Permanency Tip of the Week:
We are all familiar with the term “colicky baby” to describe a baby who is frequently highly aroused and can be difficult to soothe in spite of a range of efforts by the caregivers. This condition can lead to significant stress and poor attachment throughout the family system. When services are provided, they are almost universally focused on the caregivers in conjunction with the baby and not solely on the baby themselves. For our children and youth in foster care, often their social, emotional and behavioral functioning can mimic that of a colicky baby. Instead of focusing most of our services on the individual child, providers should consider actively engaging the caregivers in conjunction with the child / youth to help decrease the level of stress and improve the attachment throughout the family system.
Permanency Story of the Week:
Seneca Center – Family Finding – Lawrence Murray began working with an older teenager who was significantly lacking in Permanency. Through his search efforts, he was able to locate a significant group of extended family members on the East Coast. During the engagement, the family was able to celebrate the youth’s birthday with a wide range of homemade cultural foods (which she had missed out on since she was a toddler). The Youth did not have any contact with these extended family members since the Youth was a toddler because the family was told that she was going to be adopted by the child’s foster parents here in Orange County – which unfortunately never ended up happening. The outcome of the engagement was a newly found and very strong commitment by the extended family members to be an ongoing presence in the Youth’s life and is open to having the Youth come and live with them. Great work Lawrence!
Current Permanency related articles:
Langevin Introduces Permanent Families for All Children Act
Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) introduced today the Permanent Families for All Children Act, legislation that would redirect federal resources towards helping foster youth find their “forever family.”
“Finding a permanent home for children living in foster care is a top priority for child welfare agencies, but budget constraints and increased caseloads often interfere with that process,” said Langevin, who serves on the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth. “Too many children live in limbo in foster care, and we need to support a system that prioritizes permanent home placements.”
A new study linking California birth and child protective services (CPS) records provides insights into births to teens involved with the child welfare system. The data show that one in four teens in foster care in Los Angeles County give birth before age 20 and as many as 40 percent of these young mothers have a second child during their teen years. The study was authored by University of Southern California Professor Emily Putnam-Hornstein, along with other researchers at USC and the University of California, Berkeley. Funding was provided by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Stalking and Other Dangers Facing Foster Parents
Written By: Dr John DeGarmo – The act of birth parents or biological family members stalking, or trailing, foster parents is not a new one. If foster parents post all of their actions, movements, weekend plans, and vacation destinations through social network sites, birth parents may well have easy and ready access to this information. These birth parents and biological family members are able to determine where the foster parents will be next, along with the foster child, and arrive at the same location. Biological parents are also able to post threatening and harmful messages on a foster parent’s page. Other birth family members have been known to create false profiles on social media sites, in order to gain access to a foster parent’s site. For this reason it’s important to keep a close eye on who you and your child are friends with on Facebook and other social networking sites.
YouthSpeak: Maintaining Sibling Connections
California College Pathways asked California Scholars: “Is or was it difficult to maintain sibling and/or family connections while pursuing higher education?”
“Based on my personal experience, it is really difficult to maintain sibling connections while in college. As a college student, I have so many responsibilities such as going to class four times a week (depending on class schedule), work on homework, school projects, any part time job, and so on. It’s not that I am making excuses for not being connected with my siblings, but as a college student it is unbelievable how the time passed really fast.” — Joel Urzua, California State University, Pomona
Five Ideas from the young leaders of FosterClub about how you can help college age foster youth develop healthy relationships with siblings and other biological family – 1) Be encouraging when foster youth want to connect with family. 2) Recognize when help is needed. 3) Let the youth make the decision to communicate. 4) Be positive. 5) Offer support.
Mental Health Needs Among Children in Kinship Care
Chapin Hall recently published the findings from an evaluation of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) that examined the degree to which the mental health needs were being met for children in kinship care. The study also looked at the relationship between the level of caseworker concern about caregivers and whether or not children were receiving services following comprehensive assessments.
Children in the study were evaluated using the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) instrument, which, in part, assesses need for mental health services. Researchers found that 28.4 percent of the children in the study were in need of such services; however, within 6 months of being placed in kinship care, only 14.2 percent of these children had a Medicaid claim indicating receipt of the services.
The study concludes by noting that caseworker concerns about caregivers should not prevent placement with that individual, but front-end assessments and interventions should be administered in order to increase the likelihood that concrete supports will be provided to the family.
A longitudinal study of Neighbor To Family (NTF), a foster care program that uses a trauma-sensitive, child- and family-centric approach that prepares sibling groups for permanency and the future through the use of professional caregivers, found that 54 percent of the children in the NTF group were reunified with their parents, compared to 18 percent of the control group.
| Sharing the Perspective of Prospective Adoptive Parents with Disabilities |
Last week, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute was honored to co-host a policy briefing with the Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus, National Council on Disability, Child Welfare League of America, National Association of Social Workers, and the American Psychological Association.
The briefing focused on adults with disabilities as a recruitment resource for children in need of families, and highlighted Chapter 10 – The Adoption Law System of the recent report by the National Council on Disability (NCD) titled “Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children”. The report details how prospective parents with disabilities are often denied the opportunity to open their hearts and homes to children who desperately need them.