Permanency Tip of the Week: Dealing with a Bad Goodbye
When a youth secures Permanency that requires them to leave one home to transition into the permanent family home, we need to be aware that sometimes the youth might have to deal with a “Bad Goodbye.” The ideal scenario would be that the people in the two homes would communicate with each other and help coordinate / smooth out the transition; however, sometimes the families do not get along, the family the youth is leaving does not agree with the move or the youth is leaving the family on “bad terms” due to various behavioral or system-related issues. Focusing on supporting and validating the challenges related to the “Bad Goodbye” for the youth as well as the families is critical to ensuring the greatest chance of success in the new family.
Permanency Story of the Week: Breaking the cycle – A Young Woman Vows not to Repeat her Parents’ Mistakes.
AdoptUSKids – Watching her husband play with their two little girls sometimes brings tears to Melissa Pacheco’s eyes. “My daughters are loved—they are safe. They are growing up with happy memories. I am so grateful that I can give them these things—things I never had,” Melissa said.
Melissa entered foster care at 10 years old, after years of enduring what she describes as “all kinds of abuse” from her drug-addicted parents. For the next four years, she bounced around between family members who she felt did not love her and temporary foster homes. Finally, when she was 14 years old, Melissa was placed with her permanent family. Initially, it was meant to be another short-term stay. The plan was for Melissa to spend the school year with this new foster family and then return to her aunt’s home the following summer. But as summer approached, Melissa became increasingly certain that she did not want to live with her aunt’s family. She wanted more. She wanted a family who loved her…. Melissa says that before she married, she and her husband agreed that they would be foster parents someday, when their children were older. In the meantime, she is eager to share her story as an example to other children growing up in care…
Current Permanency Related Articles:
Foster Care Recruitment: Yesterday’s Solutions No Longer Work
Chronicle of Social Change – Why have foster homes become harder to find and retain? Has child welfare slacked off in its recruitment efforts? Have Americans become more self-centered and less compassionate? Such personal answers are minor factors. The more important cause is that society has changed and we are still trying to use out-of-date remedies. The composition of the average family has undergone radical changes over the past two generations, and our foster care system has not.
White Paper Highlights Best Practices in Employment & Education Support for Transition-Aged Youth
John Burton Foundation – The MANY Center for Research and Innovation recently convened providers from 31 states, representing various sectors of the youth services field, to a roundtable discussion to highlight what’s working in their programs and to share critical challenges. The findings from this conversation have been published as a white paper titled Improving Community Responses: Employment and Education for Transition-Aged Youth. The report makes a series of recommendations for overcoming what are described as the top two challenges that transition aged youth face – employment and education. The report identifies two critical barriers transition-aged youth face when it comes to connecting with employment and education services: fragmented services and fragmented data and outcomes.
NCTSN – Resources for Parents and Caregivers
National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) – Parents want to protect their children from scary, dangerous, or violent events, but it is not always possible for them to protect their children from danger. After one or more traumatic events, many children do not just forget and move on. Those who develop reactions that continue and affect their daily lives—even after the traumatic events have ended— suffer from child traumatic stress. Not all children who experience a traumatic event will develop symptoms of child traumatic stress. Children’s reactions can vary depending on their age, developmental level, trauma history, and other factors.
What makes it likely that my child will develop child traumatic stress after a traumatic event? Risk factors for developing child traumatic stress include: 1) Severity of the Event; 2) Amount of Destruction Seen/Distance from Trauma Event; 3) Caregivers Reactions; 4) Exposure to More than One Traumatic Event in the Past; 5) Children, Family and Community
Recommended Resources: Finding and Supporting Relative Families
Adopt US Kids – The benefits of placing children with relatives are well documented. Kinship care allows children to maintain relationships with parents or siblings, and children living with birth family members experience fewer placement changes and greater stability. Many state, federal, and local programs exist to help find children’s relatives and provide the support the family needs. Below are a few pages that we recommend on the Child Welfare Information Gateway website: 1)Locating and working with kinship caregivers; 2) Assessing kinship caregivers; 3) Supporting kinship families
Children can Benefit When Adoptive, Biological Parents Share Adoption Stories
Science Daily – ‘Open’ adoptions, or adoptions in which adoptive families have ongoing interactions with the birth family are becoming more popular. Now, communication researchers are studying the benefits of open adoptions. Their recent study shows that open adoptions in which communication is encouraged, can benefit the child and their adoptive parents.
2016 National Adoption Month Webinar
Child Welfare Information Gateway – As part of 2016’s National Adoption Month, the Children’s Bureau, in collaboration with Child Welfare Information Gateway and AdoptUSKids, is hosting a free, interactive webinar that will focus on how to begin and continue conversations with older youth about adoption. In line with this year’s theme, We Never Outgrow the Need for Family—Just Ask Us, this webinar will feature a panel, which includes two young adults formerly in foster care, an adoptive parent, and an adoption professional, who will share their perspective and suggestions on how to have more effective conversations with teenagers about permanency.
Join us on October 4, 2016 from 1:00–2:00 p.m. (ET) and learn about ways to promote and support permanency for older youth in foster care