Thursday, January 21, 2010
The potential of sensory Integration work with kids in foster care
The past few months have reminded me that the holidays are not easy times for our kids. Youth in foster care and who have been relinquished and adopted often experience intense, conflicting emotions. Separation from birth family, loss of belonging are acutely painful during this season and the temptation to run away or lash out sometimes feels unavoidable, particularly for kids who have experienced severe neglect in infancy and early childhood. These kids can be labeled by others as difficult or resistant. But in fact, the severe neglect they experienced significantly affected their brain development such that their default reaction can be only fight, flight, or freeze.
Recently, several staff from throughout Casey Family Services spent the day delving into the complex sensory needs of, and treatment options for, children with traumatized brain development. As I went through the training, I was acutely aware that several of our clients are working hard to resist their instinct to fight or flee. Scared straight hadn’t or wouldn’t work with them. Talk therapy has had limited success. In the training, it was reinforced that they need permanent families who can do a deeper level of work with them day-to-day and stay with them through the ups and downs.
As sensory integration work spreads throughout our agency‘s permanency work and into the child welfare systems we work within, it has incredible potential to help empower the foster, pre-adoptive, and adoptive families who have committed their lives to these children and offer healing and hope to the kids we serve.
