Every September, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sponsors National Recovery Month to increase awareness of behavioral health conditions. The observance helps inform Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life. The observance also raises awareness of behavioral health as part of overall health, and that prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover from mental and substance use disorders.

By Kristina Vaseau, Director, Child & Family Services, Spaulding for Children

More parents with children in foster care suffer from mental illness than the general population. Many suffer from poverty or live transient lives that make getting and following treatment difficult. Some may get diagnosed, get a treatment plan and medication -- then stop for various reasons, including feeling better or a move. Then they relapse. The affects ripple through their families.
 
Parents Not Getting Care are Unable to Provide Care
"I am thinking of one mother we see," said Kristina Vaseau, Director, Child & Family Services, Spaulding for Children. "Her instability is probably 70-percent of what prevents her from giving her kids the care they need. She cannot regulate herself.  If she were in treatment, she'd have some calm moments of clarity. But she is not in treatment and, therefore, we cannot recommend she have her children returned to her."

Click here or on the button below for more of Kristina's thoughts.
 

Ambassadors are foster parents, staff, community members who will help spread awareness about the importance and need for foster parents.
 
There is a one-hour training which you can learn about how to become a Spaulding for Children Ambassador. This presentation will help you understand the importance of raising awareness about the need for foster parents. You will also learn how you support the success of children when you help to spread the message about the need to encourage people to learn about becoming a foster parent.
 
Please RSVP at RSVP@spaulding.org or call 248-443-0300 to confirm you would like to attend. The second training session takes place Sept. 24, 2018 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Getting to the root of the problem is our focus: Can we prevent a child from entering the foster care system? The whole community can help prevent child abuse by knowing how to identify a potential risk and also the protective actions that need to take place.

Risk Factors

If you know or suspect a child or family is at risk, don’t hesitate to refer them and help prevent abuse.  

A message from National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation: 

Over the course of the last several years working to promote permanence and improve adoption and guardianship preservation and support, the QIC-AG has developed several insights that we want to share with you. Each month for the next few months we will be sending you a “message of the month” focusing on one of the insights with links to more information.

This month the QIC-AG is featuring its first message: Support families who provide permanence.

This is one of the more simple but foundational insights and can’t be overlooked or underappreciated as we think about the need for child welfare systems to increase their ability to provide post-adoption and guardianship supports and services for children and families.

Click here or on the button below for more details.

The Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) has helped Spaulding for Children find loving, adoptive families for more than 2,000 children. Last year, the CFC helped us in our work to keep children in more than 400 families safe. We are truly grateful for our Federal, Military and Postal Service CFC givers. We could not do this work without the generous support of people like you.

We would like to ask those who would like to support Spaulding for Children through CFC to mark the box: "Adopt America's Children." Our CFC identification number is #12014. And please, if you would, encourage your colleagues to give through the CFC as well. This year's campaign is underway through Dec. 15, 2018. Thank you!