Healing Through Yoga

You won’t find the teenagers at Willow Springs Center, a Nevada psychiatric hospital for children, doing the cat-cow pose in yoga class. They don’t use straps or belts, or other objects to bend the body. And the yoga teachers, who visit from the Reno nonprofit Urban Lotus Project, won’t tell them what to do. Instead, […]

Lessons From the Toughest Kids

I have worked at Chaddock, an organization treating children suffering from trauma, for more than 25 years. For a place that has been around for 168 years it’s a rather brief moment in history. But I will tell you this: In those 25-plus years I have learned some really hard lessons and the children we […]

Foster-to-Adopt

My husband and I always wanted to experience both pregnancy and adoption to build our family. We started the resource home approval process, hoping to adopt first, but the process took time and surprisingly (or not) we became pregnant. There were several starts and halts, so by the time we found ourselves at a matching […]

Building Relationships of Hope

We don’t often pair the words “child welfare” and “hope” together. From the time a family is in crisis, to the last visit with a caseworker, “hope” is often the last word that comes to mind. But for child welfare to meet any of its goals or purposes, hope is the only thing that is […]

A New Year Filled With Family Connections

If your family is like mine, then the year usually ends and begins with family connections. After reflecting on past challenges, some families might resolve to connect with a better future. Others might make resolutions to help disadvantaged families overcome barriers. My way of building back better, overcoming child welfare stigma, and getting past my […]

From Visitation to Family Time

This series focuses on words and expressions that are considered strength-based, with the aim of ensuring that resource families and agency staff talk and write humanely and positively about children and birth families who need family foster care services. Examples include replacing:• “cases” with “children, young people, or families,” because cases don’t have feelings and […]

Choosing an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Provider

Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) is a growing subspecialty area in the behavioral and mental health fields. IECMH includes the ages of birth through 5 years old and can be inclusive of the prenatal period, commonly known as perinatal mental health. The 2001 ZERO TO THREE Infant Mental Health Task Force Steering Committee […]

Jasmine Sanders: A Spirit of Resilience

Each weekday, millions tune in to hear what Jasmine Sanders has to say. As co-host of radio’s “The D.L. Hughley Show,” Sanders is popular with audiences because she speaks openly about her time as a former foster child, an adoptee and the search for her biological family. Sanders grew up as JoLynn with her brother […]

8 Ways to Help a Youth Transition Out of Foster Care

Being placed in foster care is traumatic enough for a child. Sadly, for far too many children, leaving the foster care system is even more traumatic. In many states, when a youth in care reaches the age of 18, the child “ages out” and begins the transition into the “real world.” At least two dozen […]