Permanency Tip of the Week: Foster Care and Relationships
When working with a current / former Foster Youth, the importance of having open and honest conversations about seeking, maintaining and ending intimate relationships is critical. Aspects of the foster care experience, especially when paired with an absence of Permanency, can have significant impacts on the relationship experience. Issues to address include: What qualities are important in a person, how / when / what to share about your foster care history and how their family experiences might impact their relationship experience. In the end, it is important that we be open, honest and supportive of our Youth in their relationship journeys.
Permanency Story of the Week: Married Orphan
Lydia Joyner – Powerful Story about what can happen when Permanency is missing:
I wouldn’t go back and redo any of my life, but if I had a caring family member watching over me in my formative years I wouldn’t have had to struggle as hard as a child or as an adult, always trying to guide myself into the right direction. When you don’t have good consistent “parents” all of the lessons are much harder and more confusing to go through.
Current Permanency related articles:
How Childhood Neglect Harms the Brain
Experts have long known that neglect and abuse in early life increase the risk of psychological problems, such as depression and anxiety, but now neuroscientists are explaining why. They’re showing how early maltreatment wreaks havoc on the developing brain.
Hawaii’s new foster care program
Ronan Farrow talks to Patricia McManaman, Director of Hawaii’s Department of Human Services, and Noy Worachit, a foster child herself and program advocate, about what some supporters say is a game-changer for the foster care system.
Six things I’ve learned about adoption
The call woke me up late one December evening in 2012. I was out of state at a training seminar for work and was already fast asleep in my hotel room. Seeing that the caller was my sister, I confess that my first, half-asleep reaction not quite joyous as, between the two of us, she is definitely the night person. But when I finally became coherent enough to understand what she was saying and her words – “You’re an aunt.” – sank in, I knew my life had just been irreversibly changed.
I now think of it as among the best days of my life. What makes it different from, perhaps, the “typical” experience is that my precious niece came to our family through adoption. Now, 18 months later, I can’t get enough of her smiles, her kisses, and her words that are coming at a faster pace by the day. Perceptions – and misperceptions – of adoption are undoubtedly too many to count, from the idea that people adopt only (and always) because it’s their only option to have children (wrong) to the idea that children are placed for adoption only because they are unwanted (wrong again).
As I’ve watched my niece grow these past months, and now as I watch my sister and brother-in-law pursue adopting four siblings, I’ve had my own perceptions challenged, reinforced, obliterated, and tweaked – in varying degrees. While I certainly can’t give ‘advice’ as (or to) an adoptive mother, perhaps a few things I’ve learned can help others whose lives have been changed, blessed, and enriched in some way through adoption – or those who aren’t quite sure how to respond to a friend or family member who has chosen to adopt.
NCTSN’s New Topic Area: Attachment Interventions (Child & Adolescent)
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) has launched a new topic area, Attachment Interventions (Child & Adolescent), on their website. Five programs are highlighted in this new topic area, including: Corrective Attachment Therapy; Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP); Family Bonding Camp; Institute for Attachment and Child Development- Family Treatment Program; and Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) Therapeutic Camp.
Discipline, Forgetfulness, Child Abuse: Where is the Line?
An ever-growing fiercely independent America has led us to believe that we should be able to raise children in whatever manner we choose unless there is a terrible tragedy. The news, almost daily, has stories of harm done to children. Whilst it is true than some are stories of freak accidents, some of children being children and injuring themselves in the process, some the result of forgetfulness or just plain bad luck on the part of the parents, but then there are other stories where there is a much more sinister force at work. Child abuse is one of the most horrifying and shameful aspects of our society.
Marriage and Foster Care-Foster Care Blog for June
Dr. John DeGarmo – Sadly, many marriages suffer during the foster process. When you are putting much of your energies and time into your foster child, you may be so drained and exhausted that you soon neglect your spouse. Here is the July blog on Marriage and Foster Parenting.