Alisa Greenwood, Author at National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services

Learn About Technical Assistance for Tribes

by Alisa Greenwood | Feb 14, 2024 | Child Welfare Competent MH

The National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services will work with child welfare (CW) systems in States, Tribes, and territories (STT) to build bridges with mental health (MH) systems to develop and train MH practitioners in issues related to separation, loss, grief, and trauma, and to develop strategies for making trauma-based culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate adoption competent MH services consistently available. This blog post introduces what technical assistance will look like for Tribes.

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Learn About Technical Assistance for Tribes

The National Center is welcoming Tribes to learn more about the technical assistance that can help either enhance or develop practice between your child welfare and mental health agencies so that children, youth, and families can have access to quality competent resources and services. While many tribes may not practice Adoption as a permanency planning outcome, the National Center is open to tribes who offer Guardianship to relatives, kin, or resource families. The National Center provides Universal Services Intensive, on-site Technical Assistance to both child welfare and mental health agencies.

What is Intensive Technical Assistance? The National Center is available to assist with on-site capacity building and creating systems change for child welfare and mental health departments/agencies so that services are focused on meeting the needs of children, youth, and families.

What are Universal Services? The National Center provides Universal Services where states, tribes, and territories (STT) can access resources and tools related to both child welfare and mental health. Use of these resources and tools are accessible on the National Center Knowledge Hub for anyone to download and review. What are other ways to use the Knowledge Hub resources and tools? Tribes can utilize these resources to develop or enhance practice through collaborative discussion or strategic planning between agencies and community stakeholders.

Knowledge Hub: Mental Health Competence: The Value of NTI for Tribes NTI is the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative. Lea more from Terry Cross, Senior Advisor from the National Indian Child Welfare Association who shares the “Value of the NTI for Tribes” as it relates to core competencies that are in the NTI curriculum. Terry shares key features of the NTI curriculum:

Relevant to the tribal experience and inclusive of various jurisdictions
Connects to knowledge building about child development, loss and grief, historical trauma, etc.
Incorporates the tribal perspective in case examples and exercises
Honors the child’s reference points of belonging with immediate and extended families, community, peers, etc.

Are you interested in learning more about the National Center? Please contact Mary Wichansky, Center Director for more information.

My Hunt for Home

by Alisa Greenwood | Jan 2, 2024 | General, Mental Health

Adoption competent mental health services are responsive to the unique needs of children, youth, and families who have experienced the child welfare system. It is a comprehensive approach that addresses the common core issues children, youth, and families experience as they navigate separation, loss, and trauma. Many young people who have been adopted, entered a guardianship, or experienced foster care, struggle to integrate their experiences into their identity. Having access to a clinician who understands what they have gone through can make all the difference. Rachel shares what it meant to her.

My Hunt for Home

Rachel Shifaraw

A self-proclaimed lifelong “wanderer,” I have always been searching for a place that feels like home. A place where I feel free to be my most authentic self…a place where my questions are answered & my voice is not only heard but more importantly, understood. Shortly after I was adopted, my parents converted me to Judaism. As a little girl growing up, I thought I would find “home” on the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem. I was hopeful that my sense of community & belonging would rest in my religion, as it seems to do for so many…only to be let down when it did not for me. As the years blew by, I continued searching for this missing piece of myself. I had become an adult, with children of my own & was convinced the void within my soul sat in the hands of my biological mother. I traveled back to the city of Santiago, Chile, where my story first started. I remember running into the arms of my first mom, expecting all my adoption aches to finally disappear but was deeply disappointed when I left weeks later, STILL feeling empty-handed.

I came to The Center for Adoption Support & Education (C.A.S.E.) when I was 33 years old. I had poured my heart out into writing a piece on how “different” I felt throughout adolescence as an adoptee. For the past 7 years, I spent time lea ing about adoption competency & discovering how critical it is to have adoption competent professionals managing the psychological components of the adopted mind. I have come to develop & understand parts of myself that once seemed unexplainable to everybody…even other mental health professionals. I have been able to progress at piecing together my personal puzzle after always feeling like it was irreparably fractured because I am finally surrounded by clinicians who are specialized in helping adopted people, just like me. Best of all, I do not feel “different” when I am amongst my C.A.S.E. community. After decades of searching, I finally feel like I have a place to call home.