Our Parents! We truly believe that Hearts and Homes for Youth has some of the best foster parents you can find. Many of our parents are veterans, individuals who are in it for the long haul, and are not willing to give up with things get tough! Their individual years of service range from three years to thirty years! Foster parents open their homes, adjust their lives, and put their needs second to the needs of their children. There is not enough we can do to thank them! Each year we host a Foster Parent Appreciation Dinner to convey this message to our parents. This year we had a lot of fun! Our foster parents enjoyed the entertainment, their meal with steak and lobster options, and special tributes to each parent! The dinner was hosted in private dining room, allowing our parents to let loose and enjoy themselves with us and each other. They danced, laughed, and were able to have a child free adult only evening! We were able to capture some memories at the photo booth, check them out!
All posts by Hearts & Homes for Youth
What sets Hearts and Homes Therapeutic Foster Care Program apart, what makes us different?
An awesome dinner with DMV CYA!
We thank our friends from the DC, Maryland, and Virginia Christian Young Adult Organization (DMV CYA). They brought dinner to the young men in our Avis Birely Therapeutic Group Home. This service was in honor of their founder, Siafa Lavala’s birthday. He was devoted to children by mentoring and uplifting them whenever he could. Dinner included yummy chicken wings, mac & cheese, green beans, and cupcakes for dessert. After dinner everyone walked to the local park where they played a few games of basketball. Back at the program they presented our guys with goodie bags filled with personal care items. We are excited to welcome them back again sometime this summer.
5 Things You Should Know About TFC
TFC is an acronym for Therapeutic Foster Care. TFC involves placing foster youth with severe mental, emotional, or behavioral health needs in a home with clinically trained foster parents. Here are some other things you should know about TFC:
- Kids in TFC, versus regular foster care, are more likely to have been exposed to more adverse experience. This is important for prospective foster parents to understand why TFC youth need a higher level of care.
- TFC usually involves more in-depth training for foster parents on neurobiology, the brain, and attachment styles.
- Exposure to abuse, neglect, and trauma at an early age affects brain development because the absence of a safety person at a young age creates a lot of insecurity and puts the child in a constant state of stress, impacting mental, behavioral, and emotional development.
- For kids in TFC, the end goals are reunification, adoption, Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (APPLA), or custody/guardianship.
- Due to the disruption an instability that youth in therapeutic foster care often experience, the importance of having relationships with stable, loving adults in their lives both while they’re in foster care and once they’ve aged out of care is immeasurable.
A Day in the Life of a TFC/Damamli Social Worker
By Bridget McGiffin
For a social worker in the Family Ties Treatment Foster Care and Damamli Mother/Baby program, the work and responsibilities vary on a day to day basis. At the beginning of the week, one might find themselves reviewing a quarterly treatment plan for a young person. By the middle of the week, the same worker could have completed three home visits, a meeting at a school for behavioral intervention, and transported a youth to their dental appointment. By the end of the week, the worker is certain to have added to their schedule a few more meetings at the main office, including supervision, and undoubtedly spent several hours updating notes and files.
In addition to the documentation of each contact that happens with all members of a youth’s team, the worker is responsible for facilitating quarterly treatment team meetings for some young people in our care, and bi-monthly meetings for others. For each treatment team meeting, the worker completes a review of the old treatment plan and a new treatment plan. The worker also attends an hour of individual supervision, and two hours of group supervision with other social workers in the agency.
As mentioned previously, the worker completes home visits. These happen twice a month for each youth, and at least once a month, the meeting has to be with the caregivers and the young person. The other time in the month, the visit can be completed independently with the youth. Often, the individual meetings with youth serve multiple purposes; for example, transporting a youth to get their cell phone turned on is a sufficient second visit. While meeting with the foster parent(s) and the child, the social worker is often in the role of a mediator, as the three parties discuss how things are in the home, and what can be worked on to achieve the goals identified in the team meetings.
Beyond the case management that the social worker provides, the most important role that the social worker engages in is that of a clinician. The social worker has to be delicate in how they approach difficult situations that often contain high-running emotions, fatigue, and fear. At the very basic level, at Hearts & Homes’ foster care programs, a social worker should be skilled and tactful at encouraging healthy relationships between a foster parent and young person.
Beyond the day to day tasks and responsibilities of a social worker at Hearts & Homes, the worker has professional obligations that they have to uphold. For example, social workers are required to participate in continued education and training, so that they can engage in evidenced based practices.
Social workers at Hearths and Homes for Youth wear many hats!
Kick Dreams United delivers sneakers to Avis Birely!
On Monday, March 13, Kick Dreams United delivered sneakers to the young men at Avis Birely Group Home!
Kick Dreams United is a nonprofit that collects sneakers and ships them to youth in need around the world as well as in the U.S.
“I truly enjoyed my experience with the young men on Monday! They were very respectful and it was a blessing to be able to visit with them,” said Kick Dreams United Founder and President Tony Hardy. “They seemed really appreciative of the shoes!”
The team from Kick Dreams United personally delivered the donation and told the young men at Avis Birely about their Shining Star program through which youth who show academic improvement get a pair of popular sneakers, as an incentive to do well in school!
Hearts & Homes for Youth and the young men at Avis Birely Group Home are incredibly grateful for the donation!
Students organize drive for Hearts & Homes for Youth!
Hearts & Homes for Youth is grateful to three high school students who rallied support and collected donations for the youth in our care!
Tyrek, DaRae, and Aaron were considering a list of volunteer opportunities for Martin Luther King Jr. Service Day provided by their high schools, but decided to create their own project to directly help others in need.
Tyrek and DaRae attend Wilde Lake High School together, and Tyrek and Aaron have know each other for over ten years; they have played football together since they were six years old, and have become best friends, like brothers. Tyrek’s mother encourages him to seek volunteer opportunities throughout the year and he often encourages his friends to volunteer as well.
The three friends researched shelters and group homes, and came across Hearts & Homes for Youth. They valued the variety of programs provided and the wide range of counties across Maryland where Hearts & Homes provides services. The students reached out to learn about our current needs and decided to host a drive for socks and toiletries. The team created their plan, developed roles, and began contacting potential donors.
The entire experience was very fulfilling for the students, in particular, knowing that they were helping children close to their own ages, in need.
Hearts & Homes for Youth and all the youth in our care are grateful for Tyrek, DaRae, and Aaron’s support and all the donations collected!
Traitify
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What are you good at?
What are your hobbies and interests?
It may come as a surprise that for many of our youth, these questions are hard to answer. When the life experiences of young people force them to focus on survival, opportunities for developing a strong sense of self and the ability to identify personal strengths and goals often suffer.
Hearts & Homes for Youth is proud to use Traitify, a career assessment tool that allows us to help our young people explore career matches while giving them insight into their personalities and strengths. The assessment itself is easy and takes about ninety seconds.
Traitify uses psychology, prompting each tester to select pictures based on their first gut reaction. These selections are then used to provide a full assessment of the taker – their personality, individual traits, and career matches. Young people will find out if they are visionaries, action takers, inventors, analyzers, planners, etc. with an understanding of the role each plays in the types of careers that would be a good fit. Young people are also able to see what careers are available to them based on varying levels of education.
We are excited to offer Traitify for all of the youth in our agency as they work towards brighter futures!
Share-a-Haircut Results!
Thank you to all our supporters who came out in early February to Share-a-Haircut at Hair Cuttery! On February 6th and 7th, thousands of clients visited their salons to help donate haircuts in our communities. As a result, Hair Cuttery will be donating 76,942 free haircut certificates to the homeless and those in need!
Hearts & Homes for Youth has received a number of haircut certificates for the youth in our care to get a fresh look for Spring!
Thank you to Hair Cuttery for partnering with Hearts & Homes for Youth and thank you to all our supporters! #sharingiscaring
Books You Should Read for Black History Month
As we recognize Black History Month and celebrate countless achievements by black Americans, our team at Hearts & Homes for Youth would like to share our top picks for books to read during Black History Month.
The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
A beautifully written historical account of the decades-long migration of black citizens from the South to the North and West. This masterpiece is rich with data, official records, and narratives of individual experiences.
The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream, by Sampson Davis
This memoir follows three teenagers from a rough part of Newark, New Jersey, who made a pact to attend medical school together. Also check out: The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect with Their Fathers, by Sampson Davis.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
A classic Southern love story centered around a strong black female protagonist. Also check out Native Son by Richard Wright
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
Legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that racial caste in America has not ended, and that Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control.
S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C., by Ruben Castaneda
A memoir of a crack addict and portrait of Washington D.C. during the height of the crack epidemic.
The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore
A book that documents the lives of two young men with the same name, born in the same area, but launched into different directions as a result of choices and opportunities.
From the Hood to the Hill: A Story of Overcoming, by Barry C. Black
From the Hood to the Hill is Chaplain Black’s story of overcoming unpromising beginnings in the ghettos of Baltimore.
Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin
Black against Empire is a comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party.
Untold Glory: African Americans in Pursuit of Freedom, Opportunity, and Achievement, by Alan Govenar
Untold Glory offers a fresh perspective on one of the most fundamental elements of American history—the conquest of new frontiers. In twenty-seven fascinating first-person accounts, African Americans from different eras, backgrounds, and occupations explore and reflect on the meaning of frontier, both literally and metaphorically.
Africana, by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates
Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board, Harvard scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah have created the first scholarly encyclopedia to take as its scope the entire history of Africa and the African Diaspora.
Classics:
The Mis-education of the Negro, by Carter G. Woodson
This book by the founder of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, is an exploration of what it means to be black in America.
Up from Slavery, by Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In simply written yet stirring passages, he tells of his impoverished childhood and youth, the unrelenting struggle for an education, early teaching assignments, his selection in 1881 to head Tuskegee Institute, and more.
The Souls of Black Folks, by W.E.B. DuBois
This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind.
Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X
This autobiography traces Malcolm X’s journey from being born as Malcolm Little to becoming one of the black freedom movement’s most recognizable figures. He describes his life experiences, from encountering racism, to being imprisoned, to being reborn through the Nation of Islam.
Black Boy, by Richard Wright
This autobiography traces Wright’s tortured years in the Jim Crow South from 1912 to 1927.
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
The main character wants blue eyes, convinced that it is her ticket to escape from life as a bullied black girl.