My Garden of Thoughts: Reflection #21 --Child Welfare Guide

 

    

    Practitioners who work with in risk and at risk youth need to find more ways in which they can help these youths have a positive outcome in their life experiences. Therefore, the Child Welfare Information Gateway decided to draw up a guide in helping practitioners to identify the factors that could prevent negative events from having a lasting impact on families and youths. 

    Populations of youths who are either at risk or in risk consist of 5 groups: Children exposed to domestic violence, homeless and runaway youth, pregnant and parenting teens victims of child abuse and neglect, and youth in and aging out of the foster care system. In order to combat these situations, experts have found that helping children identify personal skills, trustworthy guardians, and community resources have been the most successful routes of prevention.

    These methods of prevention can be compared to Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, where a diagram shows the impact of outside communities and systems on the individual. In the Child Welfare Information Gateway's guide, they provide a diagram that shows Personal Environment Dynamic. This diagram shows what types of preventions can be put in place by practitioners to families and young children reach healthy social and emotional well-being. It starts at the community level, where the local schools, community organizations, and economy can promote a child's well-being. Then it offers how at the relationship level, parents, peers, and caring adults can make efforts to support and stand for children and their needs. Then, if these two levels are in place, children can also work on the individual level, where they learn how to self-regulate, problem solve, build relationship skills, and become involved in activities outside of home. All of these preventions, if put in place correctly, can actually turn negative situations that happen in a family's life around for the positive. It helps them before they even need help.

    A couple of resources like this in the Manhattan area that I know of are places like Thrive!, Katie's Way, or No Stone Unturned. These places offer life skill building, strengthening families, and offering therapy or psychiatry services in a family setting. Many of the practitioners from these places are trained to work directly with families and specifically focus on their needs and the needs of their children. I think more programs like these would be very beneficial for the community!

- E.