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.  
• Ability to assess, using a family tree, the extent of the absence of the father and the other “half” of whom that child is.
• Learn the connection between the 4 Diagnostic Pain Questions that are Pain in the Heart (PITH) Theory regarding the absent father trauma and how to reach out and include fathers.

Agenda

9:45      Sign In

10:00     Overview of family assessment with an emphasis on the absent father.  

11:00     Brainstorming and discussion of reasons that fathers are important in the development of youth.

11:45    BREAK (CEUs will not be issued for this time)  

12:00     Group work on identifying the barriers to including fathers in our work.

1:00      LUNCH (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

1:30      Applying PITH to the absent father trauma.

2:30       Cultural barriers to including fathers.

3:30       BREAK (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

3:45       Small group work to creatively develop strategies for how to include the youth’s “other half” in our work.

4:15      Large group sharing of what you came up with and ending check out.  

4:30      ADJOURNMENT

This course meets the qualifications for (5.5) BBS CEUs for LCSWs and MFTs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.