Permanency Tip of the Week: Suffering Unexpected Losses During the Permanency Process
What happens when our Youth experience a profound loss while they are on their journey towards finding Permanency? The direction of how this experience can vary from a rapid intensifying and strengthening of the developing Permanency to a refusal to continue in the Permanency process. When we observe the refusal response, we need to validate this as a normal response – especially for someone with a chronic and often unrelenting history of losses. A slowing down of the process and focus on supporting and normalizing the Youth’s reactions can go a long way to helping the Permanency process eventually get restarted and help provide the Youth with a powerful healing experience.
Permanency Story of the Week: Adoption in Alberta: Brock’s Adopted Mom and Birth Mom Share His Life
Brock Mallard grew up knowing he was adopted. Now a soft-spoken 27-year-old, he is worlds different from his bubbly, adoptive mom, Kelley; dark-haired to her blonde, neat and organized to her self-confessed “not at all.” He harbours no ill-will towards his birth mother, who had him when she was 19. Her boyfriend at the time had just left her, Brock says, “and I think it was a good decision for everybody involved.” Brock and his biological mother have had a relatively close relationship ever since they first met when he was eight; his three half-siblings are, as far as he’s concerned, his brother and sisters.
Current Permanency Related Articles:
What Does Trauma-Informed Mean to Foster Youth?
For three decades, I have listened in awe to the brave voices of children, youth and families who have shared, in anguish, their past experiences — experiences that anyone would objectively call “adverse” and ones that can have lasting effects on health and well-being. The seminal ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study opened my eyes to how pervasive their stories were and how these findings might influence the development of effective interventions and treatment, especially for system-involved young people.
Recommendations from young people who have experienced trauma must be considered in tandem with the strength-based, positive youth development frameworks that human service systems are building around trauma-informed approaches. When armed with the right supports and services, young people become leaders in overcoming the challenges they face and build confidence — socially, emotionally and cognitively. The essence of trauma-informed approaches begins with engaging young people with respect, understanding and belief in the fact that in spite of adversity, all our youth can succeed.
Would You Purge Bad Memories From Your Brain if You Could?
Imagine you’re the manager of a café. It stays open late and the neighborhood has gone quiet by the time you lock the doors. You put the evening’s earnings into a bank bag, tuck that into your backpack, and head home. It’s a short walk through a poorly lit park. And there, next to the pond, you realize you’ve been hearing footsteps behind you. Before you can turn around, a man sprints up and stabs you in the stomach. When you fall to the ground, he kicks you, grabs your backpack, and runs off. Fortunately a bystander calls an ambulance which takes you, bleeding and shaken, to the nearest hospital.
The emergency room physician stitches you up and tells you that, aside from the pain and a bit of blood loss, you’re in good shape. Then she sits down and looks you in the eye. She tells you that people who live through a traumatic event like yours often develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The condition can be debilitating, resulting in flashbacks that prompt you to relive the trauma over and over. It can cause irritation, anxiety, angry outbursts and a magnified fear response. But she has a pill you can take right now that will decrease your recall of the night’s events – and thus the fear and other emotions associated with it – and guard against the potential effects of PTSD without completely erasing the memory itself.
Would you like to try it? When Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, asked nearly 1,000 people a similar question, more than 80 per cent said: ‘No.’
Former Foster Child Devotes His Life to Helping Thousands of Other Kids in Foster Care – One Backpack at a Time
When Rob Scheer opened his door in 2009 to meet his first-ever foster children, he did not expect to be reminded of an old, painful memory that would propel him into philanthropic action. But the jostled memory was so powerful that it eventually prompted Rob and his husband, Reece, to found a charity that has now helped more than 20,000 foster children. The Scheers’ charity, Comfort Cases, provides foster children with backpacks filled with comforting supplies to carry with them as they traverse what insiders call “the system.” The hand-packed bags replace the standard-issue foster child suitcase: A plastic trash bag.
Predictors of Homelessness during the Transition from Foster Care to Adulthood
Youth who age out of foster care face a number of challenges during the transition to adulthood. Among the greatest may be achieving housing stability. A number of studies published over the past two decades have found high rates of homelessness among former foster youth who aged out of care. Although this suggests that youth who age out of foster care are at high risk of becoming homeless, not much is known about which youth are most at risk.
Stigma Associated with Youth in the Foster Care System
Chronicle of Social Change – Delinquent. Orphaned. Troubled. Aggressive. Neglected. What do each of these words have in common? They are all words used to stereotype and confine youth in the foster care system.
8 New Pilot State Sites Announced for Launch of National Training Initiative
The National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) aims to improve mental health assessments and services and to assure stability and well-being of children in foster care who are either moving towards or have achieved permanence through adoption or guardianship. Through this initiative, State, Tribe and Territory child welfare professionals and mental health practitioners will have access to standardized web-based, evidence-informed training to understand and better address the mental health needs of children and families experiencing adoption or guardianship. NTI was established in October 2014 after C.A.S.E. was awarded a 5-year, $9 million grant through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families.