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The Fostering Connection
Consulation Initiative
Young people involved with the foster care system have led chaotic lives filled with trauma and abandonment. They have grown accustomed to disappointment and broken promises and not surprisingly, often find it difficult to trust and build healthy relationships. Although their needs for nurturing and support are profound, the chaos and trauma in their lives can undermine the efforts of those who try to extend a helping hand.
The Fostering Connection (TFC), is a non-profit organization that understands the challenges faced by helping professionals as they attempt to offer guidance and support to these needy, troubled young people. Since 2001, we have been providing foster-involved children, youth and families with free psychotherapy, offered by experienced, highly-trained volunteer therapists in their private offices, for as long as its needed or desired. The key to our therapists’ ongoing work with foster-affected youth is the regular consultation support we provide. All our volunteer therapists attend a weekly support group, facilitated by a senior clinician. During the group, therapists discuss the challenges of trying to form a nurturing connection with foster-affected clients, and work together to gain insight about how to sustain these challenging relationships over time. The support and insight therapists gain through these consultation groups helps them stay engaged and avoid feeling overwhelmed by their clients’ traumatic and chaotic lives. Ultimately, the consultation groups help therapists stay focused on their clients’ psychological needs, and allow them to sustain these fragile bonds over time, providing clients with the consistent support they need in order to make real progress.
TFC is now offering consultation support groups to helping professionals working with foster-affected youth, through our new Consultation Initiative.
The Consultation Initiative will bring the TFC Consultation Support model to agencies and organizations that serve foster-affected youth. Consultation support groups offer helping professionals working in the foster care field an additional opportunity to gain insight by reflecting on their experiences with clients, share the challenges of the work they do, exchange successful strategies with their peers, and learn how to better manage the “crisis-to-crisis” cycle with their clients.
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Consultation Groups Help Reduce Burn-Out and Enhance Staff Effectiveness with Foster-Involved Youth |
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| The Consultation Initiative aims to complement the existing support, supervision and inservice programming that organizations already provide to their staff. The goal of TFC’s Consultation Initiative is to provide staff with an unstructured, supportive and reflective experience, one that will help them weather their challenging caseloads and sustain their engagement with difficult clients. |
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Consultation Support Groups are adapted to the unique needs of each organization
Current Support Group sites and participants include:
Cardinal McCloskey Services
(Social Workers serving children in foster boarding homes)
Legal Aide Society
(Social Work Borough Supervisors in the Juvenile Rights Division)
Nurse Family Partnership
(Nurse Home Visitors in the Targeted Citywide Initiative)
Each consultation partnership begins with a preliminary meeting to assess the organization’s existing support programming and current needs. Support Groups meet on site, and can be scheduled monthly or bimonthly.
For more information, or to schedule an initial meeting, please contact Barbara Pichler, Clinical Director at The Fostering Connection. |
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