FOSTERING CONNECTIONS

Fostering Connections is a group of clinicians in the community committed to long-term psychotherapy for present and former foster children and youth. These children have often had multiple caregivers, multiple social workers assigned to different phases of placement and, in many cases, multiple placements. Each new placement makes it harder for the child to settle in and trust the connection to a new adult. Most have undergone trauma and neglect, further disrupting their ability and willingness to trust. Fostering Connections is a new service offered through TLC Child & Family Services and Program Goals have been developed for 2008.

Clinicians who have joined Fostering Connections believe that entering into a long-term therapy relationship, focused on exploring the individual's inner world, can be deeply healing and sustaining and can aid these youth's ability to form sustaining connections with others. Clinicians in Fostering Connections commit to seeing one foster child or youth in their private practice, for as long as is necessary, without charge.

Seeing children and youth that have gone through multiple relational disruptions takes dedication, hard-work and quality training and consultation. Senior clinicians in Sonoma County, with special expertise in issues affecting foster children and youth, give their time providing ongoing group consultation to the Fostering Connections clinicians involved in this program.

Currently, 25 clinicians are volunteering their time for Fostering Connections as clinicians and consultants and 17 current and former foster children and youth are being seen through Fostering Connections. The children and youth receiving therapy through this program are being given a special gift that benefits them as they grow and develop. This program plants seeds that may blossom later in their life.

Fostering Connections Program Goals:

1. To provide 25 foster children/youth with therapy through this program in 2008.



2. To established Fostering Connections as a Continuing Education provider for the Board of Behavioral Sciences and the Board of Psychology and provide two training events for clinicians working with foster children and youths in 2008



3. To establish consultation groups in the southern and eastern parts of Sonoma County by mid-2009. Currently, there are consultation groups in Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, and Sebastopol.

Cori Herzig, Psy.D., is the Program Director for Fostering Connections. She can be contacted at 707-823-7300, ext. 303 or at cherzig@tlc4kids.org