Tagged With "Group home"
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Resource List - Research
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Psychosocial Well-Being of Women Who Were in Foster Care as Children Research has shown that many children in foster care later have psychosocial problems as adults; this is often attributed to cumulative adversities and a lack of supportive caregivers. The risk factors associated with foster care, such as maternal separation and multiple placements, often counteract many protective factors that can ameliorate the effects of childhood adversities. This study...
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Resources for Parents
Grand Resources: A Grandparent’s and Other Relative’s Guide to Raising Children with Disabilities Link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/pushbullet-uploads/ujzNDwQrsR2-e9bzzqRW17gTKJfeJd1zxrArTZrlgITZ/2013-grandfamilies-GrandResourcesFULLGUIDE.pdf...
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Resources for Professionals
Adoption Information & Resources Resources on all aspects of domestic and intercountry adoption, with a focus onadoption from the U.S. foster care system. Includes information for adoption professionals, adopted adults, expectant parents considering adoption, birth parents and relatives, and prospective and adoptive parents on a broad range ofadoption topics. Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2013). Link: https://www.childwelfare.gov/t...?hasBeenRedirected=1 ...
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Resources for Supporting Children's Emotional Well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic [childtrends.org]
By Jessica Dym Bartlett, Jessica Griffin, Dana Thomson, Child Trends, March 19, 2020 The following guidance, recommendations, and resources are provided by child trauma experts at Child Trends and the Child Trauma Training Center at the University of Massachusetts. The Center is housed at the University of Massachusetts with Child Trends as the lead evaluating agency, with funding from SAMHSA and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and additional support from HRSA. While the Centers...
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Responding to the Needs of Foster Parents [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
Out-of-home placement is sometimes necessary to meet the developmental needs of infants and young children through safe, stable and nurturing primary caregiving relationships. Foster parents may include caring and committed adults who have been trained to take on the fostering role with or without the possibility of adoption. Some of these parents might also be kinship caregivers (related family members), or fictive kin (individuals who may be close to the family such as friends). Federal...
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Role of Pre-existing Adversity and Child Maltreatment on Mental Health Outcomes for Children Involved in Child Protection: Population-based Data Linkage Study [bmjopen.bmj.com]
By Miriam Jennifer Maclean, Scott Anthony Sims, Melissa O'Donnell, BMJ Journals, July 29, 2019 It is established that children who experience child abuse and neglect are at an increased risk of poorer mental health outcomes. The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child states that chronic stress to which maltreated children may be exposed, in the absence of consistent and supportive relationships with adult caregivers, has negative impacts on children’s developing brain.
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Sand Diego County's Answer to School Stability for Students in Foster Care [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
It seems obvious that keeping kids in their home school with their peer group – a concept known as “school stability”– is a key ingredient in the recipe for academic success for students in foster care. Research shows that on average, children lose four to six months of learning each time they change schools. This is especially acute for high school students, who run into issues obtaining the credits they need to graduate or may have to re-take classes due to coursework alignment issues. For...
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Shared Grief: If my daughter could know me it would help her understand her own suffering (www.risemangazine.org)
Rise Magazine is one of the few places I know of that gives voice to the experiences of parents who have children involved with child welfare. About Rise: Every year almost 300,000 children enter foster care nationwide. Media coverage of foster care focuses on tragic child deaths, the need for foster and adoptive parents, and the experiences of young people who age out of foster care at 18 or 21. Less understood is that more than half of children in foster care return home to their parents...
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Sharing Data to Benefit Kids: A Guide for Child Welfare and Education Systems [aecf.org]
Re-sharing this blog post from the Annie E. Casey Foundation where they shared a guide for data sharing linkages between child welfare and education - the Roadmap for Foster Care and K-12 Data Linkages . ...Successful data linkages mean agencies are able to draw on all the publicly collected information to create a more complete picture of individual students in foster care, helping inform interventions that are more effective. “Data sharing between foster care and educational agencies is...
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Shortage of foster families for teens, older kids
There are enough foster parents in Shasta County for the county’s children, and more. So why are some children and youths housed in other care programs waiting for a foster family? The answer is in the age group most foster parents want to foster. “Shasta County is a receiving county because we have more foster youth coming… from other counties for placement than we send out…,” said Dianna Wagner, branch director of children’s services at Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency...
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So you know about ACEs...Turn your AHA! into Action!
Spring is the time for rebirth and new beginnings! As we look around, we can observe nature around us awakening after a long winter sleep. A true sign of resilience. At Origins , we have been lucky enough to create a space for growth and learning for both groups and individuals who work towards creating environments of healing and resilience over the winter months. After completing the first round of The Resilience Champion Certificate of 2018, we have 23 graduates putting their action plans...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Specialized Foster Homes Needed for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children in King County, Washington
HOW YOU CAN HELP: Become a foster parent! King County is starting a new and innovative program—the Puget Sound CSEC Foster Care Pilot Program—to serve these youth! CAREGIVERS WILL RECEIVE THE FOLLOWING TRAINING AND SUPPORT: Extensive training and support—both upfront and ongoing Access to a CSEC social work expert for consultation services In home support services and respite care Ongoing community building/recreational activities for families and children INTERESTED IN LEARNING...
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Supporting Brain Development in Traumatized Children and Youth
This Administration on Children and Families (ACF) bulletin summarizes the effects of early trauma on brain development and looks at steps child welfare professionals can take to screen for developmental delays and identify the trauma-affected children and youth in their care. It also looks at ways to access cross-sector, therapeutic, and evidence-based treatment to encourage healthy recovery for trauma-affected children and youth. HERE TO ACCESS MATERIALS. Document attached.
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Supporting Evidence Building in Child Welfare Project Evaluation Opportunity Announcement
The Supporting Evidence Building in Child Welfare Project , a five-year project of the Urban Institute, to support the Administration for Children and Families, is increasing the number of evidence-supported interventions for the child welfare population by conducting rigorous evaluations and supporting the field in moving toward rigorous evaluation. The project focuses on evaluating interventions that already have some evidence of effectiveness and are currently operating or those that will...
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Supporting Evidence Building in Child Welfare Project Evaluation Opportunity Announcement
The Supporting Evidence Building in Child Welfare Project , a five-year project of the Urban Institute, to support the Administration for Children and Families, is increasing the number of evidence-supported interventions for the child welfare population by conducting rigorous evaluations and supporting the field in moving toward rigorous evaluation. The project focuses on evaluating interventions that already have some evidence of effectiveness and are currently operating or those that will...
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Supportive Housing Can Help Keep Families Together [howhousingmatters.org]
By Mary K. Cunningham, Mike Pergamit, and Sarah Gillespie, How Housing Matters, June 5, 2019. Many families who come to child welfare agencies after a report of child abuse or neglect are experiencing homelessness or severe housing instability. Nearly 11 million households (PDF) nationwide are paying too much for rent, and about 1.4 million people use homeless shelters and transitional housing over the course of a year. There is no place in the country where there is enough affordable...
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Teen Moms in Foster Care Have Their Children Removed at Alarming Rates. New York City’s Gotten Better at Avoiding That [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
As a teen mom in foster care with a baby of her own, New Yorker RaiLei Girard resolved never to become “known.” To be “known” meant possibly having her own child placed in foster care — to be accused of child neglect or abuse, then becoming “known” to a child welfare system that takes children from teen moms in foster care at an alarmingly high rate. Girard, who entered foster care at age 3, avoided that outcome. But another challenge emerged raising her son in her foster parents’ home. [For...
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Telling a more complete story about child welfare
A new study from Berkeley Media Studies Group found that coverage of the child welfare system omits important context and connections to other issues. Here are four steps practitioners can take to improve the news.
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Texas has options for improving its foster care system - and Texas must [Star-Telegram.com]
I’ve always been intrigued by community-based or county run vs. state administered/state run child welfare systems; does one model perform better than the other? I remember hearing about Florida transitioning to a community-based child welfare system following several instances in which children in the system were hurt by the system. This article references some great outcomes for Florida, and describes how Texas is in the midst of their own reform – Foster Care Redesign , a pilot operating...
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The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Where to begin... My heart is full of hope and joy as I watch the trauma-informed schools movement swell across our nation and planet. The science of ACEs is mind-bending to say the least and we are now able to open up a much deeper dialogue about human behavior and health. Ultimately this work is about healing… All. Of. Us. A new consciousness is taking root around ending the “us vs them” construct. The idea is growing that we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our...
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The hazards of out-of-home care for children experiencing adverse home environments [thelancet.com]
There is mounting evidence that children who experience early adversity are at heightened risk for developing physical and psychological sequelae later in childhood; moreover, such sequelae can be biologically embedded, impacting multiple biological systems (including the epigenome), thereby elevating the risk that these effects will persist into adulthood. Two common forms of adversity that affect tens of millions of children each year are maltreatment and removal from parental care and...
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The Impact of Foster Care on Students’ Education
Harold Sloke was 12-years-old when he entered South Carolina’s foster care system. Not long after that, he ended up repeating ninth grade three times. “A lot of my caseworkers believed I would never graduate, so they...
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The Trauma-Sensitive Parenting Summit & Commentary
"Having a history of trauma or loss does not by itself predispose you to have a child with disorganization. It is the lack of resolution that is the essential risk factor. It is never too late to move toward making sense of your experiences and healing your past. Not only you but also your child will benefit." That's a quote from the book Parenting from the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, which was published fifteen freaking years ago. It's...
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The Ubering of Foster Care has Begun [ChronicleofSocialChange.org]
https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/ubering-foster-care/21670 Earlier this month , I wrote a story about how Los Angeles County was considering using ridesharing services like Uber to improve “family visitation.” The problem in L.A. and across the country is that it is hard to transport children and their parents to court-ordered visits. My back-of-the-envelope math suggested that if every L.A. foster child were to be afforded one hour of visits a week – way less than court...
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They Break, You Know
It was something about the phrasing that got to me. Something about the cadence of his words, the staccato of his speech. “Nobody loves me. Not even my mother who gave birth to me.” It is an odd turn of phrase,...
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This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline [nationswell.com]
Almost half of all foster care youth end up in jail within two years of aging out of the system. First Place for Youth has figured out a housing and support strategy to keep these young adults out from behind bars and living on their own. Moments of stability were rare during Pamela Bolnick's childhood. She repeatedly witnessed her father beat her mother, a Venezuelan immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bolnick's mom eventually left her abusive spouse, fleeing to the Bay Area with her...
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‘This is not a child safety crisis. It’s a poverty crisis, a racism crisis.’ – A social worker and former foster youth featured in HBO’s ‘Foster’ shares her vision of societal and system change (www.risemagazine.org)
Excerpts from article by Sarah Harris from Rise Magazine . Q: What led you to work in the foster care system? A: I am a former foster youth and I’ve been a social worker at the L.A. Department of Child and Family Services for 5 years. I entered foster care through probation, and I got into probation through survival. I was breaking the law for clothes and food. In foster care, I bounced around a lot. For the most part I was AWOL. I was in group homes but I stayed with family or friends.
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This New Federal Law Will Change Foster Care As We Know It [pewtrusts.org]
A new federal law, propelled by the belief that children in difficult homes nearly always fare best with their parents, effectively blows up the nation’s troubled foster care system. Few outside child welfare circles paid any mind to the law, which was tucked inside a massive spending bill President Donald Trump signed in February. But it will force states to overhaul their foster care systems by changing the rules for how they can spend their annual $8 billion in federal funds for child...
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Thrive Washington: 3rd Edition of NEAR@Home Toolkit Released
Thrive Washington is pleased to announce that the 3 rd edition of the NEAR@Home toolkit is now available and offers home visitors more guidance on how to safely, respectfully and effectively address Adverse Childhood Experiences with the families they serve. This new edition reflects what was learned when the toolkit was incorporated into a Facilitated Learning Process with 225 home visitors and 54 supervisors in the four states of federal Region X: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. It's...
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Trauma-Informed Uber [chronicalofsocialchange.org]
As Los Angeles County mulls the idea of using ride-sharing services to escort foster youth to visitations with biological parents, some child-welfare experts wonder how such a service would be able to grapple with children with significant experiences of trauma and loss. Children in the county’s foster-care system remain spread out across the vast geographical expanse of Los Angeles County. Trips to court, meetings with social workers or visitations with parents or other family members can...
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Trauma, Opiates, and Child Welfare: How Family Serving Agencies Can Do Better. [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
We all know far too well the devastating effects of the national opioid crisis, and specifically, the ever-present role of opiate addiction in child welfare. Follow here to read a piece by Nico’Lee Rohac, a foster care alumni and Social Worker, published 9/18/17 by The Chronicle of Social Change. By all outward appearances , I grew up in a normal American family. My parents had respectable jobs in construction and nursing, a four-bedroom home, family dog and a playhouse my father built from...
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Treating trauma's steep toll on native youth remains challenge for courts [inforum.com]
Of the many reaches of trauma-informed practice, a trauma-informed court room seems to be one of the most impactful. The court is an instutution which holds tremendous power, through the work of trauma-informed courts, judges are uniquely positioned to use this power to help traumatized youth who appear before them. What this means is a more accurate assessment of what a traumatized youth may need as far as mental health, behavioral, and social-emotional support. When trauma-informed systems...
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Two giant child welfare systems effectively admit the obvious: They confuse poverty with “neglect” (socialjusticesolutions.org)
FLORIDA: CANDOR FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE In Florida, the admission was explicit. WFLA-TV, the same television station that broke this outstanding story about a child taken because of poverty only to die in foster care has followed up. In this story, they found state officials who admit that children are held in foster care solely because the children lack decent housing. As the version of the story on the WFLA-TV website puts it: NEW YORK CITY: A FOOD PANTRY THAT TELLS A STORY In...
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Two New Grant Opportunities for Youth Development and Diversion Services
In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.
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Understanding Trauma to Promote Healing in Child Welfare [co-invest.org]
California Child Welfare Co-Investment Partnership, Summer 2019. For child welfare stakeholders, the concept that children and their families come into our systems bearing the burden of traumatic experiences associated with neglect and abuse is not new. What has evolved over the last couple of decades is the science of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and understanding of the long-term physical and behavioral health consequences and high societal costs. A landmark study , and the many...
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When should a child be taken from his parents? [newyorker.com]
What should you do if child-protective services comes to your house? You will hear a knock on the door, often late at night. You don’t have to open it, but if you don’t the caseworker outside may come back with the police. The caseworker will tell you you’re being investigated for abusing or neglecting your children. She will tell you to wake them up and tell them to take clothes off so she can check their bodies for bruises and marks. She will interview you and your kids separately, so you...
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Who Cares: A National Count of Foster Homes and Families [fostercarecapacity.com]
By The Chronicle of Social Change, September 11, 2019 There are more than 400,000 children and youth living on foster care today. The questions the Who Cares project endeavors to answer are: Who are the people caring for them, and in what types of settings? Most foster youth live with relatives, in the home of foster parents, or in group homes or residential facilities. But as foster care numbers have crept up in the past six years, and there has been a push towards phasing out group homes,...
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Why it makes more sense to care for kids and parents at the same time [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
It’s the flu season, and David, a 4-month-old baby with a chronic lung disease, is with his pediatrician for a flu shot. David’s condition leaves him particularly vulnerable to respiratory illnesses like the flu. During the visit, David’s parents, Clare and Dave, discover that they need to make separate appointments to receive their own flu shots, which only complicates their already overwhelmed daily routine. Now imagine a place where David and his parents can receive a flu shot at the same...
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Why we should do everything possible to avoid foster care and keep kids with their families [DallasNews.com]
When I read about the crisis in Texas foster care system, all I can think about is my beautiful younger sister Nannette. Nannette got out of foster care, but she didn't survive. She became a statistic, a victim of the consequences of what experts call adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Research has shown that ACEs accumulate over time, and the number of these experiences in childhood predicts morbidity and mortality in adulthood. It doesn't say it on her death certificate, but Nannette...
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Why You Should Write a Letter to Yourself Tonight (Bessel van der Kolk, MD)
Why You Should Write A Letter To Yourself Tonight Writing is one of the most effective ways to access an inner world of feelings that is the key to recovering from ...
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Will the new foster care law give grandparents a hand? (ncsl.org)
On Feb. 9, President Donald Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892) to keep the government funded for six more weeks and pave the way for a long-term budget deal that will extend to the end of the fiscal year. Included in the act is the Family First Prevention Services Act, which has the potential to dramatically change child welfare systems across the country. One of the major areas this legislation seeks to change is the way Title IV-E funds can be spent by states. Title...
Ask the Community
How does the general public percieve Foster Children?
A couple weeks ago I was enjoying breakfast in a popular restaurant when I was captured by a conversation a husband and wife were engaged in with their children just across from me. I happened to be researching studies and locating data related to...
Ask the Community
Looking for Writers: New magazine addressing foster care system and family trauma
Hello, Everyone, I am co-editor of a new publication on Medium.com, to be launched in March 2020. Collective Power is the written arm of Home for Good , a collective organization recently launched after 6 years of planning. HFG began when our founders asked themselves, "What would a system that reflects our love for our children look like?" HFG's mission is to transform the trauma too often perpetuated by the various helping systems, among the people they purport to help—whether the...
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2015 Child Health, Education, and Care Summit [Woodland, CA]
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Mental Health and Immigration under Extreme Circumstances
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Trauma Informed Caregiving [Woodland, CA]
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Re: Are Foster Care Children Excessively Medicated?
Hi, Rebecca-- My contact with foster children is primarily throgh in-home behaviroal health services in Southern, NJ. I cannot comment on the use/over/under use of medication. What I can comment on is severely inadequate trauma recognition and trauma-informed treatment and interventions across systems--lack of recognition of trauma symptoms/trauma effects and punitive responses to them; lack of preparation by the child welfare system for foster families for the level of severity of...