Respond to your  colleagues .  Provide at least two additional treatment strategies that could be used  with this client and at least one additional cultural influence that you  think should be considered. Explain your responses. 

NOTE; (positive comment)

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Fostering

Every  year, a quarter of a million children come into foster care in this  country. Many of them will be placed in group homes or other group  residential settings because there are simply not enough foster families  to care for all of the children. Unlike birth parents, foster parents  receive training before they welcome children into their home and  support from social workers and other professionals throughout the  process. Foster parents often also have access to respite care programs  and find support through local organizations, such as churches, and  online support groups (“Adopt US kids,” 2020).

Psychological

Some  children entering into the foster system tend to have behavioral  issues, temper outbursts, anxiety, depression, and maltreatment. Providing  psychiatric services to children and adolescents in foster care require  collaboration not only with the clinical team, but also the child  welfare team. Team members include parents, foster parents, and the  social worker, at minimum. The team may also include representatives  from courts and others engaged by the child welfare system to conduct  assessments (eg, psychological, neuropsychological) (Scheid, 2020).  These children can get shuffled from place to place and could suffer  from adjustment disorders. Trauma related diagnosis could also be given.

Assessment

Child developmental  screenings coupled with clinical and functional assessment practices are  critical first steps in the intervention process.4 In addition,  gathering information related to family and community assets can help to  reinforce multidimensional and age-appropriate child assessments. The  Treatment Outcome Package (TOP) that is designed to help child welfare  systems gauge a child’s social and emotional well-being. TOP uses  statistically validated questions to identify children’s strengths and  challenges and track their progress over time using simple, web-based  tools. It features a short checklist completed by the child and those  closest to him or her — birth and foster parents, clinicians, teachers,  caseworkers — paired with immediate results and easy-to-follow reports.  TOP tracks and measures two things. It tracks how children are doing  using more than 40 child well-being indicators, such as how well a child  is sleeping or behaving in school, to help gauge whether a child’s  behavioral and mental health needs are improving through a particular  course of treatment. It also looks at specific providers’ track record  of delivering particular services. The more we know about both, the  better we can match kids’ needs with providers’ strengths (Feild, 2014).

Treatment Options

According to Psychiatric Times, Psychotherapy  is generally considered first line when addressing trauma- and  stressor-related emotional and behavioral conditions in children.  Strategies with empirical support include trauma-focused cognitive  behavioral therapy (TF-CBT); parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT),  which is suggested for children aged 2 to 7 years to improve parenting  skills and reduce children’s disruptive behavior; and attachment and  bio-behavioral catchup (ABC), which has been tested in toddlers in  foster care The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (www.nctsn.org)  provides information on a variety of evidence-based and promising  psychotherapeutic approaches for children exposed to maltreatment. This  can be coupled with SSRI’s for treatment of depression and anxiety.  Second generation antipsychotics and benzodiazepines for sleep  disorders.

Cultural Effects

Strong  cultural identity contributes to mental health resilience, higher  levels of social well-being, and improved coping skills, among other  benefits. Foster youth face and deal with trauma, changing home  environments, and lower levels of social well-being than the general  population. Often, due to this disruption, former foster youth have  lower cultural identity strength than those who did not experience  foster care. Child welfare practitioners must examine how they can best  support strong cultural identity in foster youth (Stafanson, 2019).

References

About foster parenting Foster parents change  lives—both the children’s and their own. (2020). Retrieved from  https://www.adoptuskids.org/adoption-and-foster-care/overview/foster-parenting

Feild, T. (2014, august 15, 2014). New Tool Measures Well-Being of Kids Served by Child Welfare Systems. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.aecf.org/blog/new-tool-measures-well-being-of-children-served-by-child-welfare-systems/

Scheid, J. M. (2020, May 15,2020). Challenges and Strategies in Foster Care. Psychiatric Times, 37. Retrieved from https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/challenges-and-strategies-foster-care

Stafanson, A. H. (2019). Supporting Cultural  Identity for Children in Foster Care. Retrieved from  https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/january—december-2019/supporting-cultural-identity-for-children-in-foster-care/