Supporting Family Connections
Marty Beyer
Speaker: Marty Beyer
Marty Beyer is a child welfare and juvenile justice consultant. She assisted Alabama and Oregon in implementing strengths/needs-based child welfare practice and New York City in implementing visit coaching and serves on the Katie A. Panel in Los Angeles. Her child welfare publications include "Too Little, Too Late: Designing Family Support to Succeed,""One Child and Family at a Time: Strengths/Needs-Based Service Crafting," “Visits as a Powerful Child Welfare Service and “Visit Coaching: Building on Family Strengths to Meet Children’s Needs.” Marty is the developer of Visit Coaching and has provided Visit Coaching training in 20 states. Her articles and visit coaching manual are available on her websites MartyBeyer.com and visitcoachingcommunity.com. Marty has a Ph.D. in clinical/community psychology from Yale University and lives in Oregon.
What does “family” mean to each foster child/youth? “Family” can include blood relationships, past caregivers, and others whom they love. Family can remain important to a foster child/youth even when communication has dwindled or living situations have resulted in separate housing. The quest for family connections can be an ongoing theme in a therapeutic relationship.
Therapists can support the foster child/youth in clarifying why a person was and is a necessary connection and what they now seek from that relationship. In the context of past trauma and child/adolescent development, they are guided to consider how much the connection is being pursued to replace one lost through death or abandonment, to experience missed parts of childhood, to deepen understanding of continuing anger and sadness, to clarify identity, and/or to struggle with the complexities of forgiveness. Young adults previously involved in foster care must often navigate emotions related to family lost throughout their lives. These complicated feelings and experiences can have lasting effects, including on parenting their own children.
Therapists can play a key role in facilitating beneficial visits between children and their families. Every child with a goal of reunification must have visits with the family. To help promote the most positive visits, a therapist can: advocate for developmentally-appropriate visits, meet with the relative and the caregiver to prepare for visits designed to meet the child’s needs, and support the child before and after visits.
Learning Objectives:
- Understanding the importance of family with whom there may not have not been recent contact.
- Identifying interventions to help foster children/youth consider what they hope for from a family connection
- Consider the therapist’s role in supporting quality visits between children and their families.
These events are free, and registration is available up until 24 hours prior to the start of the event. There is no penalty for cancellations. Content level is suitable for working mental health professionals with advanced degrees. There will be no breaks during the programs.
Live courses are interactive and recorded courses are non-interactive. In order to complete and receive credit for live courses, attendees must remain for the duration of each event and complete the course evaluation directly following each event. A link to the evaluation will be shared in the Zoom chat box during the live webinar. To earn home-study credits for recorded webinars, viewers must watch each course and complete the evaluation and posttest for each course. Viewers have 3 chances to pass the posttest with a score of 75% or higher. Once the evaluations or the evaluations and postttests are completed, we will generate and issue certificates via email within one week of completion.
Credit is calculated by the hours of the event (1 hour = 1 credit, 2 hours = 2 credits, etc.). The time it takes to complete the course evaluation and/or the posttest does not count toward CE credits.
To participate in a live webinar, a system that runs Zoom is required. To watch a recorded event for home-study, a system that plays recorded videos is required.
Please send an email to chrissy@ahomewithin.org to request disability accommodations, address grievances, or ask questions.
ASWB: A Home Within, 1381 is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. A Home Within maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period: 3/21/2019 - 3/21/2022. Social workers completing each of the above listed courses may receive 2 continuing education credits per course.
APA: A Home Within is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. A Home Within maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
NBCC: A Home Within has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6701. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. A Home Within is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
