Rise believes that effective training of child welfare professionals must include the voices of parents. We work with partners to integrate our stories into training so that frontline caseworkers and supervisors, parent and child attorneys, and foster parents can more deeply understand parents’ perspectives. Rise staff also lead staff training on parents’ perspectives. Our newest initiative is a writing group for frontline foster care staff to share their experiences working with parents in order to improve frontline practice.
Interview with Elizabeth McCarthy, CEO, and Jane Golden, Chief Program Officer at Sheltering Arms in New York City
Jane: For the past two years, our foster care staff have participated in writing groups led by Rise’s Editorial Director, Rachel Blustain. The group allowed the caseworkers to talk about what it’s like to do their job and to write stories about their experiences working with parents with children in foster care.
Elizabeth: We wanted to give staff an … Read More
Interview with Erika Tullberg, NYU Child Study Center and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network
I work at the NYU Child Study Center as part of a team focused on child trauma, and I’m also a co-chair of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s (NCTSN) child welfare committee.
Two years ago, Rise joined us as a member of a subcommittee focused on parents in the child welfare system who have had experiences of trauma. We are developing … Read More
Interview with David Nish, Associate Commissioner of Training and Workforce Development at NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services
ACS has a training academy for new staff, Satterwhite Academy, and a new Workforce Institute in partnership with CUNY’s School of Professional Studies, that will train child welfare staff citywide. The focus of our work is to help staff really understand the complex nature of the work that they do, with a focus on building empathy and helping families … Read More
This story is part of Rise’s series by frontline staff at foster care agencies about their experiences working with parents.
Recently, I facilitated a Family Team Meeting with a mother who was going through tremendous stress. (To protect her privacy, I’ll just call her “Mom.”) Her partner had recently died and she’d been diagnosed with a serious illness. She also suffered from anxiety and depression.
Up until the series of crises in her life, she’d worked, had an … Read More
