Blog

By Linda Hall, Photo: Tom E. Puskar/Times-Gazette.com, Ashland Times-Gazette, May 26, 2022 When children are placed in foster care , it's understood they are experiencing trauma. What's not always recognized is their parents are in a hard place, too. Ashland County's courts, area social services and other sectors of the Ashland and Wayne communities are hoping to join forces to promote positive parenting and successful reunification of children in foster care with their birth parents.

In early May, the Community Resilience Coalition of Guelph & Wellington launched the “Building Connections for Resilient Kids” campaign about the importance of connections during childhood. Connections with adults help children develop resilience to face life’s challenges. These connections can be small actions that adults don’t realize have a big impact on a child’s wellbeing. The Coalition released a series of 8 short videos illustrating stories from community members about adults who...

With tremendous gratitude to the TIC (Trauma-Informed Community) Team, I pass along these wonderful resources they have shared from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and other sources. This has been and continues to be a really hard day. Please do what is necessary for your own well-being, so that with renewed hope and energy we can continue our work to create trauma-sensitive communities together. National Child Traumatic Stress Network Resources in Response to the Robb Elementary...

By Imani Worthy, Tracy Serdjenian and Jeanette Vega Brown, RISE This article was published in the Spring 2022 Issue of Family Integrity & Justice Quarterly , "Poverty Is Not Abuse...Poverty Is Not Neglect." A family’s contact with the family polic ing system often begins with a call to the child abuse and maltreatment “hotline” made by a mandated reporter. About two-thirds of reports to New York’s Statewide Central Register (SCR) are made by mandated reporters—“ certain professionals...

By Joanna Lack, Alan Dettlaff, and Kristen Weber, UpEND, April 7, 2022 Language is powerful. The words we use signal how we make sense of the world – and people – around us. When we use the term “people of color,” it signals that we have defined diversity against a standard of Whiteness. When we describe people as “disadvantaged,” we diminish the fullness of their humanity and de-emphasize the unjust systems that shape those words. And when we call a system that surveils, regulates,...

By Jeremy Loudenback, Photo: Jeremy Loudenback, The Imprint, May 17, 2022 H oisting signs that read “Fund Families, Not Systems” and “Poverty Is Not Neglect,” protesters in downtown Los Angeles today chanted “Black Families Matter!” and shared their wrenching experiences of family separation through the foster care system. “If you are outraged that the Supreme Court may soon allow the government to reach into your womb and control whether you have children, you should be deeply outraged that...

Please join us on June 28 from 1:30-3:00 p.m. ET for a virtual conversation with best-selling author Bruce Perry. Ingrid Cockhren , CEO of PACEs Connection; Mathew Portell , PACEs Connections’ director of communities, and Perry, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, will engage in a conversation concerning historical trauma and Perry’s best-selling book " What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing, " which he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. Please share this blog...

Written by the Capacity Building Center for States "Reconnecting with and strengthening my relationships with family has always been an important part of finding my identity and sense of belonging. However, this power comes with a different set of unexpected challenges. Family events can often be stressful as we struggle with how to treat one another. It is difficult to have healthy relationships because we did not have the opportunity to learn how to do this when we were younger."— Aleks...

Key Facts and Statistics from Childwelfare.gov Include these key points in your messaging to demonstrate the important role relative and kinship caregivers play in supporting family connections that are essential to a child’s health and well-being. There are over 407,000 children and youth in foster care , and 34 percent were placed with relatives or kin. The term kin encompasses both relatives (those related by blood or marriage) and fictive kin (those who are unrelated but have such a...

Original article can be found on Children's Bureau Express here . A report from the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explores how self-regulation can be applied as a framework for promoting youth health and well-being through coregulation. It reviews which developmental skills and competencies are addressed in the current literature, how coregulation is presented, and what...

Original article can be found on Children's Bureau Express here . Youth in foster care continue to have poorer education outcomes compared with their peers. For example, the high school graduation rate in California for youth in foster care is 58 percent while the general population graduation rate is 84 percent. Best Practices Guide for Developing a District System to Improve Education Outcomes for Youth in Foster Care from the Alliance for Children's Rights seeks to build on its Foster...

Original article can be found on Children's Bureau Express here . A recent working paper by Child Trends, Integrating Positive Youth Development and Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Approaches Across the Child Welfare and Justice Systems , focuses on the importance of positive youth development (PYD) approaches in child welfare. Specifically, the working paper explores the need for PYD approaches that incorporate racial equity and inclusion, why it is important to focus on young...