CULTURAL CONNECTIONS in PERMENANCY. Children and youth that have experienced foster care and...

CULTURAL CONNECTION

S in PERMENANC

Y

Children and youth that have experienced foster care and adoption have many risk factors that pose challenges for healthy development.

While all aspects of development are important, positive self-identity is critical for healthy development. Positive identity brings self-assurance, a sense of belonging, a positive view of personal future, and better success in life.

A key element of personal identity is a sense of cultural identity. Developing positive cultural identity can be particularly difficult for children that have experienced foster care or adoption, especially when they are bridging more than one culture.

IDENTIT

Y A person's conception and expression of

their own (self-identity) and others'

individuality or group

affiliations (cultural identity)

CULTURE

A system of values, beliefs, attitudes,

traditions, and standards ofbehavior that

governs the organization of people into social

groups and regulates both

groupindividual behaviors.

RACE

RACE refers to an anthropological system of classification based upon physical characteristics determined by heredity. People who share a genetic heritage and who, as a result, have very similar physical characteristics constitute a racial group.

Racial characteristics include color and texture of hair, color of skin and eyes, stature, bodily proportions and bone structure.

ETHNICITY

Ethnicity generally refers to a classification of people based upon their national or regional origin, such as "Nigerian," "Serbo-Croatian", or "Chinese." The word "ethnic" is derived from a Greek word that means "national" or "foreign.“

Ethnicity and culture are not interchangeable. People from the same ethnic group differ widely in their cultural traits, especially in today's world with relatively easy and widespread immigration and relocation, and conversely, there are often cultural similarities among people from different ethnic groups.

Culture, in contrast to race, or ethnicity, is transmitted through learning.

It is important to emphasize this point, since so much of cultural behavior, once learned, appears to be so "natural" that it can easily be perceived as "instinctive" or biologically determined.

In fact, many people remain unaware that their beliefs and actions are, in fact, largely components of their culture--that is, learned over a lifetime.

When a child is born into his or her family, that child enters the world of his or her earliest and closest relationships. Within the context of his or her family, the child's care is influenced by his or her parents' cultural belief systems, which are translated into parenting practices and guidance for child development.

This influence is referred to as the bio-social cultural context for children.

.

The family culture provides the child with a sense of identity

and a framework for interpreting the world,

therefore greatly influencing the child’s development.

This framework, known as the “developmental niche” outlines ways in which culture and family influence a child's day-to-day environment, experience, and development. The framework is comprised of three elements, including:

Routine customs of care (Social Beliefs)

Physical and social settings of everyday life (Physical Beliefs)

Parental and caregiver cultural belief systems including language, ways of interacting, parenting as well as advice or help seeking behaviors (Caregiver Beliefs)

• The developmental niche is more currently referred to as the central role of caregiving relationships and early learning experiences in development.

• Different cultures have distinctive understandings about social and emotional development, emotional and behavioral health, and well-being.

• These include how children are taught to interpret and express their experiences of fear, anger, and shame.

When children receive care outside of their families of origin the families’ cultural beliefs and practices may be challenged, changed or even lost over time.

Children are forced to adapt and change to their current living situations and may not have a positive sense of cultural, racial or ethnic identity.

What does a healthy racial and ethnic identity look

like?

Key Aspects of Racial and Ethnic Identity include:

Racial & Ethnic Pride Multicultural

Competence Preparation for

Racism and Discrimination

A healthy sense of racial and ethnic identity is exemplified by an individual who:

• Identifies as a member of a particular racial/ethnic group or groups.

• Has a generally positive attitudes about being a member of that group, but also has a balanced view of the strengths and challenges associated with it.

Children and youth in foster care are often separated from their families and communities of origin, both of which are primary sources of experience and understanding about cultural, racial and ethnic identity.

This is also true for children of transcultural or transracial adoptions.

• Without connections to his cultural, ethnic roots, a child being raised in a home of a different culture, race or ethnicity will feel “separate” from the family raising him—they look different, act different, and may have different values. The child also feels “separate “ from his culture of origin because he has no connections.

• He needs connections to those that have a shared culture and race. This is vital to his healthy development. This is especially critical to transracial placements.

• No matter how the child is being raised, society will assign him to the race and culture of his skin, and without connection, he will feel lost and isolated, not fitting in with culture of his adoptive family and not fitting in with his own racial culture.

• By connecting a child to his own race and culture, he will learn to grow in his roots while incorporating what he is learning from his foster or adoptive family about his identity in a transracial home.

CULTURAL AWARENESS ACTIVITY

• Child welfare professionals, play a vital role in helping foster and adoptive families understand the importance of connections for their children.

• However, we must first understand how race, culture, language, and experience influence our learning and behavior.

• This will require the often difficult process of examining our own biases and stereotypes and assumptions of power and privilege, in addition to questioning structures that may hinder equitable access and participation of NEEDED SERVICES for the families and children that we serve.

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Child welfare professionals must have respect for diversity by acknowledging cultural differences, acquiring cultural

knowledge and skills and understanding behavior within a cultural context.

The culture in which a person lives impacts their attitudes, thoughts, feelings and actions. Being able to bridge the gap between our own cultural background and the cultural background of the people we serve will strengthen, support, and facilitate our role in assisting our families and children achieve timely permanency and healthy family connections.

But we must first examine the realities of how race and ethnicity play out in our society, especially within institutions such as the child welfare. We must develop skills for talking about race and ethnicity, addressing racism and discrimination, and integrate the skills and knowledge into day-to-day practice.

• Child welfare professionals must also be culturally responsive--learning from those in which they serve and responding on and individual basis.

• Child welfare professionals must keep in mind that although members of a group share similar traits, the need to see a person as an individual is paramount.

How do we learn from those we serve?

Those who practice cultural responsiveness view the individuals they serve as capable and work to understand their worldview and any oppression or discrimination that they may have experienced as well. They use their best communication skills—open-ended questions and reflective listening—to explore their concerns, thoughts, and ideas. They keep themselves from providing advice or direction as though they were the experts.

Reflective practice involves the continual challenging of oneself and an openness to learning from those we serve. It can be used to thoughtfully examine and explore the areas of:   How cultural and linguistic diversity influences the consultative process

The capacity of the consultant to provide culturally responsive care

The consultant's cultural knowledge and linguistic skills

In order to be culturally responsive, child welfare professionals must also understand how race, culture, language, and experience influence learning and behavior. This will require the often difficult process of examining assumptions of power and privilege, in addition to questioning structures that support or hinder equitable access and participation in NEEDED SERVICES.

From a culturally responsive perspective, we must also realize how certain assumptions or practices benefit some and not others, and for what purposes, and formulate a vision to prevent the marginalization, denigration, and oppression of individuals on the basis of membership in a particular group (e.g., Black, Latino, LGBTQ, Disabled, etc.).

KNOWING WHO YOU ARE DVD

MEPAThe Multi Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA) was enacted in 1994 to eliminate discriminatory practices that deny children permanency.

1. It prohibits states and other entities that are involved in foster care or adoption placements, and that receive federal financial assistance under title IV-E, title IV-B, or any other federal program, from delaying or denying a child's foster care or adoptive placement on the basis of the child's or the prospective parent's race, color, or national origin. 2. It prohibits these states and entities from denying to any individual the opportunity to become a foster or adoptive parent on the basis of the prospective parent's or the child's race, color, or national origin.

3. It requires that, to remain eligible for federal assistance for their child welfare programs, states must diligently recruit foster and adoptive parents who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the children in the state who need foster and adoptive homes.

MEPA con’td

• A child's race, color, or national origin cannot be routinely considered as a relevant factor in assessing the child's best interests. Only in narrow and exceptional circumstances arising out of the specific needs of an individual child can these factors lawfully be taken into account.

Even when the best interests of an individual child appear to compel consideration of these factors, caseworkers cannot assume that needs based on race, color, or national origin can be met only by a racially or ethnically matched parent. Much will depend on the nature of the child's specific needs and on the capacity of individual prospective parents to respond to these needs.

TRANSRACIAL & TRANSCULTURAL

PLACEMENTS

• Debate about transracial and transcultural adoption and foster care continues in the child welfare community. The National Association of Black Social Workers has not changed its 1972 position that transracial adoption is a “form of genocide.”

• Others argue that while there is no empirical research providing evidence that transracial or transcultural placement is harmful to kids, there is no doubt that growing up without permanence is damaging. Therefore, transracial and transcultural placements continue to be made.

• Children are being raised by parents of different races, cultures and identities from their own. How can we support these children in a way that doesn’t force them to choose between their adoptive family and their cultural, racial or personal identities?

Children must have:

• Foster and adoptive families that value diversity, see children as individuals but also recognize and celebrate their cultural and racial differences

• An environment that provides the child an opportunity to participate in positive experiences with their culture. religion, and language

• Association with same race adult and peer role models and relationships on an ongoing basis

• Environmental experiences that teach survival, problem solving, and coping skills which give the child a sense of racial and ethnic pride

• A parent who can understand and relate to the child’s life and daily relationship to racial and cultural differences and who can respond to those experiences with acceptance, understanding, and empathy

• A parent who accepts and can help the child accept the child’s racial and cultural ancestry and can comfortably share knowledge and information about the child’s racial and cultural ancestry with the child

• Adults around them who understand what it feels like for the child to look different from their parents

WHO CAN PARENT TRANSCULTURALY & TRANSRACIALLY?

It is desirable that persons who parent children of other races or cultures possess:

• An understanding of their own sense of personal history and how that helped form their values and attitudes about racial, cultural, and religious similarities and differences

• An understanding of racism and whose life experiences have given them an understanding of how racism works and how to minimize its effects

• Life experiences and personal history which have given them the capacity or ability to parent cross-racially/culturally

• Commitment to and capability of demonstrating empathy with the child’s family of origin regardless of the socio-economic and lifestyle differences between them and the child’s family

• Capacity and commitment to provide the child with positive racial and cultural experiences and information and knowledge of their race and culture

• Capability of preparing the child for active participation in or return to the child’s racial and cultural community

• Adequate support of those significant to them in their decision to parent cross racially/culturally

• Residence in a community that provides the child with same race adult and peer role models and relationships on an ongoing basis

• Tolerance and ability to deal appropriately with the questions, ambiguity, or disapproval which arise when people assume that the child is the applicant’s birth child

• Willingness to incorporate participation in cross-racial/ cultural activities into their lifestyle and participate in race/cultural awareness training

• Acknowledgement that interracial/intercultural parenting makes their family an interracial/intercultural family which will have an impact on all family members and that a decision to adopt interracially will make the family interracial forever

• Acknowledgement and preparedness to deal positively and effectively with the fact that as an interracial family they will experience discrimination similar to other minority families

• The skills, the capacity, interest, and commitment to learn parenting skills necessary to parent children to understand and accept their race and racial identity and to work to change the feelings of children who deny their racial identity

• Skills, the capacity, and interest to learn the skills to meet the child’s special dietary, skin, hair, and health care needs

• Appreciation of the child’s uniqueness, and at the same time, help the child have a sense of belonging and full family membership

Families planning to parent any child should examine their lifestyles, considering whether their environment will be positive for that child. However specific challenges are faced when parenting transracially or transculturally.

Myths and misperceptions about lesbian and gay parents continue to present the greatest obstacle to adoption for LGBTQ adults.

It is essential that professionals have access to and can draw from evidence-based information about LGBTQ adoptive families in making decisions in the best interests of children.

The community of people who are LGBTQ is as diverse as the general public and includes all races, ethnicities, income levels, and education levels, as well as rural, suburban, and urban dwellers.

A brief summary of the research shows the following:

• Children raised by LGBT parents do not differ in any key areas of adjustment or functioning (Goldberg, 2009).

• Quality of parenting and level of family functioning are not related to the sexual orientation of the parents (Erich, Leung, Kindle, & Carter, 2005).

• Adults who have been raised by LGBT parents report feeling more tolerant of all types of human diversity (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001).

• The sexual orientation of youth does not have any correlation with the sexual orientation of the families in which they were raised (Golombok & Tasker, 1996)

Many LGBTQ individuals can identify with, and have come to terms with, many of the difficult feelings that children in foster care have experienced. These insights give them the empathy and strong sense of advocacy that is required to meet the needs of children adopted from foster care.

The ideal approach to working with LGBTQ prospective parents is a nonbiased, strengths-based perspective in which each person or couple is assessed independently and objectively. This is the same standard applied to the assessment of all prospective adoptive parents.

As with all children and families, best practices dictate that matching prospective parents with waiting children be done on a case-by-case basis, with the best interests of both parent and child as a guiding principle. 

When talking to children or youth, regarding prospective homes, explain that there are many kinds of families who are interested in adopting, using photos and stories about the families rather than using terms such as “gay, lesbian, transgender” in first introducing the families.  With younger children, point out the family structure (“this family has two dads,” or “this family has one mom, a dog, and a cat”) rather than discussing sexual orientation, Younger children do not have a formulated concept of sexuality or sexual orientation; rather they are interested in who will be in their family.   With older children who have a more evolved understanding of sexuality and romantic/physical relationships, be very direct and honest when presenting a same-sex couple or a single applicant who has self-identified as LGBTQ. It is better to know up front if there are negative feelings toward or biases about gay or lesbian people.

Do not assume that prospective LGBTQ parents will want or, in fact, be best suited to raise LGBTQ youth. In some cases, this may prove to be an effective match but in others, it may not. Best practices dictate that matching prospective parents with waiting children be done on a case-by-case basis, with the best interests of both parent and child as a guiding principle. 

Whites parenting children of color

The family should consider whether they have ever experienced prejudice or discrimination. If not, how will they help their child cope with prejudice?

To prepare, the family may put themselves, a number of times, into group situations where they are of a different race from the rest of the group.

In this way they will experience the feeling of being in the minority and learn to understand and relate to what their child would experience every day if placed in a school, church or other group where everyone else is of a different race.

The family must consider how to proceed if their current situation would not be positive. Would they be willing to move to another neighborhood – one with a mixture of races?

Would they be willing to seek organizations where they can make friends among another race?

If their church is predominantly one race, are they willing to locate and join a culturally diverse congregation?

One of the limitations of white parents raising children of color is that the parents are viewing race through the lens of a white person. “White privilege” is a term used to describe unearned benefits that people who are white get simply because they are white. Most people that are white do not recognize this.

What does white privilege look like? It looks like when a white person walks into a store or a restaurant, they expect to be treated with respect, and generally they are. They expect to go to the mall and not be harassed or followed in a store if they are just browsing and not buying.

That's not always true for people of color. It is important to think about white privilege as a white parent parenting a child of color, because fundamentally the parent’s experience of life is different than their children’s experiences.

If parents don’t understand that important piece, they will have trouble understanding what's happening to their children, what they're feeling, what they're experiencing, and how they might respond to it.

STRUGGLE WITH IDENTITY DVD

LANGUAGE OF ADOPTION

“TRANSRACIALIZATION”

SCULPTING EXCERCISE

PARENTING STRATAGIES FOR

CULTURAL CONNECTEDNESS

PANEL

VIGNETTES

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