Missing Fathers: The Absent Parent Trauma

Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW

Training Description

Develop a better understanding of the importance of fathers to the youth with whom we work.  This epidemic of the often-absent father doesn’t mean that the father doesn’t fulfill an important role in a child’s and family’s life.   We often leave the paternal side of the youth’s family completely out of an assessment when developing our treatment plans 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.

Learning Objectives

• Identify the reasons that fathers are important and the barriers to why they don’t get included, in a meaningful way, within our systems that serve youth:  child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and school systems.