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/service 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. Remember, the pain of the missing father is a big reason for the symptoms that we are trying to ameliorate so we can’t forget this area of pain.

Learning Objectives

• Identify the reasons that fathers are important and the barriers as to why they don’t get included, in a meaningful way, within our continuums of care that serve youth: child welfare,…