SOS Illinois Participates in Mental Illness Awareness Week 2020
During this time, we have learned our health is linked; and we have experienced a ripple effect. The health of one person, one neighborhood, one city, one state, one nation, has been tested. The same is true of our mental health. Our connectedness is forcing us to stay apart physically, but emotionally we need each other to get through this. By staying home we protect our world’s physical health, but by connecting through a phone call, zoom meeting, or social media we protect each other’s mental health. We are each other’s strength. Join SOS Illinois in support for Mental Illness Awareness Week – #MIAW.
SOS Children’s Villages Illinois is raising awareness for mental health October 4-10 in an effort to ensure children in foster care have the opportunity to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. We place great importance on the mental health of the children in our care. That’s why SOS Illinois has a dedicated team of clinicians that provide trauma-informed therapeutic services for each of the children and families we serve.
Children in Foster Care are 60% More Likely to Struggle with a Mental Health Condition
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Healthy Foster Care American Initiative, mental and behavioral health is the “greatest unmet health need for children and teens in foster care.” The statistics for children in foster care in relation to mental health issues are alarming, especially considering the following statistics on youth mental health in the general population:
1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year
Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10-34
The average delay between onset of mental illness symptoms and treatment is 11 years
17.2% of the general population of high school students have “serious thoughts” of suicide, including 47.7% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual high school students
50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14
High school students with significant symptoms of depression are more than twice as likely to drop out compared to their peers
70.4% of youth in the juvenile justice system have a diagnosed mental illness
For youth in foster care, especially those within the LGBTQ+ community, these statistics are increased.
Psychotropic Medications Prescribed Present Alarming Concerns
Medications such as mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety prescriptions, antipsychotics and stimulants are being prescribed to youth in foster care as a method of treatment for behavioral and mental health issues in children as young as 3 years of age.
Research has identified alarming concerns in relation to the administration of these psychotropic medications, including the fact that oftentimes multiple medications are used simultaneously from the onset of treatment.
The SOS Illinois Village model of care presents daily, regular opportunities for youth in foster care to obtain guidance, counseling and support that offers a stable environment centered around the healing of traumatic events in their lives so that they may break free from the limitations set by their mental health conditions and eliminate their dependency on psychotropic medications.
The Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act Seeks to Closely Monitor Administration of Psychotropic Medications
This Act was brought into effect in 2011 and requires that State Child and Family Services Plans includes details of how emotional trauma associated with maltreatment for children in foster care is addressed, including details on how psychotropic medication usage is monitored.
You can read more about the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act here.
In addition to the monitoring of psychotropic medication usage, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act of 2008 requires that each state consult with pediatricians and additional experts in order to develop a plan for the coordination and oversight of medical and mental health services for children in foster care.
SOS Illinois Provides Opportunities for Healing and Longevity
Each child that enters our Villages has a dedicated support system from the very start. From our full-time Foster Parents to our on-site clinicians, therapists, mentors, case managers, support staff and more, the youth in our care are able to find safety and security in knowing they’re surrounded by a community that only wants the best for them.
These children are offered a real chance at renewing their sense of trust and hope. They’re also able to heal from the traumas of their past while gaining footing on steady ground in an effort to provide them the confidence, skills and resources they need in order to become responsible and caring adults.
SOS Illinois Supports the #MIAW Campaign
You are not alone #MIAW
The theme of this year’s Mental Illness Awareness Week is, “What People with Mental Illness Want You to Know.” Throughout the week, we will be raising the voices of those with lived experience to talk about some of the conditions and symptoms that are most misunderstood.
Mental Illness Awareness Week runs from October 4 – 10 and coincides with additional related events:
Tuesday Oct. 6: National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding
Thursday Oct. 8: National Depression Screening Day
Saturday Oct. 10: World Mental Health Day
Saturday Oct. 10: NAMI Walks National Day of Hope
You Are Not Alone
NAMI continues our year-long awareness campaign, You Are Not Alone, to feature the stories of people affected by mental illness to fight stigma, inspire others and educate the broader public. Now more than ever, the mental health community must come together and show that no one is ever really alone. No one should be without the information, support, connection and help they need.
How To Participate in #MIAW
There are many ways to get involved and remind people they are not alone by sharing stories about how connecting with someone during the health crisis has affected you, or what it means to have access to care by sharing through text, graphics, video or any other medium.
Follow SOS Illinois during the #MIAW Campaign
During Mental Illness Awareness Week, and the full month of October, SOS Illinois will be sharing resources, insights, and wisdom about caring for your own mental health, and supporting the mental health of others. You can find us on our social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Additionally, we will be sharing information about the ways that our Village Model of Care helps to support the mental health of youth in foster care, and how you can get involved to help get our communities happy and healthy.
View the original post here.
Mercy Home Supports Families Through Teletherapy
As the world unites to fight the spread of the coronavirus, the safety and well-being of our children is our top priority. But our kids have faced steep obstacles in their lives, and continuing their therapeutic treatment is critical – especially during these stressful times. Like the rest of the world, we have adapted to these new circumstances as best we can, utilizing teletherapy to ensure our children and family receive the support they need.
Individual therapy
To minimize the risk of infection for youth and staff during this time, Mercy Home made the difficult decision to temporarily reduce our physical, on-site community as much as possible, with some youth sheltering with friends or relatives, and others remaining on site and being cared for by a smaller group of staff. But technology is helping us remain connected despite physical distance.
Each youth who has temporarily transitioned out of the Home connects at least once a week for individual therapy with their regular therapist. These sessions take place via videoconferencing or phone and are tailored to meet the individual needs of each child. Before we started practicing teletherapy, our IT department took the proper measures to ensure that the confidentiality of our families was protected.
“I’ve been really pleasantly surprised – both at how well we can do telehealth and how receptive the kids and parents are to it.”
In just a short time, Mercy Home therapist Sally Weld has seen a positive response from the youth she has been able to work with in this new way. “I’ve been really pleasantly surprised – both at how well we can do telehealth and how receptive the kids and parents are to it,” Weld said. “Kids who don’t want to do therapy in person – who are really reluctant or just struggle sitting in the office – they’re asking, ‘can you call me two or three times a week – not just once?’”
In addition to the challenges that brought them to our Home, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented our kids with a new set of stressors. Their lives have shifted dramatically as their routines have been interrupted, their learning methods have altered, and their living situations have changed.
“I have a few guys who this is a really, really challenging time for,” Weld said. “And it really reiterates to me that they need help and they need services.” While talk therapy may work well for some kids, others have an easier time opening up when their bodies are engaged in physical activity. Though Mercy Home therapist Katie Cunningham can’t have in-person sessions right now, she is getting creative and finding new ways to engage youth, like going for virtual walks.
“It was a beautiful day and we both decided to take a walk and have our therapy over the phone at the same time,” Cunningham said. “And it was just nice, because it was like we were taking a walk and we could both feel how great the sun felt and how nice the wind felt and notice those things.” For many of us, going for walks is a great way to get outside for fresh air during this period of social distancing. But sadly, for some of our kids, this is not an option due to community violence.
When getting outside is not an option in this era of social distancing, our therapists have recommended indoor physical activities including YouTube exercise videos, dancing, running around the backyard, and doing pushups. And since therapists are used to seeing our kids almost every day, they are finding new ways to stay connected, like watching the same TV shows or playing video games online together.
A safe place in residential
For those youth who remain on site because they had no safer temporary place to go during this crisis, videoconferencing is still allowing them to keep connected to those staff with whom they have build therapeutic relationships but who may themselves be sheltering at home to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Each youth is still able to have weekly individual therapy sessions with their regular therapist through videoconference.
One of the kids who Weld works with is still living at Mercy Home right now, and they continue to meet weekly.
“He has a very complicated situation, but knowing that Mercy Home was open and a safe place for him to be was hugely important,” Weld said. With safe social distancing practices, kids living at Mercy Home continue to enjoy some of the same activities they always have, such as playing basketball in our gym, playing in our soccer building, and playing with our facility dog Pongo.
“It went pretty well. I could see a lot of smiles on their faces – they were excited to interact with each other.”
Group Therapy
At Mercy Home, youth often develop close bonds with their peers. One of the places bonds are formed is during group therapy sessions. Group therapy allows kids to discuss common issues they are facing, break down barriers, and find new ways to relate to each other.
During her individual therapy sessions, Cunningham found that kids were asking her if she had heard from their peers and how they were doing. And in the spirit of innovation, she decided to bring them together through a group therapy video conference.
“It went pretty well. I could see a lot of smiles on their faces – they were excited to interact with each other,” Cunningham said.
“I think that a big piece to all of this is normalizing how challenging this time is. And they can relate to one another in that because, quite frankly, many of these kids were not scheduled to transition home right now, so the challenges that they’re facing with their families are really to be expected.”
Family Therapy
During this time of sheltering in place, people are spending a lot more time with family or those with whom they live. As part of our teletherapy treatment plan, therapists continue to hold family therapy sessions on a weekly basis. “Because of everyone being cooped up – things that are so small are becoming really big. And trying to manage moments like that is more so the focus than unpacking big family histories.”
Moments like these demonstrate how important it is that our therapists continue to be there to support families. In providing remote family therapy sessions, Cunningham has found that it’s not only the kids who need support during this crisis, but parents as well.
“Parents are trying to be really strong through all this right now and brave,” Cunningham said.
“Sometimes I like to just create space where they can vent and tell me about some of their fears and worries – and I’ve noticed they feel more inclined to do that when their child is not present. I’ve called parents individually and we’ll have sessions in that capacity.”
Though this is a trying time for our families, it’s also an opportunity to practice the skills they have been working on through treatment. The goal for most kids is to equip them with the skills they need to successfully transition back home or to independent living ultimately. And while many of them return home on some weekends to practice these skills, as they do each day in school or at their workplaces, the current situation allows them to identify things they still need to work on.
“Parents are trying to be really strong through all this right now and brave.”
“I think for me, it really has become kind of like a measuring stick. For some kids, I’m like, ‘wow, you’ve made a lot of progress, and you’re able to do it better than I thought,” Weld said.
“It’s really providing a lot of data in terms of where we are at in their treatment, and where we need to go.”
Mercy Home is using every tool at our disposal to make sure our kids and families continue to build on the progress that they have made when this crisis gripped our country and our city in the past month. While some of the specific ways we’re providing healing for those in our care might look different than they did several weeks ago, our core mission and therapeutic approach remains constant. And something kids can depend on during a time of change and uncertainty is worth its weight in gold.
Please see the original post on Mercy Home’s Blog here.
The Mental Health Impact of Family Separation
AFFIRMATIONS Spring 2019
A publication of the Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago
The policy of separating children from migrant families at the U.S. border brought the issue of family separation into the national conversation.
As social workers, we are already familiar with the negative mental health impacts for children who are forcibly separated from their parents; we have long seen the consequences for children in the child welfare system.
Professor Sonya Leathers
In the summer of 2018, national attention became focused on migrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S. border. The policy of mandatory family separation was short-lived, but as of January 2019 there were an estimated 10,500 unaccompanied minors in detention centers in the U.S. Many of these children will not be reunited with family, and some are likely to go into foster care.
Professor Sonya Leathers, drawing on her experience with attachment and trauma among children in the child welfare system, observes that there are always mental health impacts for children who are separated from their primary caregivers. She notes that trauma will vary with the age of the child, their particular developmental needs, current or past stresses, and by how the separation is handled.
“But, in the situation at the border there has been a lack of attention to the needs of the children and how very vulnerable they are,” she says. “Their parents and siblings have really been their lifeline, not just at the moment of separation but also because they’ve been through enormous challenges up to that point. And then to have that lifeline abruptly separated...I fear there will be an enormous mental health impact.”
Assistant Professor Jennifer Geiger agrees, observing that even if a migrant family is fleeing violence or extreme poverty, the children have still felt safety and security in being with a parent or caregiver. She compares this to what she’s seen with children in the child welfare system. “Children fundamentally wish to stay with their parents and their family, even though home life may be abusive or neglectful. It might have been the worst situation you can imagine, but the child will almost always say they want to be back with their family,” she says. “So, working with and supporting the family and keeping the family intact is the desired outcome for the child’s mental health and well-being.”
For cases in which removal of the child is recommended, Dr. Leathers says that child welfare practitioners have been working toward a system of care that attends to the attachment needs of the child. Ideally, the trauma of separation is lessened by making sure the child understands the circumstances and understands that they will continue to have a connection to their parent. “We know from child welfare studies and practice that children fare much better when the separation is more gradual,” she says. “It’s helpful if they are able to go with the parent to their new home, and to know that the parent is involved in that decision.”
Assistant Professor Jennifer Geiger
Dr. Geiger explains that for children entering the child welfare system, the trauma of separation from family can stem from many variables, such as the allegations against the parent, who is present when the separation occurs, the age of the child, the relationship between the child and caregivers, how the adults in the situation are responding, or whether it happens at home or elsewhere. “There is always some degree of trauma as a result of the separation,” she says. “In some cases, children may develop traumatic responses to professionals who are present at the time of removal.”
Geiger worries that with the separations at the U.S. border, neither parents nor children had time to prepare. “Plus, there’s the involvement of military or law enforcement, and the presence of weapons. All of this increases the trauma,” she says. “In separating these children from their families and placing them in institutional care, it really seems as if policymakers are not considering the long-term impacts to the children.”
Dr. Leathers observes that in child welfare, children and teens are placed in an institutional setting only after an in-depth review process, to ensure it is required to meet the child’s treatment needs. “Placement in group care usually occurs only when the child has intense physical or mental health needs that cannot be met by being placed in foster care,” she says. “And when they are placed in a group setting, we hope to make the stay as short as possible.”
Dr. Geiger adds that with children who are placed in an institutional setting such as congregate care, the trauma may become further complicated. “Research shows that this is not the best environment for kids, especially if they have higher needs. In this setting there’s more instability and staff turnover,” she says, “so it’s harder for the children to form relationships with their adult caregivers.”
Geiger notes that the child welfare system is moving away from placing children in institutional care. “With the passage of the Family First Act, there will not be as much funding for those types of placements, and this will be a real shift in how we practice child welfare,” she says, “but the goal has always been to balance the safety and well-being of the child with minimizing trauma and the resulting mental health issues.”
For the migrant children who were placed in detention centers or shelters, Leathers says that it’s hard to know what sort of care the children are receiving. “Care providers working in the shelters are probably well- meaning and want to provide the best care they can, but they are probably overwhelmed by the numbers of children,” she says. “And we don’t know how many of the children are receiving trauma-informed care.”
Even when children are reunited with their families, the process of reunification may be difficult. “We know that severing the attachment between parent and child is traumatizing, and trying to mend that is extremely difficult. Reattachment doesn’t happen automatically,” Geiger says. “We see this in the child welfare system, and social workers need to play a role in the process, helping to mend the relationship and the psychological and emotional trauma.”
“ There is always some degree of trauma as a result of the separation.
In some cases, children may develop traumatic responses to professionals who are present at the time of removal.”
“For the mental health of the children, the surest remedy is prevention, making sure that families are not separated to begin with,” adds Dr. Leathers. She says that among families entering the child welfare system, there is typically a significant level of need, making it difficult for case workers to address the various needs of the parents and the children. “I would love to see a system that puts as much effort and investment into strengthening those families and making sure that parents are well- equipped from the time they have a child,” she says.
Assistant Professor Christina DeNard
Assistant Professor Christina DeNard, whose research focuses on improving services for families in the child welfare system, is in complete agreement. “From the literature, we know that families encountering the child welfare system already have risk factors. Once they’re in the system, the interventions are individual, it becomes an individual issue, and the onus is on the individual or the family,” she says. “We need to support families before they enter the system. If we invest in our communities, we can see a lot of difference in terms of families flourishing.”