ERMANENT FAMILY CONNECTIONS FOR ADOLESCENTS IN CARE

A two 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 two-day workshop focuses on Adolescents & Families For Life: A Toolkit for Supervisors^©, which provides a set of tools for helping child welfare agency supervisors (and others) guide, train and supervise staff in ensuring permanence for the adolescents in their case loads.  The workshop provides an overview of topics and strategies in the Toolkit^© which address making a case for permanency; choosing, using and developing permanency tools with teens, and supporting permanence.  Participants have opportunities to identify the issues they find most challenging, and to practice delivery of one lesson from the Toolkit^©.  The workshop leader provides tips on training workers as well as suggestions on using the Toolkit^©  effectively.

Bob Lewis provides consultation and training to child welfare organizations with a focus on permanency planning, policy and practice development.  Based in Massachusetts, he is active as a consultant and speaker nationally.  For the two years he has been working closely with the Administration for Children’s Services in New York City, their contract agencies, and various legal service providers to bring about the kind of culture and practice shift needed to ensure permanent family connections for all adolescents in that system.  He coauthored Adolescents & Families For Life: A Toolkit for Supervisors^© and in conjunction with Communities for People he developed the Family Bound Program: A Toolkit for Preparing Teens for Permanent Family Connections.

Participants come away from this two day workshop with a renewed commitment to permanency for adolescents, new strategies to help them meet this goal, and a Toolkit^© to help them train their staff.

Enrollment is limited to a maximum of 25 participants.