Looking for collaborators on research about caring adults

You might want to check with the Court Appointed Special Advocates.  We meet once per week with the youths we advocate for who are in Foster Care. 

The outcomes for kids with CASAs are much better--  but it involves not just being an AAA, but also advocacy in court, pushing for changes and solutions, being a voice of the child within the foster home if need be, and also providing practical help to the child that a parent might normally provide. 

For example, besides emotional connection and support, I also got my CASA youth out of the regular mental health care track for foster youth in my town, so she could access Neurofeedback through adult Medicaid,  and I helped her find a healing volunteer involvement at an adaptive riding program, and I helped her apply to colleges and scholarship programs.  So it was more than emotional support.

Hi Eric. I am intrigued by your work. My work has found that community resilience is a more important buffer against ACEs than ind resilience for youth. I am not sure what type of collaboration you are looking for, but happy to chat further. I am working on the idea of community resilience with non-traditional students in higher education and will be looking at the context and can consider the different levels of support.

Laura Haynes Collector posted:

You might want to check with the Court Appointed Special Advocates.  We meet once per week with the youths we advocate for who are in Foster Care. 

The outcomes for kids with CASAs are much better--  but it involves not just being an AAA, but also advocacy in court, pushing for changes and solutions, being a voice of the child within the foster home if need be, and also providing practical help to the child that a parent might normally provide. 

For example, besides emotional connection and support, I also got my CASA youth out of the regular mental health care track for foster youth in my town, so she could access Neurofeedback through adult Medicaid,  and I helped her find a healing volunteer involvement at an adaptive riding program, and I helped her apply to colleges and scholarship programs.  So it was more than emotional support.

Laura:
I think that's a really important point. Sometimes the advocate is actually supporting the parenting work that a parent may be unable to do and that matters. And sometimes, the emotional stuff won't resonate. I know as a high ACE kid I now look back on teachers who were reaching out (or trying) and at the time I thought they were strange and intrusive because my way wasn't to talk about stuff. So, though they gave me some space to share or open up I was miles away from knowing how to do that, and still wonder if it even would have been helpful had reality not changed at home. Don't want to mess with those protective superpowers that make life tolerable. I think we have to be careful to assume what support looks like as though that's always the same for all kids in all situations. But helping manage through systems, maneuver and having an advocate who knows how the system works and is at least somewhat trusted - IS huge!

Cis

Hi Eric, 

Great topic. I might be described as someone who was an "ACE kid" and I believe fully that having caring adults in my life made a huge difference and helped get me to where I am now. The support I received wasn't super tangible, measurable, or formal, but I had a few teachers that I know really cared. I also had youth group leaders who I felt really cared for me. Now as a LMHC, in working with clients I have also heard similar stories. Additionally, it may be interesting for you to look at siblings as the child who had a caring adult may have turned out differently than the sibling who didn't. 

Also look at the program "Thread" in Baltimore.  Fantastic work with middle school aged kids at risk of dropping/failing out of school.  The provide a team of AAAs for the kids and mentor them for 10 years.  Fantastic results.