Training to provide effective parenting to foster homes and families

By Lailani Upham

PABLO — Next week DHRD Foster Care will host a free training for all local foster parents, adoptive parents and kinship caregivers on therapeutic parenting by author and licensed clinical professional counselor Kate Cremer-Vogel from Bozeman.

The parent training is also a part of a yearly effort to recruit foster parents as well, according to CSKT Foster Care Licensor Shaunda Albert.

Cremer-Vogel has worked with families since 1994 and specializes in adoptee families to facilitate secure attachment. She has over 300 hours of training with Daniel A. Hughes PhD, a world-renowned specialist in bonding and attachment.

The issues adoptive families deal with are closely related to what foster children families deal with. “Foster and adoptive parents deal with similar issues due to loss of mother, father and families along with being moved around. The parent approach is different with foster and adoptive children. What usually happens is parents use their own approach used with their own children and it ends up bouncing off the children and it doesn’t work,” Cremer-Vogel said.

“With the training we teach how to reach children when all other ways don’t work,” she added.

Vogel wrote “What Every Adoptive Parent Needs to Know: Healing Your Child’s Wounded Heart”, a compelling real-life story of a family struggling to overcome the effects of early abandonment and neglect on their adopted children. The book addresses essential therapeutic keys that ultimately brought the family hope and healing.

Ms. Cremer-Vogel uses an empathic approach to help parents bond deeper with their adopted/foster child. Cremer-Vogel believes the primary parent and child relationship is vital to the child’s development and complete brain growth. In her training she teaches relational therapy to lead the parent and child into a more meaningful connection and understanding, deepening their mutual trust.

Each year DHRD Foster Care program sets up trainings for parents with an additional goal of recruiting new foster parents.

Currently there are 42 homes licensed and they are all full, according to Albert.

The recruitment efforts usually bring on 4 to 5 additional licensed foster families. More families are desired but any amount of additional homes are highly appreciated, stated Albert.

The most concerned challenges are placing infants, teens and sets of siblings according to Albert.

Currently the sibling sets range up to four children. It is ideal to have all siblings placed together but usually unlikely.

Teens are another major concern for being placed, yet the reality is they will remain most of their years at the Second Circle Lodge; a youth home for children ages 10 to 17.

Second Circle is presently caring for a dozen children, who ideally would like to be placed in a home according to House Manager, Rick Clary.

“Incorporating your own parenting style in these kinds of situations is challenging and it is hard to be consistent with their children in the home and foster children. So, we offer trainings to help parents with alternative methods of discipline,” Albert said. “Some parents use spanking as a way of discipline but it is not allowed as a foster parent,” she added.

Clinical counselor Cremer-Vogel will offer demonstrations and discussions on responding to difficult behaviors and applying therapeutic parenting to real life situations that will help parents be effective in their families.

The parenting training is offered to foster parents but open to all parents, social workers and child care providers and teachers that would like to gain more understanding and learn how to effectively reach children.

The therapeutic parenting training with Kate Cremer-Vogel, LCPS will be held at the KwaTaqNuk Resort on Thursday September 24, from 9am to 4pm.

Pre-service foster care training for potential foster parents will be held at the SKC Arlee/Charlo Theatre building on Friday and Saturday, September 25-26, from 9am to 4:30pm and lunch will be provided both days.

For more information please call Shaunda Albert at (406) 675-2700, extension 1087.