🎉🎉 Georgia Clifton who reached her one year anniversary of caring for Allambi Care on 24/08/2024 🎉🎉

Save the date for Family Connections & Culture Ongoing Training being held on 12th September in the Mezzanine room at Allambi. Please come along and spend time with like-minded people while listening to training that will help you support the child or young person you care for. As usual, morning tea and lunch will be provided so please let your Case Worker know by 05/09/2024 if you are attending and/or have special dietary requirements. 

 

My Forever Family has training and resources that help Carers with their Fostering journey.

 

August 24: 1pm to 3pm

August 27: 10am to 12pm & 7.30pm to 9.30pm

This webinar will cover what trauma informed care is and how trauma affects children's behaviour. It will help you to increase your confidence to support children who have experienced trauma, strategies to strengthen the carer and children relationship, an awareness and sensitivity of the dynamics of trauma.

 

September 3: 10am to 11.30am

September 10: 6pm to 7.30pm

September 14: 10am to 11.30am

This training session is presented by Noel MacNamara of Australian Childhood Foundation and will look at how children in care experience loss and grief and what we as carers can do to support them through it.

 

For more information or to register for these training sessions go to:

Training opportunities for carers - My Forever Family NSW

Here is the 12th and final article based on the book the ‘Whole Brain Child’ by Dr Dan Sigel. Our amazing Play Therapist, Grahame Williams, suggested the topic so we know it will be good. The article is an easy read and presents strategies that you can use with your child or young person. 

The last strategy in The Whole-Brain Child is directed at helping children navigate the conflict they will inevitably have with other children (school, siblings, etc.) by using some mindsight skills. Mindsight is “understanding our own mind as well as understanding the mind of another,” and understanding the mind of another is the focus of Strategy 12: Connection Through Conflict.

 

Earlier in the chapter, Siegel and Bryson speak about the brain as being wired for “we.” They say, “… what happens between brains has a great deal to do with what happens within each individual brain. Self and community are fundamentally interrelated, since every brain is continually constructed by its interactions with others.” And of course, one of the interactions that will happen between brains is conflict, so what do we teach our children? 

 

We teach them to:

When we teach our children to recognise the other’s point of view, we are trying to elicit empathy. We can do this by asking them how they think another person feels or why they think someone reacted in a certain way. As we get our children to recognise other points of view, we also want them to read nonverbal communication. We want them to understand body language. And the last (and possibly the hardest) is repair. We do want our children to say sorry, but sometimes they need to take some further steps to repair the parts of their relationships that have been ravaged by conflict.

 

“Sometimes a sincere apology is enough, especially when combined with honesty and sincerity… but kids also need to learn what it means to go the extra mile and take specific steps toward reconciliation.”

 

So, what does this look like? Well, with Elise, a 4-year-old, and Maggie, a 1-year-old, we are not making great leaps and strides here, but we are laying a foundation. When a toy is grabbed away, when someone is accidentally (or not) shoved, we ask Elise how she thinks a sobbing Maggie feels. Then we have Elise check on Maggie, try to hug Maggie or rub her back, and if the conflict involves a toy we try to work out sharing or trading or another compromise. We also encourage Elise to use words (not just grabbing) when they have a conflict, so that she can be a model for Maggie. And frankly, this is a daily occurrence at our house, so we are going to keep practicing and encouraging empathy in our children.

 

As much as I would like to have conflict-free days, Siegel and Bryson say, “If [our children] are going to be in relationships, they’re going to face quarrels and disagreements,” so let’s teach them these mindsight skills. When “children develop these mindsight skills, they can learn to balance the importance of their own inner lives with those of others.” Learning to balance what you are feeling and what another person is feeling is a difficult task, so we need to start helping our children sort through conflict.

 

I know some of these strategies sound like common sense, but honestly, they are not my first instinct. My first instinct is to stop the situation, the sooner the better, not to mediate who gets the Dora microphone first, but my kids will benefit from me taking the time to implement these strategies. They will benefit from me resisting my first instinct, taking a deep breath, and calmly teaching them how to consider one another and make the necessary repairs to their relationship.

 

I have spent the summer months summarising each strategy in The Whole-Brain Child, but I want you to know that there is so much in this book. At the end of each strategy, the authors include illustrations that show families acting out the strategies. Then at the end of each chapter, the book provides illustrations to show how to teach the concepts about the brain to your child, and each chapter includes a section called Integrating Ourselves which is directed at us, the parents. Taking the time to read and process the Integrating Ourselves content might be difficult, but understanding your past and how it affects your relationships will help you see where you can make changes and better connect with your children.

 

Pick up a copy of The Whole-Brain Child so you can further explore the concepts presented in the book and practice the strategies with your children. And once you’re done practicing, well, practice some more. I’m sure your children will present you with plenty of opportunities — I know mine will.

“He showed me that I shouldn’t have to feel confused, that I should know my roots, where I’m from and who I am” – Aboriginal young person in care 

 

Case Workers are an essential link for children in out-of-home care to build relationships with their family and culture. Their role to create positive communication between carers and families gives children in out-of-home care the capacity to be connected to culture, and thus form their identity. However, these relationships can involve complex interpersonal dynamics and Case Workers often experience high workloads which can impact their capacity to focus on relationship-building. 

 

In the film, the young person touches on the fact that he’d had numerous Case Workers in the past and because of this, he was unable to build up a positive relationship or trust. He expressed how Case Workers didn’t know him or follow through with their promises. His new Case Worker, Trevor, stood out to the young person because he created a comfortable environment for him to talk freely and spent time getting to know him so that he wasn’t a stranger to him. Trevor listened to the young person and was proactive in taking the first steps to arranging family time. 

 

“I love learning culture… because it makes me feel connected and some sort of togetherness… That knowledge, that love, gave me strength” – Aboriginal young person in care

 

If you are caring for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island child or young person and need more cultural advice and support, speak with your Case Worker or contact our Cultural Therapeutic Team.

 

RESOURCE: Keeping kids connected with video chats