Child Welfare Professionals Weigh in on ARC Reflections - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Child Welfare Professionals Weigh in on ARC Reflections

Posted January 26, 2018
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
ARC Reflections helps foster parents build important skills

Child wel­fare pro­fes­sion­als and agency lead­ers have embraced ARC Reflec­tions, a new skill-build­ing cur­ricu­lum from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion and the Jus­tice Resource Insti­tute that helps fos­ter par­ents, kin and oth­er care­givers sup­port chil­dren who have expe­ri­enced trauma.

The cur­ricu­lum, which is avail­able for free, includes all the need­ed train­ing mate­ri­als — from an imple­men­ta­tion guide and Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions to facil­i­ta­tor guides, a case man­ag­er guide and more.

In loca­tions that have imple­ment­ed ARC Reflec­tions to date, pre­lim­i­nary results and feed­back from fos­ter par­ents indi­cate that the train­ing is work­ing. One exam­ple: In Lin­coln Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na, the cur­ricu­lum has helped pre­vent dis­rup­tions in fos­ter care place­ments and encour­aged more care­givers to par­ent a wider vari­ety of kids, accord­ing to Sandy Kennedy, who serves as the fos­ter care and adop­tion pro­gram man­ag­er for the county’s Depart­ment of Social Services.

We have had bet­ter suc­cess with fos­ter par­ents tak­ing in chil­dren who have been hard­er to place,” says Kennedy, who imple­ment­ed ARC Reflec­tions as part of the curriculum’s pilot phase. Before ARC Reflec­tions train­ing, they might have said, No, that child is too high main­te­nance for me.’”

The cur­ricu­lum, which is based on an inter­ven­tion frame­work called Attach­ment, Reg­u­la­tion and Com­pe­ten­cy, spans nine ses­sions run­ning two hours apiece. Despite this sub­stan­tial time com­mit­ment, par­tic­i­pants have found the train­ing well worth it. Care­givers felt this par­tic­u­lar train­ing was dif­fer­ent because there were hands-on tools that they could take back and use in the home,” said Kris­tine Kin­niburgh, who co-authored the cur­ricu­lum. Co-writer Mar­garet Blaustein agrees, adding that fos­ter par­ents have a lot to dis­cuss with each oth­er and receive valu­able sup­port and feed­back from care­givers with sim­i­lar ques­tions and experiences.

Ear­ly input from par­ents and child wel­fare pro­fes­sion­als also under­scores the impor­tance of select­ing the right ARC Reflec­tions facil­i­ta­tor. Effec­tive train­ers need time to absorb the curriculum’s exten­sive con­tent and must be com­fort­able facil­i­tat­ing con­ver­sa­tions about race, iden­ti­ty and oth­er topics.

These mod­ules illic­it emo­tion,” says Dana Trow­er, super­vi­sor of the Recruit­ment, Home Study and Train­ing Unit in Fair­fax Coun­ty, Vir­ginia. You need some­one who is going to get the con­tent out there but who is also able to sup­port the fam­i­lies as their emo­tions come out.”

Anoth­er les­son learned? Split the train­ing duties between an agency staff mem­ber and an expe­ri­enced fos­ter par­ent. I’ve nev­er fos­tered a child a day in my life,” Kennedy says. My infor­ma­tion is book learn­ing. The infor­ma­tion from our fos­ter par­ent was hands-on. The fos­ter par­ent co-train­er was a huge resource for us.”

Buoyed by these suc­cess­es, the cur­ricu­lum is here to stay, accord­ing to child wel­fare lead­ers who have seen the impact of ARC Reflec­tions first­hand. The over­all feed­back from agency staff and fos­ter par­ents has been very pos­i­tive,” says Kei­th Wong, pro­gram man­ag­er for Fos­ter Care and Adop­tion, Resource and Sup­port, in Fair­fax Coun­ty. We are plan­ning to train every sin­gle fos­ter parent.”

Access all the ARC Reflec­tions train­ing materials

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