FAM Monthly Adoption and Foster Care Newsletter

March e-Newsletter

Volume 1 Edition 4

March 2009

Greetings Families and happy spring!

March is a month of new beginnings - spring is here, crocuses are peeking through the hard-packed ground, the air is fresh and crisp! This month our newsletter features Gannon, a child looking for a new beginning. Last month's featured child, Emily, remains available , however, her worker has received a number of inquiries regarding her and is hopeful that the right family will soon be identified for her.

Subscriptions to the FAM e-newsletter continue to rise and we thank you for your support. The FAM newsletter keeps you abreast of the latest information and events for foster and adoptive families in the northwestern corner of CT. Please visit our website for more information on foster care and adoption and updates regarding local events. Our new Caregivers Resource page (Resource page link) on our website provides readers with links to articles and websites relevant to our readers' lives. If you have any suggestions please send them to me for inclusion on the Resource page.

Check out the article on teenage brain development! Click on the link and watch the entire PBS special about the way the teenage brain works and the maturation process. Next month as a follow-up, we will feature an article on teenagers and sleep.

All licensed families should receive an invitation to our FAMilies Festival scheduled for April 25 at Quassy. Included on the invitation will be a coupon for free admission for the first 100 families to arrive at the festival. Families unable to utilize the coupon will pay $30 per carload which includes all rides as well as cultural events during their visit. Lunch is the responsibility of the family and is not included in the admission price or the coupon. This festival does not take the place of our Family Fun Day in August but is another opportunity FAM is providing for families to become better acquainted with their children's birth cultures. It promises to be a fun and educational experience. We hope to see many of you there!

We continue to feature our article on Fosterware parties. Foster and adoptive parents are the best recruiters for our kids. Please consider holding a fosterware party at your home or church. Our kids need your help in finding good homes.

And, as always, we welcome your comments, suggestions and opinions.

Inside The Teenage Brain

It's the mystery of mysteries -- especially to parents -- the unpredictable and sometimes incomprehensible moods and behaviors of the American teenager. Generations of adults have pondered its cause. Hormones? Rock music? Boredom? Drugs?

In "Inside the Teenage Brain," FRONTLINE chronicles how scientists are exploring the recesses of the brain and finding some new explanations for why adolescents behave the way they do. These discoveries could change the way we parent, teach, or perhaps even understand our teenagers.New neuroscience research has shown that a crucial part of the brain undergoes extensive changes during puberty -- precisely the time when the raging hormones often blamed for teen behavior begin to wreak havoc. It's long been known that the architecture of the brain is largely set in place during the first few years of life. But with the aid of new technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), scientists are mapping changes in pre-teen and teenage brains and finding evidence that remarkable growth and change continue for decades.

The vast majority of brain development occurs in two basic stages: growth spurts and pruning. In utero and throughout the first several months of life, the human brain grows at a rapid and dramatic pace, producing millions of brain cells.

"This is a process that we knew happened in the womb, maybe even in the first 18 months of life," explains neuroscientist Dr. Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Mental Health. "But it was only when we started following the same children by scanning their brains at two-year intervals that we detected a second wave of overproduction."

This second wave -- occurring roughly between ages 10 and 13 -- is quickly followed by a process in which the brain prunes and organizes its neural pathways. "In many ways, it's the most tumultuous time of brain development since coming out of the womb," says Giedd.

Confronted by these new discoveries, academics, counselors, and scientists are divided on just what all this means for children.

"Our leading hypothesis ... is the 'use it or lose it' principle," Jay Giedd tells FRONTLINE. "If a teen is doing music or sports or academics, those are the cells and connections that will be hardwired. If they're lying on the couch or playing video games or [watching] MTV, those are the cells and connections that are going to survive."

But others voice caution in leaping to conclusions about the implications of these findings.

"The relationship between desired behaviors and brain structure is totally unknown," John Bruer tells FRONTLINE. He is president of the James S. McDonnell Foundation and author of The Myth of the First Three Years. "This simple, popular, newsweekly-magazine idea that adolescents are difficult because their frontal lobes aren't mature is one we should be very cautious of."

This FRONTLINE report also looks at research that is helping scientists understand another puzzling aspect of adolescent behavior -- sleep.

Mary Carskadon, director of the E.P. Bradley Hospital Sleep Research Laboratory at Brown University, has spent years mapping the brains of sleepy teens. She has calculated that most teens get about seven and a half hours of sleep each night, while they need more than nine. Some say these sleep debts can have a powerful effect on a teen's ability to learn and retain new material -- especially abstract concepts like physics, math, and calculus.

Despite all the new scientific research, "Inside the Teenage Brain" suggests that there is a consensus among experts that the most beneficial thing for teenagers is good relationships with their parents. Even Dr. Giedd wonders about the kinds of lessons parents can draw from his science. "The more technical and more advanced the science becomes, often the more it leads us back to some very basic tenets. ... With all the science and with all the advances, the best advice we can give is things that our grandmother could have told us generations ago: to spend loving, quality time with our children."

Ellen Galinsky, a social scientist and the president of the Families and Work Institute, has seen scientific fads come and go. But she says her research for a book about children shows there are enduring lessons for parents. Drawing on her interviews with more than a thousand children, she found that, to her surprise, teens were yearning for more time and more communication with their parents, even when they seemed to be pushing them away. She told FRONTLINE, "Even though the public perception is about building bigger and better brains, what the research shows is that it's the relationships, it's the connections, it's the people in children's lives who make the biggest difference."

** Reprinted with permission from PBS Frontline

Commission on Child Protection and Attorneys for Children in Care

by Carolyn Signorelli

The Commission on Child Protection is a relatively new agency created by the legislature in June of 2005 and in operation since July of 2006. The Commission is responsible for hiring a Chief Child Protection Attorney to carry out the Commission's mission to provide quality legal representation to poor parents and all children in Juvenile Court cases where the Department of Children and Families (DCF) has brought a petition claiming that a child is neglected, abused or has special needs that the home cannot meet. These children are entitled to attorneys and the Commission is the agency that appoints them. Children are assigned their attorney at the very beginning of the court case.

            In some cases a child in your care may have a separate Guardian ad Litem (GAL) responsible for representing the child's best interest to the court. Attorneys and GAL's are expected to establish a relationship with the child in order to properly represent the child's interests with DCF and in court. The following is an excerpt from the Standards of Practice for Attorneys Representing Children in Child Protection Matters:

     ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN

Communicate and Visit with the Child.
Action: Visit the child in his or her current placement and, if appropriate, meet with the child outside of his or her placement with sufficient frequency and in such duration and manner to establish an age-appropriate attorney/client relationship with the child. At a minimum, meetings should occur (1) prior to all court appearances, case status conferences, pretrial conferences and mediations, and (2) following (and, when possible, prior to) significant transitions including, but not limited to, initial removal and changes in placement.

Investigate.
Action: To support the client's position, the child's attorney should conduct thorough, continuing, and independent investigations and discovery that should include, but not be limited to:
   a. Reviewing the child's DCF, psychiatric, psychological, drug and  alcohol, medical, law enforcement, school, and other records relevant to the case;
    b. Reviewing the court files of the child and siblings, as well as the case narratives and records of DCF and other service providers;
    c. Contacting lawyers for the other parties and guardians ad litem or court-appointed special advocates (CASA) for background information;
    d. Contacting and meeting with the parents/legal guardians/ caretakers of the child, with permission of their lawyer;
    e. Obtaining necessary authorizations for the release of information;
    f. Interviewing individuals involved with the child, including school personnel, DCF social workers, foster parents and other caretakers, family friends, relatives, school personnel, coaches, clergy, mental health professionals, physicians, law enforcement officers, and other potential witnesses;
    g. Reviewing relevant photographs, video or audio tapes, and other evidence; and
    h. Attending treatment, placement, administrative hearings, other proceedings involving legal issues (such as school PPT's)    concerning the child as needed. ...

Request Services.
Action: Consistent with the child's wishes, the child's attorney should identify the child's needs and seek appropriate services (by court order if necessary) to access entitlements, to protect the child's interests and to implement an individualized service plan. These services should be culturally competent, community-based whenever possible and provided in the least restrictive setting appropriate to the child's needs. These services may include, but are not limited to: