Foster Care Training

This is aimed at all mental health professionals who work with children and/or families. Emily will focus on three distinct “screentime” challenges and how clinicians can address them with clients: persuasive design, screen use at home, and screen use for school. Content is designed to assist clinicians in supporting their clients with best practices around screen use and offer practical suggestions for how to prioritize important developmental skills such as executive functioning and critical thinking. Tools and resources will be provided that clinicians utilize themselves and share with parents. Cultural Competency Summary: Excessive screen use is a modern-day issue that affects all children. Historically, concerns about a “digital divide” meant an attempt to close the gap between who had access to computers and technology and who did not. This is no longer the case. Today, as one article headline so pointedly states, the real issue is “Rich Kids Get Smart; Poor Kids Get Tech” (Nellie Bowles, “The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected,” The New York Times, Oct. 2018). In fact, research shows children from low-income families spent more time on digital devices than their wealthier counterparts. Additionally, the biases of app and web designers (who are predominantly white and male) have implications for the algorithms that we are shown. Increasing awareness of these differences is important to better understand the populations we serve, and to demand better outcomes for all children.