Foster Care Training

Our families, communities, institutions, and society at large are steeped in dysfunction. Social service professionals are all too familiar with the realities of shame, verbal and/or physical abuse, and emotional neglect and/or repression that exist inside many families. Further, professionals within the child welfare system are exposed every day to the blatant dysfunction and violence of a society characterized by white supremacy and anti-Black racism. The systems of familial dysfunction and societal racism mimic and mirror each other – a society characterized by white supremacy acts like and produces outcomes similar to a dysfunctional family, and a dysfunctional family acts like and produces outcomes similar to a society characterized by white supremacy. Both systems – our families and our society – are fed by and continually reproduce dysfunction until the dysfunction is disrupted and health is introduced into the system. This workshop explores four modes of behavior passed on from dysfunctional families and society: (1) Dualism or All-or-Nothing Thinking (2) Judgmental Thinking (3) Control (4) Perfectionism. We look additionally at fear, which fuels these distorted thought patterns and unhealthy coping strategies.