Greetings Permanency Champions,
Permanency Tip of the Week: Permanency and Trauma Informed Leadership –
We are all leaders in one form or another. Serving at-risk youth and families within child welfare and juvenile justice systems of care requires a delicate blending of leadership that is focused on being focused on permanency and being trauma informed. We often focus our attention and training on securing permanency and providing trauma informed care for our clients; however, without leadership that models these two principles, we run the risk of our outcomes, our workforce and ourselves breaking down. Take a step back and consider how can we create permanency for ourselves and our staff as well as how can we create a trauma informed workplace and home.
Permanency Success Story of the Week: Video – It’s Worth It: Raychelle
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is driven by a single goal: finding a loving family for every child waiting in foster care to get adopted. We are North America’s only national nonprofit charity dedicated solely to finding permanent homes for the more than 130,000 children in foster care.
Permanency Related Articles:
Dr. Ross Greene, Educating Kids Who Have Been Traumatized
ACEs Connection – Notes & Quotes from Dr. Ross Greene Educating the Traumatized Child Education Summit by the Attachment & Trauma Network. For a very long time, we’ve thought that children’s misbehavior was the result of poor motivation. With what the research (over 40-50 years) shows is that ”kids with chronic behavior problems are lacking skills not motivation and need interventions that are not oriented towards improving motivation (time outs, stickers, detentions, paddling). These don’t help, he said, because kids need help solving the problems causing their challenging behavior. He said behavior problems are the result of a kid facing expectations that outstrip abilities…
A kid with a trauma history needs “their voices to be heard more than any of the rest of us do,” he said, but “the reality is we all want our voices heard and we all want our concerns addressed.” For more on Dr. Ross Greene’s organization and approach, see Lives in the Balance.
Trafficking in Persons Report 2017
US Department of State – “Human trafficking is one of the most tragic human rights issues of our time. It splinters families, distorts global markets, undermines the rule of law, and spurs other transnational criminal activity. It threatens public safety and national security. “But worst of all, the crime robs human beings of their freedom and their dignity. That’s why we must pursue an end to the scourge of human trafficking. “Today we take another key step towards that goal. The 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report highlights the successes achieved and the remaining challenges before us on this important global issue.” – Rex W. Tillerson, Secretary of State
Foster Care System Flooded with Children Amid Opioid Epidemic: 5 Things to Know
Becker’s Hospital Review – The opioid epidemic has contributed to a dramatic increase in the number of children in foster care over last two years, according to The Washington Post. Here are five things to know: 1. Many of the children who end up in foster care are born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. 2. In 2012, the number of U.S. children in foster care hit a modern low of 397,000. By 2015, that number increased to 428,000. While there is no hard data available at the national level, foster care experts cited by the Post say this figure continued to surge over the last two years as the opioid epidemic intensified. 3. In Maine, there were more than 1,800 children in foster care in 2016, which marks a 45 percent increase since 2011. 4. The foster care population in Ohio has increased nearly 10 percent in recent years, with more than 60 percent of children placed in the system due to parental drug abuse. 5. “It’s pretty much every state — except maybe four or five — that have seen an increase in the number of children in foster care,” John Sciamanna, vice president of public policy at the Child Welfare League of America, told the Post. “What you are seeing now is just a straining of the system.”
Relational Interventions for Maltreated Children
Child Development – Child maltreatment may be best characterized as a pathogenic relational experience which primarily occurs in the mother–child relationship. As such, enhancing the mother–child relationship is the key process that should be targeted in intervention approaches for child maltreatment. Two salient and modifiable components of the mother–child relationship are highlighted: maternal sensitivity and attachment organization. It is argued, from a developmental psychopathology perspective, why focusing on these issues hold the most promise for interrupting negative developmental cascades and promoting resilience among maltreated children. Utilization of a tiered approach to delivering increasingly intensive relational interventions is recommended as are future directions for translational research and dissemination.
The New Normal – Life Once the Adoption Excitement Fades
Creating A Family – Adoption is full of hope and promise, but the reality is often hard, sometimes very hard, especially at first, and especially if you are adopting older kids or more than one at a time. The initial hoopla and excitement shared by all your family and friends dies down mighty fast. Everyone else gets back to their own lives, but you can’t get back to your old life because everything has changed. Your old life is gone.
Post adoption behaviors can overwhelm even the most prepared parents. Many adoptive parents feel so alone because they are afraid that no one will understand because after all, they asked for this right?!? Well, I’m here to tell you that it is one thing to prepare, but a whole other thing to live it. Fortunately, most families find their footing, settle in, and begin to thrive in the new normal. It helps to remember this when you are in the thick of it…
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Take care and keep up the Permanency work – Our children, youth, young adults, families and communities are depending on it!