Meet the Fosters: Training and Retaining Foster Care Parents

DESCRIPTION

Foster care parents are key members of the child welfare system and have an immense responsibility in providing a new home, and a healthy, clean, and nurturing environment for children who have been removed from their own homes. While the majority of literature and research on the child welfare system focuses on the children and biological parents, this workshop aims to fill the gaps in this scholarship by focusing on working with foster care parents, specifically mothers.

We will take into consideration factors such as culture and family values, kinship or non-kinship status while applying a caregiver stress and coping model as well as role theory to deepen our understanding of foster parents. We will learn assessments/strategies and interventions (specifically, psychoeducation) to work with foster care families and biological parents and review strategies that enhance recruitment and retention.

PRESENTER

Yamile M. Martí Haidar, Ph.D., LMSW, MA, has been teaching at CSSW since 2011. She has worked at the individual, community, and policy levels and within mental health organizations, schools, community centers, and government agencies. Her clinical experience ranges from issues of substance abuse; the child welfare system; and therapy and group work with families and children, cancer patients, abused women, and abused/neglected children, among others. Dr. Martí has conducted research on the implementation and evaluation of a teacher training intervention for empowerment, as well as, a community empowerment intervention in Puerto Rico. She also collaborated in a psycho-education intervention for young women who are pregnant and in foster care with Dr. Ellen Lukens and Dr. Mary Sormanti of CSSW and conducted a qualitative study on the experiences of foster care mothers.

Dr. Martí’s research areas include the development of resiliency and coping skills for children and women in crisis or facing adversity, the implementation and evaluation of interventions that promote positive mental health in children and women and the role of psychosocial and cultural factors on mental health.

Dr. Marti earned her doctorate at CSSW, where she focused on the experience of foster care mothers. She also holds Masters degrees at Teacher’s College, Columbia University (Concentration in Psychology Education) and in Social Work from CSSW.

For more information and to register for the event, please click here. 6.5 contact hours are available for NYS, NJ and CT Licensed Social Workers. Licensed Social Workers for other states, please refer to your state licensing agency and email swope@columbia.edu. This event is also open to the public.