The Blessings Family Handout for the DCFS Focus Group Meeting

When I got to meet with the DCFS focus group on August 5th, in addition to telling my story I prepared a handout to be able to give to each person who attended the meeting.  Below is a copy of the handout I prepared:

The Blessings Story – Broken Bonds

The Blessings Family
2009

Introduction: 

As a Legal Risk foster parent for the State of Utah, I adopted

three siblings from DCFS who all shared the same birth mother who is an IV drug abuser.  All three of my children had intrauterine drug exposure to heroin and cocaine.  I eventually found myself parenting two children who were diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder.  My home became unsafe for family members as well as our family pets.  My family experienced a lack of mental health services, appropriate community based resources and services that were needed to be able to successfully help my children and keep my home safe.   Due to the lack of mental health resources, I was forced to relinquish two of my children back into State custody and ultimately disrupting their adoptions.

 

Attachment Disorder: Traits and Symptoms

Attachment disorder affects all aspects of a child’s functioning.  A child may display some combination of the following primary symptoms:

 

   ●  Behavior:  oppositional and defiant, impulsive, destructive, lie and steal aggressive and abusive, hyperactive, 
        self-destructive, cruel to animals, irresponsible, fire setting.

   ●  Emotions:  intense anger and temper, sad, depressed, hopeless, moody, irritable, fearful and anxious
   ●  Thoughts:  negative beliefs about self, relationships and life in general (“negative working model”), lack of 
        cause-and-effect thinking, attention and learning problems.
   ●  Relationships:  lacks trust, controlling, manipulative, does not give and receive genuine affection and love,      
        indiscriminately affectionate with strangers, unstable peer relationships, blames others for own mistakes or
        problems, victimizes others/victimized.
   ●  Physical:  poor hygiene, tactilely defensive, enuresis and encopresis, accident prone, high pain tolerance
   ●  Moral/Spiritual:  lack of faith, compassion, remorse, meaning and other prosocial values, identification with evil
        and the dark side of life.

Recommendations:

   ● Using Foster Care as a resource for children with mental illness and attachment disorders is not helpful for the

        child or the family and does not promote healthy attachment.
    ●  Parents must have the necessary mental health resources to be able to effectively parent a child with trauma,
        attachment disorders and mental illness.
    ●  Children are best served when they can remain in the home and to do that we must provide community based
         and In-Home Mental health services.
    ●  Using a Child Welfare System that is adversarial and hostile is not the correct way to help families with
         Mental Health issues and especially children with attachment disorders.
    ●  Parents must have weekly respite when parenting children with attachment disorders.

Resources:

http:www.attachmentexperts.com/whatisattachment.html

www.attach.org

www.attachmenttraumanetwork.com

 

 

I don't know if my handout will be effective, but I wanted to have a one page handout that I could give every person there so that when the meeting was over they would have a reminder of who I was and what my family had experienced due to the lack of DCFS post adopt support, community based mental health services and in home mental health services.  I pray for the day that no child has to be placed back in foster care to get appropriate mental health services.