As mentioned in our previous blog post, Encourage is passionate about serving youth with higher levels of need including medical, emotional and/or behavioral challenges. This could range from asthma, diabetes or ADHD to more challenging medical and behavioral needs such as cerebral palsy, pre-natal exposure to drugs or alcohol, or behaviors related to a youth’s prior trauma.
A youth with high-level needs will previously have experienced some type of childhood trauma and/or have an identified medical-related issue. The childhood trauma typically comes in the form of emotional maltreatment, physical and/or sexual abuse. Because of their trauma, these youth may have emotional issues and don’t know how to express their needs appropriately.
They often struggle academically and socially. They may likely display a full range of emotions, or none at all, and as result, require some further intervention by mental health professionals in addressing their needs. Many of these youth require counseling and/or medication to help them cope and function more positively in school and home. Some other high-level youth may have identified medical issues, and thus need more support by their caregivers and additional medical appointments to help them with their development.
Treatment foster families who care for youth with higher levels of need will benefit from additional supports and services. Encourage uses the Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) Model to train and assist our foster families. TBRI is an attachment-based tool that caregivers use to connect with children from hard places. This trauma-informed approach helps foster families create felt-safety for youth being placed in their homes. It also helps foster families better understand their own attachment styles so they can then extend compassion for their youth and the biological family.
Encourage supports foster families throughout the youth’s stay in their home. Professional, compassionate staff provide intensive case management to assist those families with weekly contact, immediate mental health counseling and psychiatric services as needed.
Our next blog post will share more about case management and other therapeutic services.
