Permanency Tip of the Week: Role of Mental Health in Permanency
Permanency efforts for our Youth in Care must be closely coordinated with the past and present mental health needs and services. When reviewing the youth’s mental, look for: 1) Attachment Friendly Information (AFI) from reports / testing; 2) Mental Health and AFI related information available on their Child, Parents, Siblings, Relatives; 3) Mental Health Symptoms and Diagnoses – Is the Youth being seen through the lens of Permanency, Loss, Attachment and Trauma?; 4) Nature, scope, focus and provider information for past and present Mental Health Services; 5) Are the Mental Health Services addressing any mental health related barriers to forming and sustaining healthy attachments?
Permanency Story of the Week: What Adoption For Older Foster Youth Really Means
When I was 16 years old and in foster care in Tennessee, people told me I was unadoptable. But I desperately wanted a family. I enlisted the help of a judge, even the commissioner of the Department of Children’s Services, and was adopted just a week before my 18th birthday.
We have a lot to be grateful for and this holiday season let’s not forget about the more than 415,000 youth in foster care especially older youth. These youth are the most likely to get overlooked for adoption, but they shouldn’t be. They need and deserve a family just as much as young children do. Check out AdoptUSkids’ newPSA or visit AdoptUSkids.org to learn more about adopting older youth and see what they mean by “you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.”
My adoption was life changing and probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Having a forever family has given me unconditional love, support, confidence, and security. I know that I’m loved and that I belong.
Current Permanency Related Articles:
Alcohol, Cannabis, trauma? What is hardly mentioned is the fact that trauma, sustained over long periods of time, actually alters the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for risk taking behaviors, moral judgement and reasoning. If drug use is a risk-taking behavior, and we know that trauma is an indicator for premature risk taking,how can we start to change the direction of conversation to healing trauma as a preventative measure for drug use?
To summarize a long story, if we understand that: 1.) Systemic trauma is real; 2.) Trauma is a precursor to drug use; 3.) Drug use is mainly a result of trauma; 4) Communities hit with systemic marginalization are more likely to experience trauma; 5) Prohibition creates the illegal market …then it is safe to say that systemic racism and oppression are a drain on resources, perpetuate drug use/abuse and the illegal market.
National Foster Care Month 2016 Website Now Live
The 2016 National Foster Care Month website launched this month with the theme “Honoring, Uniting, and Celebrating Families,” focusing on family reunification. Visit the website to access resources specifically focusing on engaging and supporting parents, youth, families and caregivers, professionals, Tribes, and communities. The website also features real-life stories to inspire and share, graphics and social media tools to promote awareness, and the State foster care contacts map to connect with others in the foster care community.
State by State – Access to Adoption Records
This factsheet discusses laws that provide for access to both non-identifying and identifying information from an adoption record by adoptive parents and adult adopted persons. Generally, the person whose information will be disclosed must consent to the disclosure, and methods of providing consent are discussed. Access to original birth certificates by adult adopted persons also is addressed. Summaries of laws for all States and U.S. territories are included.
Transracial Parenting: Challenges and Tips
Every child deserves a loving family who will cherish them. Of the 415,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, 108,000 children under the age of 18 are currently waiting for adoptive families, according to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). African-American children continue to be overrepresented in foster care when compared to their numbers in the general population. In 2014, African-American children made up approximately 15 percent of all the children in the United States but 24 percent of the children in foster care. Given this disparity, transracial foster and adoptive placements are common
Strategies for Finding and Keeping Foster, Adoptive, and Kinship Homes
As part of the Innovations in Family Recruitment program, funded by a diligent recruitment grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services released a best practice guide. The guide helps professionals navigate the challenges of finding foster and adoptive families equipped to meet the needs of children and youth entering foster care. The guide contains seven chapters that explore different focus areas: recruitment, data collection and analysis, and targeted recruitment. The guide also provides information about using effective customer service and social media for recruitment. The guide includes a “Put It Into Practice” feature that provides related resources complimenting a practice described in each section, evidence-based practice models throughout certain chapters, and an appendix of related resources and factsheets.
What Children’s Brains Tell Us About Trauma: Invest Early
Chronicle of Social Change – Advocates, professionals, legislators, families, caregivers and all those who interact with the child welfare system grapple with the question of when and how resources should be invested at local, state, and national levels, to most effectively help children and families who may be touched by the foster care system. If we are serious about helping children, we must ask ourselves with greater urgency: At what point should we begin to pay attention to families who are at risk? The vital importance of the early years of children’s lives in setting the stage for their futures cannot be overstated.
To understand why foster care, as critical as it is in some instances, is a less effective intervention than assistance in advance of removing children from their homes, it will help to know something about stress, trauma and brain development. Some of what I will describe we know and have known for a long time, and some we didn’t really know until quite recently, but all has important implications for how we approach child welfare decisions and policies.