Permanency Tip of the Week: Week 4 of 4 – Permanency and Loss, Attachment and Trauma – A Look Back / Forward
When we look back at the experience of the Holidays for our Youth, in the context of the previous 4 concepts that I discussed, it is important to continually reflect on our experiences, memories and expectations of life in comparison to those of our Youth. This act of reflecting ultimately needs to lead to a healthy series of conversations with our Youth about how we can partner with them to help them in creating new life experiences, memories and expectations in spite of a history that may be filled with an absence of Permanency, multiple Losses, challenging Attachments and Traumatic events. Let’s be sure that we focus on creating these opportunities for conversations year-round and not just during the Holidays.
Permanency Story of the Week: They’re a Family Now
CASA Los Angeles – They thought they were just going to see a baseball game. But when six-year-old Jayden and his newly adoptive mother, Shellie, arrived at the minor-league Kane County Cougars’ ballpark, in Geneva, Illinois, over Labor Day weekend, they realized they’d been tricked. “Welcome to our family, Jayden! Congratulations!” read the banner on one wall of the luxury box. A loop of photos of Jayden played against another wall. A table in the middle of the room overflowed with presents.
Shellie’s adoption of Jayden had just been finalized.
Current Permanency related articles:
Adverse childhood experiences impact child health and school outcomes
Nearly half of all children in the United States are exposed to at least one social or family experience that can lead to traumatic stress and impact their healthy development – be it having their parents’ divorce, a parent die or living with someone who abuses alcohol or drugs – increasing the risk of negative long-term health consequences or of falling behind in school, suggests new research led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
For several years, CASA volunteers and staff around the country have been concerned about an ominous trend. Despite a general decline in the number of children in foster care, the family courts were requesting more volunteer advocates for more and more foster youth. Additionally, the children who had CASA and guardian ad litem advocates were coming from more challenging home situations. It is a sadly familiar pattern we have seen after previous recessions.
Last year we also noted that the decline in children in foster care was leveling off. The new numbers now confirm what our volunteers feared might happen. The number of children in foster care nationwide increased in 2013 for the first time in seven years. At the same time, we have received a report that child welfare spending actually declined nationwide between 2010 and 2012. That’s the first time spending has gone down in twenty years.
People Adopting Children When Most Are Thinking Retirement
Adoption advocates quoted in this article say that an increasing number of older adults are becoming adoptive parents. “There’s a lot more opportunity for older parents today than in the past,” said Chuck Johnson, president of the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Council for Adoption. Johnson started working in the field 28 years ago at an adoption agency that capped adoptive parents at age 40.
True Equality in Child Welfare (Opinion)
The Chronicle of Social Change – Here is what an equality band aid looks like in child welfare reform: the “racial disproportionality” movement, which is an effort to match the number of black children in foster care to the percentage of black children in the general population.
Succeeding as a Foster Child: A Road-map to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Success
Dr. Jamie Schwandt provides first-hand experience and in-depth research on the steps foster children must take to achieve success. These powerful lessons provide a roadmap for foster children to beat the stigma and pave their way to excellence. “I wish someone would have shared this insight with me when I was in foster care.” This is a common contention by the author and research participants. This book is a shortcut to eliminating this feeling and steering directly towards action and results. This book will provide tools to overcome challenges as well as contribute to the knowledge foster children have about the great opportunities they have been afforded by simply being foster children. Life in foster care is a temporary solution, but success is permanent. Embrace this opportunity, take advantage of the vast of resources, be positive and succeed!
Attachment and Child Welfare Practice
The July 2014 issue of Practice Notes, a newsletter produced by the North Carolina Division of Social Services (NC DSS) and the Family and Children’s Resource Program, is focused on attachment and child welfare practice. In order to best serve the children and families that come to the attention of NC DSS, it is important that child welfare professionals are “attachment literate.” This issue examines what attachment is, how it works, and ways of effectively responding to attachment problems.
Lessons on adoption and foster care I’ll never forget
If you would have spoken with me in 2012 about my career goals, experience involving adoption and/or foster care would have been low on my list–probably not even on my radar. I was naïve. I was naïve in thinking that foster care was an entity with little connections to me and my future goals. The reality is more heartbreaking and hard to understand than I ever imagined.
My experience at Heart Gallery Alabama has broadened my worldview. Before coming to HGA, I knew little about foster care and adoption, and what I thought I knew had been shaped by others comments rather than my own research/experience. 1) I thought most children in foster care had lost their parents because of death; 2) I thought the goal of foster care was to separate families; 3) I thought all children are adopted if parental rights are terminated; 4) I thought adoption was a fairy tale ending.