Supporting Parenting Foster Youth: Baby Bonding, and Infant and Toddler Development

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.