Bridges Between Families by Deborah D. Gray

Children use words like, “awful, scary,” or “I didn’t understand what was happening,” when they talk about foster care moves. Soothing children’s pain and confusion is a priority for everyone involved. Children will need the type of help, as laid out in the booklet’s pages, with their feelings, placement-related concepts, and their own worth.This interactive booklet is written for social workers and parents (of all kinds) to use with children, helping them to understand what has happened, why it happened, and to provide support for their strong feelings. The book highlights the love that children have for the parents they left and the value of those relationships. At the same time, the book helps children to receive nurture and love from the people in the current home. This book is phased, so that people can read it with children over a series of days or weeks, depending on children’s ages and tolerances. It guides children through the initial facts around a foster care move and the Court system, move on to support their feelings as they transition between families, teaches methods to deal with strong feelings of anger and grief, and ends with a celebration of their value and areas of mastery. Deborah Gray MPA, LICSW Deborah has a lifetime achievement award in 2015 from ATTACh, and was a Henry Meier Practitioner in Residence at the U of WA. She treats children and families in a specialty practice focused on trauma, attachment, grief, and parenting support. She was core faculty for 19 years for the Portland State University Foster Care and Adoption Therapy Program. She is the author of the Attachment/Trauma Focused Therapy Program, now taught by ATTACh.Deborah Promoting Healthy Attachments; Attaching through Love, Hugs, and Play; Nurturing Adoptions; and Attaching in Adoption. She co-authored Games and Activities for Attaching with Your Child.