Youth for Youth
Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services & Interventions (CCTASI) at Northwestern University – This gripping film features a highly diverse cast of seven adolescents and young adults who examine the shared and unique challenges faced, mistakes made, and growth attained in the struggle to transcend legacies of developmental trauma. Unexpectedly insightful, unsentimentally poignant and always real, Never Give Up is an offering of collective wisdom, inspiration and hope for young people ensnared by adverse life experiences such as chronic neglect, violence, abuse, bullying, and exploitation from seven peers and mentors who came just before them and found their way through. This ground-breaking product developed by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) specifically for youth.
Mental Health Interventions for Children in Foster Care
Children’s Bureau Express – Children placed in out-of-home care usually have suffered adverse childhood experiences or situations that can lead to high rates of mental health problems, such as disruptive behavior disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders, and mood disorders…These children, however, are difficult to treat because of the transitory nature of out-of-home care…Additionally, some families may prefer to avoid the stigma of seeking out mental health care.
An article in Children and Youth Services Review aimed to evaluate intervention research in order to identify promising solutions to help children in foster care who are in need of mental health care. The study focused on research involving children who were between the ages of birth and 12 years.
Researchers selected interventions based on the following inclusion criteria: 1) The intervention showed at least one positive child mental health outcome for children in foster care. 2) The intervention could be delivered at home or in an outpatient/community setting. 3) The intervention contained at least one specific and unique therapeutic component rather than only enhanced foster care or wraparound services. 4) Outcome and engagement rates were measured after the completion of the intervention. 5) There was an evaluation of the intervention’s effectiveness.
Researchers identified 10 interventions that fit the above criteria: Attachment and Biobehavioral Catchup, Child-Parent Psychotherapy, Fostering Healthy Futures, Incredible Years, Keeping Foster Parents Trained and Supported, Kids in Transition to School, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Short Enhanced Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and Treatment Foster Care Oregon for Preschoolers…
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Take care and keep up the Permanency work – Our children, youth, young adults, families, and communities are depending on it!