Posts Tagged: trauma

‘Children’s Behavior Is a Communication’

Ana Rodriguez-Betancourt is a child-parent psychotherapist in New Jersey. We reached out to her because our children had gone through difficult experiences, from bullying, to witnessing domestic violence, to foster care. Our children also had been given diagnoses, like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

We wanted to better understand what was behind some of our children’s emotional and behavior struggles. We also wanted to know how to show them that we cared about their feelings while setting limits when their behavior wasn’t OK. Here’s how Rodriguez-Betancourt broke it down.

Changing Industry Perspectives – Reshaping the relationship between caseworkers and parents

Interview by Keyna Franklin

Katya Smyth is the CEO and founder of the social change organization The Full Frame Initiative.

Katya Smyth

Q: Can you tell us what you learned about services from running On the Rise to help women in crisis?

A: I knew going in that programs and systems tend to see people as problems. What I came to appreciate is how hard it is even for frontline workers who don’t want to see people that way to … Read More

Helpful Intervention – A new program prepares families to go to court

Interview by Keyna Franklin

Kiran Malpe is a social worker with Strong Starts Court Initiative, a program that provides information to judges, lawyers, ACS, and workers about the science of human development and how some court decisions can traumatize families. 

Q: Can you tell us about Strong Starts and about your role there?

A: Strong Starts has a dual mission to bring expertise in early child development to all stages of court proceedings, and to strongly support infants … Read More

Mothers share post-adoption grief

The grief parents suffer when they lose children to foster care and adoption is “invisible and often goes unacknowledged,” explains Toronto-based social worker Kathleen Kenny and parent advocate Sheryl Jarvis, who run a 15-week support group for women who use drugs and have experienced having one or more children removed or adopted.

Q: How would you compare the grief of a parent who loses a child to adoption to a parent whose child dies?

Jarvis: When a child … Read More

Signing Away My Son – I had to give up my rights because I’m incarcerated

I came to court that morning with my heart and my mind racing in time with one another. I was handcuffed as we traveled from the bowels of Bronx criminal court, arriving at a phone booth-sized room where I was told to wait for my lawyer.

It was the day for me to sign those papers. My son, Justin, was 8 then. For the first three years of his life, Justin had slept in my bed, … Read More

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