P

ERMANENT FAMILY CONNECTIONS FOR ADOLESCENTS IN CARE

A one-day, hands on training

To every child we take into care, society makes a promise. We promise to restore them to a better family then the one from which we removed them, if not their own, then another. No one can exempt us from the promise, not even the teens themselves. This workshop is about keeping that promise.

Workshop Leader: Robert G. Lewis, M.Ed.,

M.S.W., L.I.C.S.W.

This one-day workshop focuses on concepts and strategies. The workshop uses the material in Adolescents & Families For Life: A Toolkit for Supervisors^© - the first in a series of curricula to help child welfare supervisors and workers develop a practice that ensures permanence for the adolescents in their caseloads.

The one-day workshop is appropriate for administrators, supervisors and staff. Throughout the morning and afternoon session, we encourage participants to highlight especially challenging areas, ask questions and discuss cases. As a whole, the workshop provides an overview of topics and strategies, which will create a successful permanency for teens practice in your agency.

During the morning session, we make the case for working for permanency for adolescents. With plenty of interaction between the workshop leader and participants, we discuss:

¨Adolescent development and why teens need families

¨The intent and obligations of the Adoption and Safe Families Act

¨Common barriers and objections to permanency for teens and the challenge of overcoming them.

¨ The forms of permanent family connections for teens

¨ How to talk to adolescents about permanence

During the afternoon session, we discuss

¨ Specific strategies for achieving permanence

¨ Apply the concepts and practice to cases and systems

¨ Support for permanence within the agency culture

¨ Tools to prepare teens

Enrollment is flexible, but a group no larger than of 30 participants is optimum.

---