Permanency Tip of the Week: Finding Someone to Share their Journey to Healing
Across many trauma focused treatment modalities, one of the key tenets is the importance of treating the entire system, not just the victim / survivor. For our Youth in out of home care, they are at a distinct disadvantage in this area due to their absence of a Permanent Connection. Who will benefit from the hearing their Trauma Narrative? Who will they be able to educate about how best to care for them? If we truly want our Youth to be able to heal from their trauma and access the full potential of their strength and resiliency, let us start with securing them the most powerful tool – Permanency.
Permanency Success Story of the Week: An Adoption Success Story – The Marris Family
More than 110,000 children are waiting to be adopted from foster care in the United States. Unfortunately, more than 20,000 of them will grow up and leave the foster care system without being adopted, putting them at risk for homelessness and incarceration. But a new national survey is offering new hope. The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption commissioned the survey, which found that, among those looking to adopt for the first time, nearly 80 percent say they would consider adopting children in foster care. That number represents an impressive jump from just five years ago and a continued shift in the attitudes about foster care adoption.
Permanency Related Articles:
CBS Announces Singer-Songwriter Josh Groban will Headline the 19th Annual “A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS”
CBS – Children’s Action Network – Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption – A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS features uplifting stories of adoption from foster care and raises awareness of this important social issue. The inspirational stories of these American families are enhanced with performances by some of today’s most popular artists including: Singer, songwriter and actor Josh Groban, Multiple Grammy Award winner Kelly Clarkson, Multiple Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves and Multi-Platinum-selling country vocalist Kane Brown.
Children Waiting – Currently, there are more than 420,000 children in foster care in the United States. The inspirational “Children Waiting” segment gives voice to these forgotten children by creating an intimate portrait of their hopes, their dreams and their wish for a “forever family.”
The special is presented in association with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and the Children’s Action Network. #Home4Holidays, #DTFA, #ChildrensAction
Video – Remembering Trauma – From the makers of the ReMoved film series: We have been so excited to share this project with you, and we think you’re going to love it as much as we do! We teamed up with Northwestern University to create a film on the effects of trauma in children. What experts have been finding is that trauma presents itself differently in different children (and adults!), and that oftentimes behavioral presentations resulting from complex trauma look very similar to clinical mental health diagnoses. The university hopes this film will inform service providers working with children (teachers, counselors, psychologists, parents, etc.) to consider the impact of complex trauma in terms of behavioral presentation. They say it much more eloquently, so we hope you’ll watch it and enjoy. Please share with anyone and everyone you think could also benefit from this perspective! Full length version.
It Takes a Village – The Fine Art of Keeping a Child and Family Held – Signs of Safety – Bridgette, Jessica and the father will present what it looks like when ‘it takes a village to raise up a family’. The presentation will detail how long-term relationships were built through the Circle process within the community. At the same time, it will show how Child Protection gracefully held hard lines around safety, around needing a network for the children, around practicing the safety plan in order to break the cycle of secret keeping, and around unhealthy behaviors. The result was a reputation change and pride for the family that has rippled out into the community and to other families involved in child protection.
Six Things I’ve Learned Since Coming Out of the Adoption Fog – How to be Adopted – Wow it’s been a tough year. Coming out of the fog started slowly in my early thirties, then it accelerated massively when I had children. If you don’t know what the fog is, it’s a term used to describe how you feel about being adopted.
Here are six things I’ve learned since coming out of the fog: 1) I’ve been lying all my life; 2) You can’t force anyone out of the fog; 3) I hold adoption trauma in my body; 4) Being adopted has made everything harder; 5) Being adopted doesn’t get better with age; 6) The adoptee community is awesome!
Oh how I wish I’d found them sooner. But better late than never. The online adoptee community is fantastic, so supportive of one another and encouraging us in our baby steps to speak out and cope with the daily strains of adoption, search and reunion, etc. Thank you so much to you all…
Crucial Disparities Exist in the Economic Well-Being of Youth Transitioning Out of Foster Care – Annie E. Casey Foundation – Opportunity Passport Participant Survey Results Show Employment Helps Many Thrive. A new report completed for the Annie E. Casey Foundation examines the economic well-being of youth transitioning out of foster care, with assistance from the Jim Casey Initiative’s Opportunity Passport program.
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Take care and keep up the Permanency work – Our children, youth, young adults, families and communities are depending on it!
Sincerely,
Dr. Greg Manning