Connections

Foster Club recently published its Permanency Pact, a new tool to support permanency for youth in foster care. A Permanency Pact is a pledge by a caring adult to provide specific supports to a young person in foster care who is preparing to transition to adulthood without a permanent family. The goal of the pact is to formally establish a lifelong, kinlike relationship. The pact is created between the youth and adult with the help of a facilitator, who can be a caseworker, independent living provider, or other adult.

Included with the tool is a description of how to create the pact and a list of supports the adult might provide as the youth prepares to transition out of foster care. Members of the pact work together to choose appropriate supports from the list. Once the final list is agreed upon, copies of the pact are given to the youth and adult and are maintained in the case record as part of the youth’s transition plan. A certificate to affirm the Permanency Pact made between the youth and supportive adult can also be used to symbolize the importance of the agreement.

The tool is available for downloading from the Foster Club’s website: www.fosterclub.com/pdfs/PermPact.pdf
 

Adapted from John Gottman’s Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, this book helps adults identify their parenting and caregiving style. It explains the five important steps in “emotion coaching” children, to ensure that children are guided to healthy emotional growth.

Kids who can accept and share their emotions do better in many ways, Gottman’s research shows:

• They form stronger friendships;
• They achieve more in school;
• They bounce back from emotional crises more quickly; and
• They are physically healthier.

Beautifully illustrated with photographs of parents and children.

Psychologist John Gottman has studied marriage, couples, and family relationships for more than 30 years. He is the author or coauthor of more than three dozen books.  For more information on What I am Feeling? visit www.parentingpress.com.

[Parenting Press, ISBN 1-884734-52-9, $12.95]
 

This information packet was written to support child maltreatment prevention efforts by describing strategies and activities that promote protective factors. It is written for service providers, to encourage and support them as they engage and partner with parents to protect, nurture, and promote the healthy development of children. The packet includes suggestions for enhancing each of the five protective factors in families (nurturing and attachment, knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development, parental resilience, social connections and concrete supports for parents); tip sheets in English and Spanish for providers to use when working with parents and caregivers on specific parenting challenges; strategies for sharing the message about child abuse prevention in communities; and information about child abuse and neglect.

The packet is available for download on the Child Welfare Information Gateway at http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/res_packet_2007/index.cfm

Used with permission from the Child Welfare Information Gateway