Trauma Training Videos & Fact Sheets: Trauma Sensitive Approaches for Home and School

Trauma Sensitive Approaches for Home and School videos– produced by Formed Families Forward as part of our work with the Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports project. Under 10 minutes in length, each video provides an introduction to critical trauma content.

The videos include:
1) Understanding Trauma
2) Responding to Trauma
3) Building Trauma-Sensitive Schools

Three fact sheets are designed to support the Trauma Sensitive Responses at Home and School video series.

Individual Fact Sheets are available as separate documents, and all three fact sheets in one document. Accessible text versions of all fact sheets are also available in English and Spanish.

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  Video Series

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  Fact Sheets for Videos 1 through 3

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  Video 1 Fact Sheet Understanding Trauma

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  Video 2 Fact Sheet Responding to Trauma

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  Video 3 Fact Sheet Trauma Sensitive Schools

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  Video 1 Fact Sheet Understanding Trauma accessible version

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  Video 2 Fact Sheet Responding to Trauma accessible version

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  Video 3 Fact Sheet Trauma Sensitive Schools accessible version

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  SPANISH Video 1 Fact Sheet accessible version

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  SPANISH Video 2 Fact Sheet accessible version

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  SPANISH Video 3 Fact Sheet accessible version

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  ARABIC Video 1 Fact Sheet

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  ARABIC Video 2 Fact Sheet

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  ARABIC Video 3 Fact Sheet

What Formed Families Forward Can Do for You

Families formed by foster care, kinship care, or adoption, especially those raising children with special needs, face unique challenges. Formed Families Forward helps families find and navigate services here in Northern Virginia, including:

• Early intervention for infants and toddlers
• Instruction and support in schools
• Mental and behavioral health services
• Juvenile justice, courts, and detention
• Health and disability services
• Social services
• Transition through middle and high school to college, job training, and employment

What Can FFF Do For You?

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  What Can FFF Do For You? fact sheet

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: What Families Say about Parenting FASD fact sheet

This Fact Sheet, produced by GMU Intern Charlotte Walmsley in Spring 2023, provides suggestions based on lived experiences of parents and caregivers raising children, youth and young adults with FASD. Links to additional resources are included.

Internet Safety Tip Sheet for Parents and Caregivers

From Formed Families Forward, this tip sheet covers 10 tips for helping to keep children and youth safe online.

Internet Safety for Teens Tip Sheet

From Formed Families Forward, 10 tips for teens to stay safe online.

How to Address Your Child’s Concerns about COVID

This Fact Sheet from Formed Families Forward in July 2020 pulls from a number of mental health and education resources to share specific strategies and suggested language to use with preschool children, school-age students and adolescents to address concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.

We thank our summer 2020 interns from GMU Clare Yordy and Austin Guske for their contributions to this resource.

Children and Trauma: What Can You Do? FFF Fact Sheet

Child traumatic stress refers to the physical and emotional responses of a child to events that threaten the life or physical integrity of the child or of someone critically important to the child (such as a parent or sibling). Traumatic events can overwhelm a child’s capacity to cope. Children may feel terror and powerlessness; they may act out. The fact sheet provides information to understand the types of trauma, potential responses to the trauma and ways to support a child who has experienced trauma.

Responding to Children Impacted by Trauma FFF fact sheet

It is often difficult for parents and caregivers to know how best to respond to their children’s behavioral and emotional needs. Download our fact sheet for proven strategies for responding to children impacted by trauma.

Foster Families: Did You know?

Click here to download a PDF version of this fact sheet.

• A child with a disability in your care can get educational services. Every child age 2 through 21 years old identified as having a disability has the right to free special education and related services. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) must be developed for each individual child with a disability. The IEP specifies the needs of the child and what educational and related services are necessary to meet the child’s needs. (8VAC20-81-10)
• You should help make important educational decisions for your foster child. Virginia special education regulations clarify that foster parents can make education decisions regarding the IEP and other important aspects of their foster child’s education. Even if birth parents’ rights have not been terminated, the foster parent may act as parent. (8VAC20-81-10)
• You should be informed when decisions are to be made. Parents and caregivers must be told when each IEP meeting will occur and are to be present if possible at any IEP meeting. If they cannot attend, schools must use other methods to allow participation, such as phone calls or video meetings. The school must pay for any additional costs for the alternative methods. (8VAC20-81-110)
• Your foster child’s school should be helping solve behavior problems. Schools, along with parents as part of the IEP team, must consider the use of positive interventions, strategies and supports to address behaviors that are causing problems for the child or others. The IEP team should develop goals and services related to behavioral needs. The team can also call for a functional behavioral assessment and determine if a behavioral intervention plan is needed to address the child’s behaviors. (8VAC20-81-160)
• A child in foster care may change schools. If a foster placement changes to a home in the boundary of another school, social services and school staff meet to determine the student’s best interest for school placement and ensure educational stability. This can be complex when the student has an IEP. (Joint Guidance)
• School records from previous schools should be sent to a new school. If the child in your care is moving from one school division or district to another, his or her school records including IEPs and other special education information, must be sent quickly from the previous school to the new school. Schools do not need permission from you, birth parents, or the caseworker to transfer records. (Va Annotated Code 22.1-289)

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  Foster Families: Did You Know? Fact Sheet

Adoptive Families: Did You Know?

Click here to download a PDF version of this fact sheet.

• Your child with a disability can get educational services. Every child age 2 through 21 years old identified as having a disability has the right to free special education and related services. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) must be developed for each individual child with a disability. The IEP specifies the needs of the child and what education and services are necessary to meet the child’s needs. (8VAC20-81-10) Infants and toddlers with delays or disabilities may be able to get early intervention services through the Infant & Toddler Connection. (12VAC35-225)
• You should help make important educational decisions about your child. Virginia special education regulations clarify that adoptive parents, like all parents, should be part of the team making education decisions regarding the IEP and other important aspects of their child’s education. Parents’ rights include inspection and review of records, participation in meetings, and involvement in decisions regarding educational placement. other important aspects of their child’s education. (8VAC20-81-10; 8VAC20-81-170)
• You should be informed when decisions are to be made. Parents must be told when each IEP meeting will occur and are to be present if possible at every IEP meeting. If they cannot attend, schools must use other methods to allow participation, such as phone calls or video meetings. The school must pay for any additional costs for the alternative methods. (8VAC20-81-110)
• Your child may get support services to benefit from special education. Among the supports eligible children with disabilities may receive are assistive technology, transportation, extended school year services, and related services such as occupational and physical therapies, speech-language pathology, and psychological services. (8VAC20-81-10; 8VAC20-81-100)
• Your child’s school should be helping solve behavior problems. Schools, along with parents as part of the IEP team, must consider the use of positive interventions, strategies and supports to address behaviors that are causing problems for the child or others. The IEP team should develop goals and services related to the behavioral needs. IEP teams can also call for a functional behavioral assessment and determine if a behavioral intervention plan is needed to address the child’s behaviors. (8VAC20-81-110; 8VAC20-81-160)

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  Adoptive Families: Did You Know? fact sheet

Mental Health Needs in Formed Families

For a PDF version of this fact sheet, click HERE.

MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS in FORMED FAMILIES

Virginia families formed by foster care, adoption and kinship care are much more likely than other families to need mental health care and supports.

The children and youth we care for are 3 to 4 times more likely to have behavioral and emotional disorders than children raised by birth families.

In addition, because of their mental health needs, our children and youth are at increased risk of facing inappropriate educational placements, inadequate specialized services and poor long-term outcomes.

• Students in foster care experience significant challenges with the lack of stability in their lives. Many have serious academic needs including learning gaps, poor attendance and serious emotional and behavioral problems. These problems faced by youth in foster care often go unnoticed, unassessed and unserved (Zetlin, Weinberg & Shea, 2010)
• Children who were involved with child protective services who were in out of home care are disproportionately more likely to be identified with an “emotional disorder” classification in school than students for whom there were no substantiated reports of maltreatment (Smithgall et al, 2004).
• The rate of school discipline incidents is higher for students in out-of-home care than for students with no substantiated maltreatment, and students with ED classifications had the highest rates of disciplinary incidents (Smithgall et al, 2005).
• US adolescents who had been adopted in infancy are more likely than nonadoptees to have teacher, parent, and child-reported mental health problems, particularly externalizing problems. Adoptees were more than twice as likely to have had contact with a mental health professional than nonadoptees (Keyes et al, 2008)
• 26% of adoptive parents report their adopted children age 6 and older were ever diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (vs. 10% in birth families). (National Survey Adopted Parents, HHS, 2007)
• 38% of parents who adopted from domestic foster care report their children age 6 and up were ever diagnosed with ADHD (National Survey Adopted Parents, HHS, 2007)

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  Mental Health Needs in Formed Families Fact Sheet

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports

• What do parents and caregivers need to know?
• Does PBIS look the same for all students?
• What should be part of every school’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports approach?

Download our fact sheet for the answers.

Kinship Care: Rights and Responsibilities

This fact sheet from Formed Families Forward provides Virginia-specific information about rights and responsibilities for families providing informal and formal kinship care.

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  Kinship Rights and Responsibilities Fact Sheet

Kinship Families: Did You Know?

Click here to download a PDF version of this fact sheet.

• The child in your care can get educational services. Every child age 2 through 21 years old identified as having a disability has the right to free special education and related services. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) must be developed for each individual child with a disability. The IEP specifies the needs of the child and what education and services are necessary to meet the child’s needs. (8VAC20-81-10) Infants and toddlers with delays or disabilities may be able to get early intervention services through the Infant & Toddler Connection. (12VAC35-225)
• You should help make important educational decisions about the child you care for. Virginia special education regulations clarify that an individual acting in the place of a birth parent (including grandparent, stepparent or other relative) with whom the child lives can act as a “parent” under special education regulations and can make decisions regarding the IEP and other important aspects of the child’s education. (Code of Va. 22.1-213.1)
• You should be informed when decisions are to be made. Caregivers must be told when each IEP meeting will occur and are to be present if possible at any IEP meeting. (8VAC20-81-110)
• Your child’s school should be helping solve behavior problems. Schools, along with parents or kinship caregivers as part of the IEP team, must consider the use of positive interventions, strategies and supports to address behaviors that are causing problems for the child or others. The IEP team should develop goals and services related to the behavioral needs. IEP teams can also call for a functional behavioral assessment and determine if a behavioral intervention plan is needed to address the child’s behaviors. (8VAC20-81-110; 8VAC20-81-160)
• School records from previous schools should be sent to a new school. If the child you care for is moving from one school division or district to another, his or her school records including IEPs and other special education information, must be sent quickly from the previous school to the new school. Schools do not need permission from you, birth parents, or the caseworker to transfer records. (Code of Va. § 22.1-289; 22.1-3.4 for those in formal foster care)

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  Kinship Families: Did You Know factsheet