Kids in Foster Care: Transformative tools to treat the trauma of abandonment, abuse, grief, and loss

The World of Foster Care
Interactive experience: Through the eyes of a foster child

• The internal working model of kids in care
• Terms, roles, placement types, and systems
• Current barriers to mental health services

Trauma, Attachment, and the Brain

• Abuse, neglect, and adverse experiences
• Childhood trauma: neurological responses
• Trauma, dissociation, and “foster care syndrome”
• Impact of attachment style
• Four areas of attachment loss in foster care
• The iceberg effect of unmet needs
• The stages of complicated grief

Assessment and Diagnostics

• Determine “what happened to them”
• Trauma-informed assessment strategies
• Tools to differentiate anxiety, depression, PTSD, and attachment disorders

A Framework for Intervention Using a Complex Trauma Lens
It Starts with Connection

• 3 must-use trust-building activities
• Non-verbal strategies to build rapport
• From fight-flight-freeze to regulation
• Therapy sessions: start to finish
• Collaborative case conceptualization

Coping with Feelings, Thoughts, and Sensations

• Trauma responses via feelings, thoughts, body, and behavior
• Activities: Hold Onto My Feelings, The Anger Bag, and more
• Age-appropriate strategies to address:
  • Parental mental illness
  • Substance use disorders
  • Death
  • Sexual abuse
  • Abuse and neglect
• ACT and CBT strategies to support selfworth and foster resilience

Construct a Coherent Life Narrative

• Intuitive tips for answering kids’ questions about their past
• Activities
  • My Question Box
  • My Journey Through Placement
  • My Family Tree
  • Parts of Me
• Life Narrative template
• Case study

Treat Anxiety and Depression

• Establish locus of control
• Navigate the distress hill
• EFT and trauma focused strategies for in-the-moment calming
• Alternatives to medication
• Risk assessment and suicidality

Address Attachment Disorders

• Animal-assisted therapy
• Interventions to treat abandonment wounds
• Attachment focused interventions

It Takes a Village: The Foster Care System

• Partner with parents and foster parents
• Establish structure and consistency
• Nurture and heal attachment trauma
• Boundaries and support options
• Collaboration: caseworkers, educators, rehab and medical professionals

Being a Foster Care Competent Counselor

• Ethical and cultural considerations
• The risks and joys involved
• Mitigate counter transference
• Strategies to prevent compassion fatigue
• Limitations of the research and potential risks