Foster Care Training

Shame is perhaps the most excruciating emotion youth experience, sometimes embedded deeply into their experiences of emotional abuse. It is also a signal that can assist in protecting and maintaining social bonds. Because of its aversive nature, there is a natural inclination to avoid shame either by denying, avoiding, ignoring, or rising above it. However, failure to tend to youth experiences of shame can lead to other negative consequences. Avoidance may foreclose rich and crucial channels to understanding and deepening human relationships, particularly within foster families. In this class, participants will look at the topic of shame: how a relationship to shame can inhibit and/or facilitate work with foster youth. Participants will read some shame theory and will have plenty of time to discuss participants’ experiences of this phenomenon with youth, families, and in larger systems of care.