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Linking Safety and Permanence in a shared vision for every child WHAT DO YOU THINK? ABOUT SHARED PARENTING Summer 2006 Volume 5 Issue 4 T OPIC: Shared Parenting: AssessmentI DEAS: Shared parenting is a vessel that holds the process of raising children together. It is the eyes, ears and hands of safety; the personal connections of permanence; and the nurturing of development and well-being. It’s both our tool and our product when we intervene in a family’s life. It is a messy, human process, but a process. In repairing or creating that vessel we begin by looking at how well it is holding the process. We begin with an assessment. Who is within range of this family and how available are they for partnerships of any kind? How well can the family members, or individual youth, identify the positive network of connections? It’s got to be a positive process that looks for strengths, minimizes risks and reframes misdirected energies.D ISCUSSION: Who is in the circle that surrounds this family/youth and is available to them? Is there someone, anyone who might step forward and add their strength to this youth/family right from the start? When placement is an issue, we get so focused on “who will take these kids” that we overlook or reject resources and connections that may be vital to that very process. Someone who cannot house the children or youth, may know someone who can. We get fixed on the “first live one”. Yet the folks who have something to offer, may have stepped back from the youth or family because “officials” have stepped in. When we begin this assessment with a family, looking for those who can contribute to the vessel of shared parenting, we are looking for involvement not full responsibility; sharing some responsibility even just a little.How able is the family to identify the resources of their own network? Does the family even know or are they blinded by addiction, illness or other things? Are they strained by the distance of relocation or loneliness of emotional isolation? Do they know and are they willing to say? Dare they tell the very people who have come crashing into their lives? Sometimes young people and adults are so focused on escaping from the present predicament and so untrusting of us and other professional helpers that they can’t say. Some misperceive who and what is available. Sometimes awareness is blocked by fear, anger, hurt and experience. Assessing a family for shared parenting means figuring this out. Assessing the elements of a family’s shared parenting vessel has to include reframing some behavior that is not getting them what they want, minimizing risk, and maximizing strengths. Anger doesn’t relieve the hurt any more than addictions, except in the briefest of moments. Often, those who have distanced themselves from a family or youth have done so for their own protection. How might their former love and concern be nurtured while they themselves are protected? What have others loved about this family or young person? How well have these others been able to see the world from the child(ren)’s point of view? Who has recognized what positives there are despite the overwhelming negatives all around? Who will start to build or mend the vessel of shared parenting? Who will continue? What can they offer. |
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Bob L