- Toolkit 1:
- Adolescents & Families for Life: A Toolkit for
Supervisors
- By Robert G. Lewis and Maureen S. Heffernan
-
The Toolkit is a unique workbook for professionals who need to
guide, train and supervise staff to insure permanence for the
adolescents on their caseloads. Organized into three sections,
"Making the Case for Permanence," "Choosing, Using and
Developing Tools with Teens," and "Supporting
Permanence," the Toolkit breaks down the issue of permanence for
teens into 27 short, staff-meeting-length, teachable units. Includes
a CD-ROM of the PowerPoint presentation of the complete Toolkit, unit
by unit and section by section.
Click here for
A 3rd party review of
Adolescents & Families for Life
To order a copy of the book please download, print, fill out
and mail-in a copy of the
Book order form or go
online to www.TheToolkit.org
- Toolkit 2:
-
The Family Bound Program: A Toolkit for Preparing Teens for
Permanent Family Connections
-
Developed by Robert G. Lewis and
Communities For People, Inc.
-
Written by Thea Stovell, Susan
Landers, and Robin Warsh.
The Family Bound Program is a
unique curriculum that prepares teens for family life. It provides
education and preparation about family life in nine two-hour workshop sessions.
Also It provides experience of family life through a kick-off “Pizza Party” and
five special family weekends with “practice” families who may be a foster,
adoptive, kin, birth, or “Bridge” family. Finally it gives you guidance on
recruiting and training Bridge Families. Bridge Families have never met their
teen before but have been recruited to work with a teen in the Program.
The Bridge Family concept is unique to the Family Bound Program but can
be useful in many different contexts. Three step-by step guides, first a guide
to the nine sessions and for working with participating families. Second a
Handbook for Teens to use as they go through the program. Third and
finally a Families’ Guide to the Family Bound Program.
To order a copy of the book please download, print and fill out a copy of the
Book order form
- Toolkit 3:
- By Robert G. Lewis and Maureen S. Heffernan
-
- A workbook for managers, supervisors and workers. A great tool
to bring the issues into the staff meeting for discussion and
development. Suggestions and requests from clients and foundations motivated
Maureen and me to create a curriculum for hour-long, refresher meetings
as vehicles to support and train/retrain staff in adolescent permanency.
We designed this new Toolkit to guide discussions on key permanency
concepts and issues.
Training Aids (Always In Progress)
My experience as executive director (formerly) of a
special needs adoption agency and as a consultant/trainer tells me that child
welfare agencies with adolescent permanency goals need a variety of training
aids. Thus, I continue to develop new training aids myself and with others
to support this challenging work. I chose common issues that child welfare
agencies, whether large or small, public or private, need to address.
Feel free use these materials. I will be
grateful for your feedback which you can provide by emailing me at
Bob@RGLewis.com.
Engaging Youth
& Those Around Them In the Process of Permanence
(Click the navigation bar at the top of the page on the left "Talking with
Youth" to reach the files)
Includes:
Talking With Youth
- An interactive workshop of
PowerPoint slides with notes for discussion. Developed with support from
New York City Administration for Children’s Services and the Freddie Mac
Foundation. How do we talk to teens about permanency? What are the
issues? Why are permanent family connections important? What are the
legal options? What do we say? How do we listen? The workshop itself
has exercises and handouts.
Preparing
Everyone
- Also a PowerPoint slides
presentation with exercises, a trainers guide and notes for discussion.
Developed with support from New York City Administration for Children’s Services
and the Freddie Mac Foundation. Who needs to be prepared? What does
shared parenting mean for youth and parents? We’ve all got issues –
professionals, parents, caretakers. How do we run a meeting? What do
we say?
A Program to Run with Young People
Lets Talk
- A 15
PowerPoint slides presentation about
talking with teens. Their needs (competence, self-esteem, behavior management,
usefulness, power, belonging, loyalty) their losses, their development tasks.
Asking Connections Questions
Key Questions
-
Five pages of questions and checklists for professionals about their work
on permanency for adolescent clients by Alexandra Lowe, New York City
Administration for Children’s Services and Robert G. Lewis. What are my
attitudes and feelings about this client, Have I identified all the resources
for this teen? Have I prepared the youth to consider adoption? Have I prepared
the birth parents? What is the youth’s input in my planning? Have I prepared
the permanency resources for getting involved in this youth’s life?
Ask Teens - A one page list of
suggested questions to ask teens about their connections from "Who loves you?"
to a list of all their relatives.
Asking Parents - Also
a one page list of questions for parents about who else loves their children.
Finding and Making
Connections for Children/Youth
Recruitment is Everyone's
Business
-
To make "permanence as intuitive as safety" we all have to be thinking
about and working on connections for our children in care. I developed
Recruitment is Everyone's Business for a residential treatment center that
offered it to all of their staff from maintenance to executive staff and from
child care to clinical consultants. Reconnecting youth and family is
recruitment; reconnecting youth and community is recruitment.
To get a copy that you can modify for your own use, please email me at Bob@RGLewis.com.
Reaching out to Missing
Children/Youth
Reaching out to
Missing Children
-
One of he most vexing challenges we face in trying to achieve permanence
for some children/youth is our inability to hold onto them. Click on the
title to link is a protocol to use both for finding missing children and working
on permanence at the same time. The following link will take you to
additional comments, input and questions from around the country when I asked our
colleagues "What Do You Think?" I welcome your thoughts on all of
the material and links on this site, email me:
Bob@RGLewis.com.
Comments and
Introduction to Reaching out to Missing Children
-
Here is a summary of comments and additional suggestions and questions
when reaching out to missing children from worker, supervisors, lawyers and managers.
Some of your comments I have incorporated and some will have to wait for another
time. Thank you.
