Permanency Tip of the Week: Caring for the Caregiver – Secondary Trauma
Providing care for our Youth in Foster Care, whether in a foster family home or group home, can be challenging – mentally, emotionally and physically. Starting on the journey towards Permanency can add an additional layer of challenges for the caregivers in terms of how they can best support the Youth and at the same time take care of themselves. It is critically important that we actively and consistently reach out, support and guide the caregivers to whom we entrust our Youth using the model like the one established through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN).
Permanency Story of the Week: What Makes Family
You Gotta Believe – As we enter National Adoption Awareness Month, I am writing with the knowledge that there are more than 100,000 youth in foster care who still need the unconditional commitment of a lifetime parent. But those national numbers don’t even include the many thousands of young people who have been deemed by the system to be ‘too old’ for adoption. Today, I ask that you remember them, and that we all reconsider our notions of family.
Earlier this year, 12 young people got together with our YGB team and an incredible film crew. Over a weekend, they shared their powerful stories of life in care and they opened their hearts to us about their ideas about family. While many people may have given up on the idea of family for our oldest youth, these kids have not given up hope. As you can see from Ramone’s story, their thoughts on family are profound and powerful. Ramone’s is the first story, with more to come. We must hear the voices of our youth.
Current Permanency related articles:
100 Best Adoption-Friendly Workplaces
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (DTFA) – Good news for thousands of employees across the country – your workplace is one of the best! This week, featured in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, find this year’s 100 Best Adoption-Friendly Workplace list and editorial, then head to the DTFA website to find the best companies by size, industry, and best in Ohio.
Interested in bringing adoption-friendly benefits to your workplace? Order a free kit!
Adoptive parents need to be supported to help their child grieve for the past
United Kingdom – Children in the adoptive system will have suffered separation, loss and trauma. The child’s “journey” through this process is explained first to adopters and then to children, when they reach maturity, through court reports produced by social workers. The creation of a “life story” book with this information in can help the child understand what has happened to them, where they have lived, who has cared for them and the decisions that have happened in their lives.
Why I Love Adoption – Jillian Lauren
I am both an adult adoptee and an adoptive mother to a beautiful firebrand of a 6-year-old boy from Ethiopia. I love adoption. I love the whole messy, rich, textured, complex world it has given me. I do not love it because it is one long Disney happy ending. Rather, I love it for the way its struggles have defined my life and made me strong. I love it for the fascinating, crazy quilt of a family it has stitched together for me.
Creating a Permanence Driven Organization – A Guidebook for Change in Child Welfare
Anu Family Services is pleased to announce, in partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, this new guidebook which assists organizations who are interested in increasing their permanency outcomes. Since 2006, Anu has engaged in a journey towards increasing the number of youth discharged to permanent settings. Anu has demonstrated significant increases in permanence and is ever-closer to reaching our “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” of “being the last placement, prior to permanence, for 90% of the youth we serve.” Anu provides technical assistance and training in this area nationally and internationally, and we hope this guidebook helps you and your organization promote practices that help you to join us on this bold journey, too.
Why we should welcome caregiver participation in the child welfare system
Foster parents and relative caregivers generally spend more time with a foster child than any other participant in the child welfare system. Because they know the child well, caregivers are often very effective advocates for their foster children. Yet too often, the system does not value or recognize caregivers as an important resource for direct information about the current physical health, mental health, educational progress, special needs and overall well-being of the children in their care.
Children Can Thrive: California’s Response to Adverse Childhood Experiences
A three-day summit on Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, strengthens California’s efforts to orient policy and practice around preventing and responding to child trauma. “We know that it makes sense to keep kids in school for $9,000 a year versus individuals in prison for $62,000 a year.” This statement is the kind of thing you’d expect to hear from a leader in education or child welfare, right? What if I told you instead that the person who said this is a leader in the criminal justice system? In fact, no less than the Chief Justice for the California State Supreme Court Tani Cantil-Sakauye made this statement.