Missing Fathers: The Absent Parent Trauma with System Involved Youth
Wed, Sep 25
|Online Event
Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW
Time & Location
Sep 25, 2024, 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM PDT
Online Event
About the Event
Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW
Training Description
Develop a better understanding of the importance of fathers to the youth with whom we work in our systems of care. This epidemic of the often-absent father doesn’t mean that the father doesn’t fulfill an important role in the system involved youth and family’s life. We often leave the paternal side of the youth’s family completely out of planning with youth in out of home care even though the father is very much a part of the youth’s “picture” and impacts their day-to-day functioning. Remember, the pain of the missing father is a big reason for the behaviors that we are trying to ameliorate so we can’t forget this area of pain if we want to make the most positive impact on outcomes for system involved youth.
Learning Objectives
• Participants will be able to identify at least 2 reasons that fathers are important and at least 2 barriers as to why they don’t get included, in a meaningful way, within our continuums of care that serve system-involved youth: child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and school systems.
• Participants will be able to explain, using a family tree and historical timeline, the extent of the absence of the father as the other “half” of where a system involved youth comes from.
• Participants will be able to explain the connection between the Pain in the Heart (PITH) Theory and the absent father trauma and how to reach out and include fathers.
Agenda
10:00–10:15AM Sign In and Introductions
10:15–10:30AM Overview of family history and trauma with an emphasis on the absent father.
10:30–10:45AM Group work practice on family trees and timelines.
10:45–11:00AM Video about the Myth of the Absent Black Father and discussion.
11:00 –11:30AM Brainstorming and discussion of reasons that fathers are important in the healthy development of system-involved youth and cultural influences on father involvement.
11:30: 11:45AM Brainstorm and Identification of barriers to including fathers in the support of their children.
11:45AM–12:00PM BREAK (CE hours will not be offered for this time)
12:00–12:30PM Group work on addressing the barriers to including fathers and discussion of the
challenges in transitioning from being a biological parent to a committed father.
12:30–1:00PM Video presentation on the messages that males in our society receive that can Interfere with becoming a committed father and debrief of the video as a group.
1:00–1:30PM LUNCH (CE hours will not be offered for this time)
1:30–2:00PM Cultural barriers to including fathers, and our field’s bias as one of those barriers
2:00 – 2:15PM Why mothers don’t have this same bias.
2:15 – 2:30PM Reflection on our own biases and where they come from regarding our pasts.
2:30–3:00PM Viewing of another video and beginning to apply PITH theory in a way that can heal the absent father trauma.
3:00–3:15PM BREAK (CE hours will not be offered for this time)
3:15–3:45PM Small group work to integrate our understanding of the pain which the youth feels because of having an absent father; then, creatively developing strategies for how to include the system involved youth’s “other half” of their family in our work.
3:45–4:15PM Review & discussion regarding these strategies for outreach to fathers.
4:15–4:30PM ADJOURNMENT
Meet Our Trainer
Pamela Parkinson, PhD, LCSW, is a clinical psychologist and clinical social worker, whose specialty area is working with youth and their families. Dr. Parkinson has spent most of her career working with system involved youth in our Continuum of Care (foster care, juvenile justice, mental health and the kids struggling in our school systems). She is a certified PCOMS evidence-based practice trainer. Pamela currently works as a child/family consultant to CBO’s in the Bay Area and has worked in level 14 residential, NPS, hospitals, and a variety of community-based settings including outpatient clinics, schools, diversion, kinship, etc.
This course meets the qualifications for (5.5) BBS CE hours for LCSWs, LMFTs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.