Wed, May 12
|Online Event
Supporting Parenting Foster Youth: Baby Bonding, and Infant and Toddler Development
Sonja Lenz-Rashid, PhD, LCSW


Time & Location
May 12, 2021, 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Online Event
About the Event
Sonja Lenz-Rashid, PhD, LCSW
Training Description
The training workshop will take a developmental approach, highlighting for people supporting foster youth the different stages of infancy and childhood. This course provides an overview of effective baby and toddler emotional bonding techniques that are crucial for foster youth. Attendees will learn about the impact of attachment in the early months and years of life, as well as gain a deeper understanding on how attachment can promote well-being for foster youth physiologically, cognitively, and emotionally.
Learning Objective
- Knowledge of Infant and Child Development
- Knowledge of the importance of caregiver attachment in foster youth well-being outcomes
- Knowledge of the role of emotional bonding in attachment for foster youth
- Identify 3 techniques supporting an individual’s healing from trauma in early childhood relationships
Agenda
9:30am-9:45am Introductions and Training Objectives
9:45am-11:00am Section I: Overview of baby and toddler development
11:00am-11:45am Section II: Overview of Attachment and Its Importance and Case Vignettes
11:45am-12:30pm Section III: Baby and Toddler Bonding Techniques
Meet Our Trainer
Dr. Sonja Lenz-Rashid, LCSW, is a Professor of Social Work at San Francisco State University and a Co-founder and Faculty Research Evaluator of the SF State Guardian Scholars Program (GSP). Launched in 2005, the GSP serves over 90 current and former foster care youth on campus and has an annual budget of over $1 million (and is a non-profit on campus). Dr. Lenz-Rashid has studied the outcomes of, and best practice models for, former foster care youth at the national, state and Bay Area levels. Her research and publications have provided valuable feedback to child welfare administrators, legislators, and program developers in how best to serve these disenfranchised young people using evidence-based practice. She is also a consultant, trainer and clinical supervisor at a number of Bay Area non-profits serving children and youth being served by the foster care, juvenile justice, and behavioral health systems. She has over twenty-five years serving vulnerable youth in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This course meets the qualifications for (3.0) 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.