Making Transracial Placements Work
Workshops for Adoption & Fostering Professionals
| Celebrating Diversity in Trans-racial (and other) Placements is a workshop for Foster Carers and Adoptive parents. Usually some professionals attend as well. |
| Overview The relentless pressures to find a home and create a family for a looked-after child make it increasingly difficult for many professionals to take a fresh, creative look at their work. This course is designed to offer not just a fresh, but a unique perspective. The challenges of working with children and families when a disruption has occurred or is looming, or when everybody is at their wits end can increase stress for everybody involved. The dysfunctional demands and behaviours of looked-after children can trigger fear and frustration in their carers, often with distressing and sometimes disastrous effects. Many workers are struggling with old paradigms and new pressures to help children mend or heal the wounds of biological, foster or adoptive families. Multiple residential and respite placements will exacerbate problems for children and adults. There is growing awareness that something different needs to happen - not just for more efficiency pre-placement but for greater effectiveness post-placement. By influencing the adult child relationship in new ways, parents, carers and professionals can reduce the financial and human costs, with their potentially devastating long-term effects of family disruptions. The models and approaches in these workshops will help in assessing applicants and supporting placements by offering new ways of understanding behaviour patterns and family dynamics. Participants
will be involved in exercises, discussions and presentations that will
offer new perspectives on Placement Decisions, Group Dynamics,
Key-worker Systems, Concurrent Planning, Parenting Tasks, Parenting
Techniques, Listening Skills, and techniques for understanding the
models and theories outlined below. GATHERING HIGH VALUE INFORMATION Speakers delete, generalise and distort information in twelve specific ways, which we intuitively recognise as we listen to people. A tendency to fill in the gaps from our own maps and models of the world often results in poor listening, false assumptions, inadequate questions and placements that are less well planned! Knowing the 10 key questions and listening between the lines, helps the process of gathering ‘High Value Information’ as a better basis for decision making.
THE FAMILY’S DRAMATIC TRIANGLE The
drama triangle is a set of survival strategies - determined in
childhood - which keep us on the frustrating misery-go-round of habit
that is held in place by playing psychological Games. Although the Rescuer / Victim / Rescuer 'Drama Triangle' will be familiar to many people, not so many are familiar with its antidote. IDENTIFYING PARENTING TASKS AND SKILLS Having had the privilege and pleasure of spending time with - and had some training from - the excellent Dr Joseph Crumbley (whose book Transracial Adoption and Foster Care I highly recommend), I give far more emphasis to the following parenting tasks. As Dr Crumbley says, "Practitioners can support parents with the challenge [of the subtle and not so subtle impact of transracial placement] by encouraging the multidimensional bonding and attachments that will need to occur on an emotional as well as a cultural level." These tasks include:
CREATING LISTENING ENVIRONMENTS Nancy Kline's Excellent book 'Time To Think' offers an elegant approach for encouraging and empowering people to speak openly and to express themselves with clarity and courage. This approach will significantly increase the listening and information gathering skills of all participants, be they adoptive parents, foster carers, residential workers, supervisors, key-workers or any one else concerned about the child's welfare. This framework will also be particularly beneficial for and add greatly to the skills of anyone who wants to improve their group-work skills. Elements of a Thinking Environment include: Attention, Incisive Questions, Equality and Diversity. Attention involves listening with Respect, Interest and Fascination. 'Time To Think' - Listening to Ignite The Human Mind Nancy Kline: |
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| Facilitator |
Michael Mallows FAPHP |
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Reason for commissioning this Learning & Development opportunity
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§ Continued Professional Development § Service Development § Improve interdepartmental and inter-agency communication § Understand Logical Levels of Change |
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Overview |
The module focuses three different approaches to interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. Crafty Listening is about the Art & Craft of listening. Clean Language is an extraordinary approach to asking questions. And Celebrating Diversity is about recognising our differences[1] as a source of abundance and a cause for celebration by talking about them more overtly, not least to raise awareness in the adults who live and work with trans-racially - and same race - adopted and fostered children. |
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Development objectives |
Knowledge On successful completion of this module participants[2] will: · Be better able to support parents and colleagues faced with the specific challenges that ensue from the subtle and not so subtle impact of trans-racial placements[3] on children (and adults) · Identify the thinking patterns that keep people ‘running on habit’ · Be clear about the importance of silence · Understand how to build and maintain rapport · Recognise the linguistic deletions, distortions and generalisations that, unchecked, can result in poor decisions (or poor placements) Skills On successful completion of this module participants will be able to: · Ask questions that elicit High Value Information, which is essential for making good decisions · Use questions that increase self-awareness · Be aware of how the quality of our attention impacts on other people’s functional intelligence · Identify Fundamental Filters for motivation & inspiration · Develop metaphors with families, teams, colleagues · Reduce so-called ‘personality clashes’[6] |
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Who will benefit: |
This worshop could be delivered for parents, carers and professionals together. Adoptive parents. Foster Carers. Panel members. Residential and Social workers. Managers. Supervisors. Team leaders. Mediators. Counsellors. Teachers. Sencos. etc. |
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Prerequisites |
Questionnaires. Some pre-reading |
[1] Diversity is about age, gender, education, race, sexual orientation, class, oh, and pigmentation.
[2]
Knowledge will be adapted as appropriate to the roles and tasks of the
participants.
(Adoptive Parents, Foster carers
Practitioners, Teachers, Managers, Adoption Panels, etc.)
[3] This training will also be of relevance to placements in general
[4] Fierce: robust, intense, strong, passionate, eager, powerful
[5] Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations. Piatkus.
[6] Often akin to sulky children squabbling in the playground.
FEEDBACK from attendees
In what ways did the course meet your expectations?
"It enabled me to explore different methods of understanding where exactly the people I assess are in their life cycles and 'scripts'"
"The Drivers and Emotional Freedom Techniques"
"Gave me information I can use in practice"
"Found it very enjoyable and challenging"
"Exceeded expectations - an exciting course"
"Gave me tools to use when working with families"
"I admire and value the work Michael does and how he presents it"
"Focus"
What aspects did you find most relevant?
"I realised that feelings need to be understood through feelings"
"The presentation was refreshing, taking me away from traditional training programmes"
"I learned not to project my own assumptions and solutions"
"Case studies "
"Provided good material"
"Different thoughts and ways of developing a more holistic approach to assessments "
"Thoroughly enjoyable course."
"Inspiration to be daring in my work."
"Value of Transactional Analysis when working with families"
"I got a lot out of the course and will use it in my work"
"Inclusion of Self"
"Ego States from Transactional Analysis"
"Assessment analysis"
"Lots of useful information to be explored"
What aspects did you find least helpful?
"There was nothing that I found unhelpful but I would have liked more time"
"Perhaps more structure would have helped - but I realise this is personal "