Permanency Tip of the Week: Preparing for and Responding to Setbacks
Throughout all of life’s journeys, we experience successes and setbacks. The journey towards Permanency for our Youth is no different, except that their belief that there will be people around them to unconditionally support them through the setbacks is more likely to be somewhere between limited and non-existent. That is why our efforts need to focus on predicting, preparing and supportively responding to these NORMAL and EXPECTED challenges. With this mindset and plan of action, we can much more effectively support our Youth and the families leading to stronger and sustained PERMANENCY!
Permanency Story of the Week: Anthony and James’s Story
By their seventh birthday, identical twins Anthony and James had already lived in a half dozen different foster homes throughout the Bay Area. After being removed from their biological parents as toddlers due to prolonged periods of neglect where they were left alone with no one to meet their needs, the brothers experienced a series of short-lived foster placements, moving from house to house and school to school without any promise of permanence. The only constant in their young lives was each other. Anthony and James were not just twin brothers; they were each other’s best friends …After a year in Seneca’s ITFC program, one of the boys’ paternal aunts was located through Seneca’s family finding initiative and identified as a possible permanent guardian. Anthony and James began meeting with her regularly, and eventually they were able to transition out of foster care and move in with their aunt, who became their legal guardian. Now happy, healthy, and thriving nine year olds, the twins remain in touch with their former Seneca foster mother and her son, thinking of them fondly as extended family members who helped them through the most difficult time of their lives.
Current Permanency Related Articles:
Expert Denise Goodman Explains How You Can Support Foster Families — Give the Gift of Family
Through the support of loving families, children grow into healthy adults. But each year thousands of children are separated from their families due to conflict, or face abuse by caregivers who were meant to protect them. These situations create upheaval in their lives forcing them to flee from their homes. They embark on dangerous journeys seeking a safe place they can call home.
Is Your Organization Secondary Traumatic Stress Informed?
This article is part of a series of guest articles on the topic of secondary traumatic stress (STS). Each article in the series focuses on STS at a different level of child welfare—the worker/peer level, manager/supervisor level, and organizational level. Transforming a child welfare organization into a trauma-responsive agency requires attention to how indirect trauma impacts workers and explication of the role and responsibility of the agency to protect its workforce… The Secondary Traumatic Stress Informed-Organizational Assessment (STSI-OA) was designed for this purpose and is an example of a rapid assessment tool that can facilitate this developmental process and support trauma-informed care transformation in public child welfare.
6 Reasons I’m Acting Out (An Adopted Child’s Perspective)
Identifying the reasons behind your child’s misbehavior may help you get to the root of the problem and create lasting improvements. Every adoptee has a story. Their stories are their own. Every individual is unique, so I don’t mean to generalize and infer that all adoptees feel and behave the same. My goal is that as adoptive parents, we strive to understand what our children are going through and why they may be acting out at times.
Improving Outcomes for Children Affected by Parental Substance Use
Children in homes where one or both parents have a substance use disorder are at risk for experiencing abuse, neglect, and related physical and emotional issues. Parental substance use also substantially increases the odds for adolescent drug use. An article in Substance Abuse and Rehabilitation focuses on a study that performed a comparative literature review of controlled trials that examined various interventions targeting parents with substance use issues and/or children with at least one parent with a substance use disorder. The review used specific eligibility criteria to identify interventions that showed promise in improving the behavioral and mental health outcomes of affected children.
Investing in Hope: Signature Report 2016
Casey Family Programs’ 2016 signature report marks our foundation’s 50th anniversary and reflects on the continuing urgent need for a collective effort to safely reduce the need for foster care and build Communities of Hope for every child in America. This new report explores the promising approaches being developed today to keep children safe, make families strong and help communities become more supportive. This report also includes a look at a model that uses real-time data to protect the most at-risk children. This report is grounded in the belief that all of us — public, nonprofit, business, philanthropic and community sectors — can and must work together to create supportive communities that help families thrive.
CW360°: A Comprehensive Look at Child Welfare Reform
The spring 2016 issue of CW360° takes on the broad theme of child welfare reform, ranging from articles on the evolution of policy, practice, funding, and research methods to a variety of personal perspectives from long-time practitioners. The issue highlights innovative practices in the field and a discussion guide to encourage conversation among child welfare agency workers and administrators. CW360° is published by the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota.