Permanency Tip of the Week: Permanency and Loss and the Holidays
This week begins a series of 4 Tips related to how Permanency and Loss, Attachment, Trauma may be experienced and can be addressed by all of us in service of our Children, Youth and Young Adults during the Holiday season.
Week 1 – Permanency and Loss and the Holidays – Questions to consider
How do we experience Permanency during the Holiday season? How do we experience our past losses during the Holiday season? How might these experiences be similar or different from the Children, Youth and Young Adults that we serve in our homes or at work? How might our Children, Youth and Young Adults respond to the presence of examples of permanency in our home and life (ex. Family reunions, family dinners, cards / gifts from family members and friends)? How can we be more sensitive to the challenges that our Children, Youth and Young Adults experience during the Holidays as it relates to Permanency and Loss? Let’s consider seeking out creative ways that we can begin the process of creating both a little more Permanency and Healing from the losses each day in the lives of the Children, Youth and Young Adults in our home.
Permanency Story of the Week: Instant Mom
After 10 years of pursuing parenthood, Nia Vardalos and her husband had just 14 hours notice before they brought home a preschooler via U.S. foster care. Adoptive Families is pleased to share this excerpt from Instant Mom, her hilarious, poignant new memoir of her adoption journey.
Current Permanency related articles:
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption – Flip the script
Our friends Bryan and Angela Tucker are adoption advocates with whom we connected last year during the release of their film Closure. Closure encompasses Angela’s story of getting adopted from foster care and her journey of reconnecting with her birth family. As she recognizes National Adoption Month, Angela is participating in #flipthescript, a campaign supported by The Lost Daughters, a coalition of adult adoptees wanting to speak and be heard. Often, the National Adoption Month conversation solely focuses on celebrating with youth who are united with their forever families, and sharing the sentiment of new parents. Flip the script urges us to also look to the input of adult adoptees; to recognize their journey, celebrate their experiences, and value their voice.
Casey Family Programs – A Declaration of Hope
Creating a nation where all its children are free from physical and emotional harm will require solutions which reach children within their families and those families within their communities. The challenges that families face are complex and they require complex responses.
Four of the core principles and beliefs underlying 2020: Building Communities of Hope are:
- Local leaders must lead our efforts to work with and empower families and communities to make the decisions to improve their life outcomes.
- We must improve our utilization of data to drive our decision-making and improve the capacity of communities to support their most vulnerable members.
- We must change our federal, state and local funding structures to support more effective investments in sustainable change, improvement and hope.
- The philanthropic and business communities must rethink their approaches to giving so that they are more aligned with supporting and leveraging the enormous annual investments made by federal, state and local governments to improve life outcomes for our most vulnerable citizens.
Center for Youth Wellness – San Francisco, CA
The Center for Youth Wellness is part of a national effort to revolutionize pediatric medicine and transform the way society responds to kids exposed to significant adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress. Led by founder and CEO Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, we are a health organization within a pediatric home that serves children and families in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco. We were created to respond to an urgent public health issue: early adversity harms the developing brains and bodies of children.
We screen every young person we see for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) that we know can lead to toxic stress and lifelong problems with health, wellness and learning. We heal children’s brains and bodies by piloting treatments for toxic stress and sharing our findings nationally. We prevent toxic stress by raising awareness among those who can make a difference: from parents and pediatricians to policy makers.
ChildHelp Launches New Website Highlighting National Epidemic of Child Abuse
Childhelp®, the nation’s oldest and largest non-governmental nonprofit advocating for abused and neglected children, has launched a new website at that highlights and focuses on the Five Too Many campaign aimed at reducing the incidences of child abuse through prevention education.
My Kids Aren’t ‘Lucky’ Because I Adopted Them — I Am
Every time someone tells me how lucky my children are for having been adopted into my family, I want to gag. Instead, I politely tell them I’m the lucky one
Viewpoint: We must focus on runaway prevention
This month, as we recognize National Runaway Prevention Month, it is important that we reach the core of this issue. Instead of asking youth, “What is wrong with you?” we should ask them, “What happened?” It is all about prevention, a call to action. In order to prevent youth from running away, we need to understand why they considered it in the first place. Child Welfare Information Gateway Resource: Youth Who Run Away From Out-of-Home Care.