Week 1 – Building Your Support Network — Welcome to the new location and starting out our support topics with how to avoid isolation and create sustainable community care.  Light snacks and drinks will be provided and let us know if you need training hours for us to have ready for your visit.  We look forward to meeting you!

Week 2 -Working With Caseworkers & Agencies — This week we will be learning Communication strategies, documentation, and collaborative advocacy with the foster care system.  Many of you have started or have worked with these agencies before, but knowing what works and doesn’t work helps us all to navigate the system better and more effeciently.  Hope to see you there!

Week 3 – Supporting Siblings (Bio, Foster, Adoptive) — Who has their own kids that are struggling with living with foster placements?   We will tackle learning how to Manage jealousy, fairness, trauma responses, and maintaining connection.  It is hard enough parenting kids with trauma, but add your own kids’ issues with the new kids in the mix and you have a recipe to create disaster.  If you have navigated this before and know some great techniques for parenting both kinds of kids, please bring your insight to our meeting too!  Other parents will want to hear what you have to say!

Week 5 – Understanding Survival Brain Responses — How many times do you notice your child going from zero to sixty on something that shouldn’t have?  Did feel like your on eggshells around them; afraid to set them off? Let’s learn about Fight/flight/freeze/fawn patterns, how they show up in daily life, and how parents can respond without escalating.  There are ways you can learn to help them and yourself navigate the waters of the Survival Brain.

Week 6- Youth Rights & Self‑Advocacy — Do you have teens and not sure how to help them work through the system?  You see them constantly shutting down and not trying or exploding with anger at frustration with their situation and/or the systsem.  Help them by empowering teens to speak up for themselves in safe, appropriate ways.  They can have a voice in foster care. 

Week 6 – Preparing for Transitions & Placement Changes — Have you ever decided to do a break between placements to try to work through the emotions, or get another child right away to keep things going because it felt better?  Maybe trying to have a plan for your emotional preparation, goodbye rituals, and supporting kids through uncertainty.  This may not only alleviate what you are going through, but also what the kids are feeling when they have to transition.  Especially if it is a bad transition, it can affect things for the whole family’s future.