Tagged With "Health plans"
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L.A. County to Implement State Plan to Prevent Unintended Pregnancies Among Youth (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
The state plan, “ California’s Plan for the Prevention of Unintended Pregnancies for Youth and Non-Minor Dependents ,” aims to address the fact that by age 21 over 1 in 3 girls in foster care will have given birth, according to a report by the Children’s Data Network. Representatives from all three departments, the child welfare advocacy community and at least one former foster youth will participate in developing the strategy. “What’s important here is to make sure we’re catering to the...
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Left Behind: Trump's Immigration Plans Could Spur Uptick in Foster Care Numbers [socialjusticesolutions.org]
As we begin a new year, a new presidency, and new policies on immigration, it’s vital for child welfare leaders to increase coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to address the impacts of deportation policies on children who remain in the US, often in a foster care placement, following the deportation of their parents. Having experienced a significant lack of coordination between child welfare and immigration systems, including barriers to reunification in my own practice,...
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Lois Henry: Upping the bar for foster children [bakersfield.com]
A new law in California, effective this year, is reducing the number of groups home and congregate care facilities. This law is part of a larger framework called the Continuum of Care Reform (Assembly Bill 403). This editorial by Lois Henry sheds light on the plans of one California community, Bakersfield, to reduce group-care and increase the number of foster homes. Including efforts to level the playing field for relative caregivers and streamline the permanent plan of adoption.Zachary...
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Mental Health, Social Adversity, and Health-Related Outcomes in Sexual Minority Adolescents: A Contemporary National Cohort Study [thelancet.com]
By Background Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have mental health problems, adverse social environments, and negative health outcomes compared with their heterosexual counterparts. There is a paucity of up-to-date population-level estimates of the extent of risk across these domains in the UK. We analysed outcomes across mental health, social environment, and health-related domains in sexual minority adolescents compared with their heterosexual counterparts in a large,...
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New York’s parent defender model lowers reliance on foster care [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
New York City’s brand of wrap-around legal representation may not prevent the removal of children from their families. But they might be getting home much faster, and without any risk to their safety. A much-anticipated study of parent representation released this week found that for parents represented by interdisciplinary law offices (ILO) – which include lawyers, social workers and parent advocates – youth spend about four fewer months in foster care than in cases represented by...
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Office of Children's Mental Health Focuses on Helping Communities Prioritize Children’s Mental Health with New Fact Sheet [children.wi.gov]
From Wisconsin Department of Health Services, May 6, 2020 Ahead of Children's Mental Health Awareness day tomorrow, May 7, Office of Children’s Mental Health Director Linda Hall today announces the publication of a new fact sheet focused on prioritizing children’s mental health in Wisconsin and how our communities can do that. Highlights include: Almost half of high school students in Wisconsin are feeling anxious A child typically experiences symptoms of emotional distress for 11 years...
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Oregon psychiatrist testifies before Senate Finance Committee on the impact of childhood adversity and toxic stress on adult health
Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to...
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Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8 (The National Academies Press 2016)
A study published by The National Academies of Sciences in 2016 resulting in 10 Recommendations to build support for parents... "Over the past several decades, researchers have identified parenting- related knowledge, attitudes, and practices that are associated with improved developmental outcomes for children and around which parenting- related programs, policies, and messaging initiatives can be designed. However, consensus is lacking on the elements of parenting that are most important...
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Partners in Planning — When parents and caseworkers work together, families move in the right direction (www.risemagazine.org)
Link to entire piece here . Excerpt below:
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Partners in Planning – When parents are supported to participate in planning, we can make better decisions [risemagazine.org]
This story is part of Rise's series by frontline staff at foster care agencies about their experiences working with parents. Recently, I facilitated a Family Team Meeting with a mother who was going through tremendous stress. (To protect her privacy, I’ll just call her “Mom.”) Her partner had recently died and she’d been diagnosed with a serious illness. She also suffered from anxiety and depression. Up until the series of crises in her life, she’d worked, had an apartment, cared for her...
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Building Resilience in Foster Children: The Role of the Child's Advocate [repository.law.umich.edu]
Children who enter the foster care system often suffer from the effects of traumatic stress. The sources of their trauma may vary: they may be the victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect-or they may be exposed to violence in their homes or communities. Similarly, many children who enter the child welfare system have experienced the loss of one or more significant adults in their lives, often through death or abandonment. Although the removal of a child from an abusive or...
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California has Begun Screening for Early Childhood Trauma, But Critics Urge Caution [sciencemag.org]
By Emily Underwood, Science, January 29, 2020 On 1 January, California became the first U.S. state to screen for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—early life hardships such as abuse, neglect, and poverty, which can have devastating health consequences in later life. The project is not just a public health initiative, but a vast experiment. State officials aim to cut the health impacts of early life adversity by as much as half within a generation. But critics say the health benefits of...
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Child Welfare and Human Trafficking - Connections Rooted in Trauma
Recently in Washington State, there has been a massive, multi-pronged coordinated effort to address Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) across systems. As this effort made its reach to child welfare, I was reminded of a documentary I watched years ago about two girls who were swept into a life of sexual exploitation, kept from their families and everything familiar. One of the girls was in and out of foster care and group homes, the other had run away from her family home, both...
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Coding Boot Camp Gives California Foster Youth a Path to Solid Tech Careers [ChronicleOfSocialChange.org]
As a teenager , Jose Colmenares spent time sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles as a runaway before ending up in a group home for foster youth. Besides missing many days of school, he missed out on important conversations about how he would plan for the future, including developing a career. At the group home where he lived from age 15 to 18, he remembers listening to many panel discussions about drug abuse, but never about careers. Colmenares had always been fascinated by technology, but...
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CRI is hiring an Associate Director!
Community Resilience Initiative is seeking an innovative and passionate individual to join our organization as an Associate Director (AD). The AD reports to the Executive Director and to the Board of Directors. Job Overview The role of the Associate Director is to sustain the resilience-based, trauma-responsive capacity building work at the local, regional, state and national stage for which CRI is recognized. Success in this position will be evidenced by recognition of its exceptional...
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Despite Gains, the Emotional Lives of Children Often Forgotten by Our Medical System [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
By A.K. Whitney, Center for Health Journalism, November 11, 2019 I don’t remember the date, or even the time of year, though the medical records tell me it was 1977. I was 6. But I will always remember that day: the gloomy, wood-paneled exam room at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the hard, high table I sat on, the doctor looming above me as he muttered about swan necks and hammers, though there were no birds or tools in sight. He didn’t bother making eye contact with me. I’m not sure he...
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Education resources, including mental health, for kids, families during coronavirus pandemic
We have an abundance of helpful links and posts swirling online to support families and school systems as we adjust to our new normal of learning while self-isolating at home. Thousands of free academic resources from the NYT student writing prompts, to the Anti-Racist, Anti-Oppressive Homeschool Resource list, to this excellent collection from BuzzFeed, and the ever-growing crowd-sourced collection aptly named Amazing Educational Resources are being shared. Our schools do so much more than...
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Fewer US Children in Foster Care; First Drop Since 2012 [nytimes.com]
By The Associated Press, The New York Times, October 24, 2019 The number of children in the U.S. foster care system has dropped for the first time since 2012, stemming a surge that was linked to substance abuse by parents, according to new federal data released on Thursday. The annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services counted 437,283 children in foster care as of Sept. 30, 2018, down from about 441,000 a year earlier. The peak was 524,000 children in foster care in...
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Five Things You Wish Your Community’s Early Childhood Programs Knew [CitiesSpeak.org]
By NLC Staff on May 10, 2019 Cities, towns, and villages are places of innovation and solution finding. If you want to improve early childhood wellbeing—local leaders are key partners. The Networks of Opportunity for Child Wellbeing (NOW) Learning Community is a program of Boston Medical Center’s Vital Village. The learning community’s goal is to support local early childhood coalitions and build their capacity to work together with the broader community to improve the wellbeing of our...
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Helping Youth Transition to Adulthood: Guidance for Foster Parents
Please see the attached document to learn more about: The transition to adulthood and self-sufficiency can be challenging for any young person. For teenagers who have been living in foster care, the transition to life outside of care can be daunting. Generally, youth who have experienced foster care do not have the same safety nets and support networks as others their age, and the transition challenges can be even greater.
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High Ambitions For Health Equity in the Americas [thelancet.com]
By The Lancet Public Health, October 17, 2019 On Oct 1, 2019, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) published Just Societies: Health Equity and Dignified Lives, the report of the Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas—a Commission established by PAHO, chaired by Sir Michael Marmot, and tasked to analyse the effect of drivers influencing health, while proposing actions to address health inequalities in the region. The report finds that, although there have been...
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How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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How to Help a Child Struggling With Anxiety [npr.org]
By Cory Turner, National Public Radio, October 29, 2019 Childhood anxiety is one of the most important mental health challenges of our time. One in five children will experience some kind of clinical-level anxiety by the time they reach adolescence, according to Danny Pine, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and one of the world's top anxiety researchers. Pine says that for most kids, these feelings of worry won't last, but for some, they will —...
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HOWEVER KINDLY INTENTIONED: STRUCTURAL RACISM AND VOLUNTEER CASA PROGRAMS [cunylawreview.org]
When we talk about child welfare reform, we shouldn’t shy away from issues of disproportionality and institutionalized oppression, as both are prevalent, present, and deserving of dialogue. One area of conversation I’ve noted of late is with CASA programs. CASA’s are Court Appointed Special Advocates who make recommendations to the court on behalf of the child’s best interest. More often than not, CASA volunteers are well-meaning individuals who give their time to help children. But, many...
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InBrief: Relilience Series [developingchild.harvard.edu]
This series of videos from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University provide a great resoruce on resilience: 1. InBrief: What is Resilience? 2. InBrief: The Science of Resilience 3. InBreif: How Resilience is Built Reducing the effects of significant adversity on young children’s healthy development is critical to the progress and prosperity of any society. Yet not all children experience lasting harm as a result of adverse early experiences. Some may demonstrate “ resilience...
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A Case for Collecting Adverse Childhood Experiences Data [youthtoday.org]
Check out this awesome work being done at Children and Families First in Delaware! They are integrating ACEs and Resiliency across all programs, collecting data, and using results to drive services! Let me start with a radical statement: I love data. One of my favorite activities in my role as chief strategy officer at Children & Families First , a large nonprofit child and family services agency, is turning columns of numbers into sets of colorful graphs. But even more satisfying is...
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A grandmother learns to be a mom again [CopeFamilyCenter.org]
One Friday afternoon, as Jana was on her way to pickup her grandson from school , she received a very disturbing call. The police had come to her daughter’s apartment the night before, arrested her for drug involvement and taken her grandson, David, into the custody of Marin County’s Child Protective Services . After meeting with CPS, she was able to obtain temporary custody of D avid and take him home with her to Napa. She was not prepared to instantly become a mother again . David’s father...
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A View From the Sharp End of New Zealand's Suicide Problem [thespinoff.co.nz]
By Gawen Carr, The Spinoff, October 21, 2019 Last week, as I left yet another 3am crisis interview in ED as a psychiatric doctor for a suicidal teenager, I felt drained and weary. This was partly due to the time, but mostly something else: although I felt I had helped keep the young person safe in the imminent future, I was frustrated that I was unable to meaningfully address the reasons why they felt that way. I thought I’d look through the recently released Ministry of Health authored...
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A Wakeup Call About Children's Sleep and What To Do About It [psychologytoday.com]
By Robyn Koslowitz, Psychology Today, November 3, 2019 Only half of children in the United States routinely get enough sleep each night, and this has significant effects on their academic performance and social, and emotional well-being. A comprehensive study analyzed responses from parents or caregivers of 49,050 children, 6 to 17 years old, who were part of the 2016-2017 cohort of the National Survey of Children’s Health. They were queried about how many nights of sleep a randomly selected...
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About CAPTA: A Legislative History [childwelfare.gov]
Follow here , or download this fact sheet from the Child Welfare Information Gateway, About CAPTA: A Legislative History. This is a great quick reference tool if you are learning about, or studying child welfare law, policy, or reform!
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Aging Out Institute: The best Collection of Resources for Aging Out of Foster Care on the Internet
National Resources Below you will find programs that are not state-specific, but rather can be leveraged regardless of where the foster youth lives in the U.S. Simply click on the name of the program to get to more information about it. A Home Within:...
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Better Child Abuse Fatality Reviews are Key to Overhauling Child Welfare [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Theresa Covington and Ilana Levinson, August 15, 2019 The Family First and Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), which passed into law as part of the 2018 budget resolution, is one of the largest overhauls of our nation’s child welfare system in the last decade. The law aims to realign resources toward prevention and intervention before a child reaches the critical point of being placed into the foster care system. Most of the attention on the new law is focused on new ways to use Title IV-E...
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Bringing ACEs, Resilience, and Hope to preschool families
This school year, an endeavor of the Franklin Pierce Hewins Early Learning Center (ELC) was to bring Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Resilience to the preschool families. What began as a broad idea soon turned into an exciting project: “Rise to Resilience & Hope”. Our ELC has had a Kids at Hope culture for many years – believing that all children are capable of success, with no exceptions. With Kids at Hope, the adults are Treasure Hunters, seeking out and recognizing the...
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Pasadena Unified Establishes Foster Youth Advisory Council [Pasadena/San Gabriel Valley Journal]
What an amazing solution story highlighting some great work done in the Pasadena Unified School District to support foster youth! The district has established an advisory council to ensure the success of the 400 foster youth enrolled across the district. The district has established services, training, programs and resource centers to support the needs of enrolled foster youth. At its meeting on August 25, 2016, the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) Board of Education approved the...
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Reimbursement for Parenting Education and Support Services
Unfortunately, regardless of training received and degrees earned, parenting educators can't serve families and get reimbursed by public and private insurers for their services. In an effort to bring light to this issue, I wrote the attached paper with two colleagues at NC State. Our (unpublished) paper outlines research supporting parenting education services and their efficacy to improve individual and family health and long term wellbeing and community prosperity. We highlight the fact...
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Report: Solutions To Stop Sexual Violence Against Children [npr.org]
By Susan Brink, NPR.org, November 19, 2019 Sexual violence against children happens everywhere: in wealthy enclaves, in slums, in suburbs, in rural villages. Invariably, it happens in secret: in the privacy of family homes, in dark corners of schools and churches, and in murky shadows at neighborhood, community, sporting and scouting events. It happens often, and periodically groups put out reports to call attention to the issue. "That's usually where the story stops," says Daniela Ligiero,...
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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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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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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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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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Temporary Free Access to Paediatrics & Child Health (PCH) articles (Oxford Academic)
Temporary free access to highly cited articles making an impact in Paediatrics & Child Health ( PCH ) has just been opened up by Oxford Academic. If you're a research hoarder like me, you'll want to check this out. https://academic.oup.com/pch/pages/highly_cited_articles
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The Hello It’s Me Project comes to Pittsfield: Dr. Claudia Gold at the helm of initiative to create healthy bonds between parents and infants (www./theberkshireedge.com)
Cissy's note: I am a huge fan of the way @Claudia Gold works with those of us Parenting with ACEs . The first time I read her writing I relaxed. She was speaking with and for parents not about or at us. Unfortunately, her approach is rare. Fortunately, she just launched a new project she's been dreaming of for years. I love the way she supports all families and how she centers the role of all parents in the lives of all children - especially those - not all except those...
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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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We need to protect people’s housing during this pandemic. And beyond. [preventioninstitute.org]
From Prevention Institute, March 27, 2020 Physical distancing has become key to managing the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. But the economic disruption that accompanies “sheltering in place” has caused millions of people to lose their jobs. Come April 1, when the rent or mortgage payment is due, the many people who just became unemployed and those who were already living paycheck to paycheck will be at risk of losing their homes in addition to their livelihoods. Stable, safe, and...
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Why Do LA’s Foster Care Facilities Keep Calling The Cops On Traumatized Kids? (witnessla.com)
On March 21, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an important motion that instructed the Director of the Office of Child Protection, Michael Nash, former presiding judge of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court, to find out why so many of LA County’s foster children were crossing into the county’s delinquency system, what could be done to prevent that crossing, and how these so-called crossover kids could be helped if and when and if they found themselves in the clutches of both...
Comment
Re: Child Welfare and Human Trafficking - Connections Rooted in Trauma
Our organization, CHRIS 180 has been using ACE scores to triage and plan services for the foster youth we work with since 2012. www.chris180.org
Reply
Re: How does the general public percieve Foster Children?
January 28, 2014 My Dear Colleague Jeff Bergstrom: The interaction you had with the couple in the restaurant in June 2013 was fascinating, scary and probably an honest summary of some of the mis-information and the biased thinking that dominates segments of this country. I have been told that it is difficult to reason someone out of something that they have not been reasoned into. This may be one of those conversations. But I wonder where the ideas about children in foster care came from? It...
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Re: ACE's Informed Child Protective Services?
I echo the sentiments shared here. Service Management Solution services for Children is about to embark on this journey. We have been trained through the Karyn Purvis Institute in Texas, using Trust Based Relational Intervention. I manage the training for the Child Protection Investigators with the Department of Children and Families as well as the training for Case Managers. It is a daunting task. We plan to eat this elephant one bite at a time. The TBRI training will be required after...