Permanency Tip of the Week: Emotional Safety on the Permanency Journey
The importance of creating and sustaining environments and relationships that are conducive for emotional safety cannot be understated. This process starts during our first contact with the child and continues every step of the way. It is important for us (and all those serving the youth) to continually monitor the child’s level of emotional safety during the Permanency process. Preparing the child for engaging with possible permanent connections as well as surrounding the child with trusted adults and objects can go along with building up their level of emotional safety. When people feel emotionally safe, they are much for likely to engage in attachment friendly interactions.
Permanency Story of the Week: The Toles Family: A Story of Adoption
In this video, you will meet the Toles family of Xavier, adopted at 18, Ronnie, adopted at 14 and John, adopted at age 17, by Joe Toles, dad.
Current Permanency Related Articles:
Building Resilient Social Workers is Everybody’s Business
Chronic sickness and staff retention problems among health and social care staff – social workers in particular – along with growing interest in mindfulness and meditation, have put the spotlight on building resilience in the professions. While there is cause for optimism about the benefits of practices such as mindfulness for social workers, it is important to recognize that this will not solve problems such as unfeasibly large caseloads. It is also important that we don’t allow mindfulness to lead us into thinking that building resilience is a purely individual matter. Social work is a profession that builds on an understanding of the individual in their social and environmental context. Resilience building for social workers must do the same.
Raised by grandparents: ‘Grandfamilies’ face many challenges
Many grandparents raising grandchildren do so to give children a chance at a better life. When divorce, separation, illness, death, incarceration, military service or a dozen other reasons leave a child without parental support, often the grandparents step in either temporarily or permanently. In the aged parenting role, they may face health problems, financial hardship, the generation gap, legal complications and more. Clem summed it up for many grandparents raising grandchildren. “We chose to give two girls a better life and give up our golden years, and we decided that was what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. Have we ever regretted it? ‘No.'”
Understanding Trauma: A Guide for Youth
Youth M.O.V.E. National, a youth-led organization promoting awareness around youth issues, developed a guide to help youth understand trauma, how stressful events can affect youth’s health and well-being, and how youth can work toward processing trauma and asking for help. The guide is presented in a colorful booklet format, and readers are ushered through the content by two characters, Jessie and Hayden—both representing youth advocates. As the characters share their experiences and understanding surrounding trauma, the guide offers information on what trauma is, adverse childhood experiences, the impact of trauma, symptoms and triggers, resiliency, and things youth should keep in mind when looking to start a conversation about their trauma experience.
Children’s Action Network – Fundamentally, this article is about an incredibly sweet boy named Daniel, who is caught in a system not of his own making. As always, when meeting some of the impossible number of children in foster care, I think about the benefits they, and society as a whole would reap, if each of these young people were living in secure, loving homes. The goal here, is just that…finding a permanent family for Daniel. This is an ongoing series profiling some of the 100,000 children living in foster care who are eligible for adoption. The videosare produced by the Children’s Action Network.
Help Your Team Manage Stress, Anxiety, and Burnout
It can be tough enough to manage your own stress. But how can you, as a manager, help the members of your team handle their feelings of stress, burnout, or disengagement?… Although it’s unlikely that the pace or intensity of work will change much anytime soon, there’s a growing body of research that suggests certain types of development activities can effectively build the capacity for resilience…The bottom line for managers is that personal development makes each person, and the entire team, better, enabling higher performance and engagement over time. Doing well at work and encouraging people to feel well isn’t just possible — it’s the foundation of a high-performance team.
Suffering and deliverance – By Esther Mulder
I’ve always had a sense of surrealness about my existence. I remember having these existential moments as a 7-year-old, when the questions of “Who am I? Why am I here?” overwhelmed me. My place in the world—the meaning of my existence—was an open question for me. The question of belonging is especially poignant for foster kids…The answer has come slowly and unexpectedly. Aristotle extolled the primacy of experience over reason. My experience has taught me that nothing in this world will satisfy this longing within me…The most beautiful things in this life point me towards something else. The greatest truth I have encountered is summed up in the instruction to “love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” All good in life seems to flow from here.