A Home Within Invites You to Our Next Continuing Education Event
Please join us for our next free Continuing Education event!
Did you know that when you volunteer with A Home Within you gain free access to our Continuing Education events? If you are a licensed therapist who’s interested in making a lasting impact on your community, we hope you’ll consider volunteering with A Home Within!
We are a nationwide network of therapists who each provide free, weekly, one-to-one therapy to a single youth in foster care, “for as long as it takes.” Our volunteers address the trauma and disruption inherent to foster care, help youth manage stress and anxiety, and develop the inner tools they need to become healthy adults. In exchange, our volunteers receive access to consultation groups, free CE credits, and join a nationwide network of peers. Over the past two years there’s been an overwhelming collective experience of grief and loss — for current and former youth in foster care, experiences with ambiguous loss are undoubtedly familiar. Clinicians working with these young people can enhance and deepen their work by understanding ambiguous loss and how to best address it in therapy.
Dr. Pauline Boss and Dr. Monique Mitchell will join us on Monday, May 23rd, from 10am-12pm PT to offer an important and timely workshop, Therapeutic Interventions for Ambiguous Loss and Grief Among Youth in Foster Care. Click here to register!
In this workshop, Drs. Boss and Mitchell will define ambiguous loss and explore its potential effects. Participants will learn how to apply both/and thinking in order to manage the stress associated with ambiguous loss, and will also learn about the six domains of ambiguity that former and current youth in foster care frequently experience. Finally, the speakers will provide examples of therapeutic approaches to address grief and grieving among former and current youth in foster care.
Dr. Boss is well known for her pioneering work on ambiguous loss—clearly relevant to young people’s experience of the pandemic. Dr. Boss and her teachings have recently been featured in the press, including the December New York Times Magazine article “What If There’s No Such Thing As Closure?”
Dr. Mitchell is the Director of Training and Translational Research at Dougy Center and a recognized expert on grief and loss, particularly among foster youth and their families. Her recent publications include a book chapter on “Non Finite and Cumulative Loss in Foster Care,” and the position paper, “Becoming Grief Informed: A Call to Action.”
Particularly given the many losses and challenges of the past two years, the perspectives and insights of Drs. Boss and Mitchell will be invaluable.
All are welcome. LCSWs can earn 2 CEs for attending the workshop.
We can’t wait to see you there!
A Home Within
Donate now!www.ahomewithin.org
(510) 387-7518
Executive Director: Reed Connell
Mission
With a mission to create and support lasting, caring relationships for children and youth in foster care, A Home Within identifies, recruits, trains, and supports a network of licensed therapists who each provide free, weekly, one-to-one therapy to a single foster youth “for as long as it takes.” For foster youth who often watch people move in and out of their lives, our model creates an anchor of support.
Begin to Build a Relationship
We know you care about where your money goes and how it is used. Connect with this organization’s leadership in order to begin to build this important relationship. Your email will be sent directly to this organization’s Director of Development and/or Executive Director.
Relational pro bono therapy can be life saving. The relational, financial, and mental health support of A Home Within has the power to heal attachment wounds, connect individuals to vital resources, and provide a very core basic need of consistent, safe, and reliable source of emotional support that one may not have otherwise.
Helping More Foster Youth Get the Therapy They Need
Committed, compassionate volunteer clinicians are at the heart of A Home Within’s mission to offer free, open-ended, individual, relationship-based therapy to foster youth. With staggering numbers of foster youth needing and seeking therapy, more volunteer clinicians continue to be needed.
Executive Director Reed Connell says, “It is likely we’ll hit 750 volunteers this year, and may double it next year. We are looking for $500,000 a year, for the next three years, to support our extraordinary growth and effectively double the number of young people we serve.”
The funding would allow the volunteer clinician community to keep expanding, creating a more robust cohort. “If we’re supporting the mental health workforce’s retention of therapists of color with LGBTQIA, native therapists and so on, we are improving the quality of the mental health field as a whole,” says Connell.
Key Supporters
May and Stanley Smith
Charitable Trust
Sarnat-Hoffman Family Foundation
In-N-Out Burger Foundation
Kaiser Permanente
MYDAR Foundation
Glass Half Full Fund
Mental Insight Foundation
Aviv Foundation
The Louis and Harold Price
Foundation
Pritzker Foster Care Initiative
CASA Organizations
Throughout California
Foster Care Research Group
at the University of San Francisco
11 California Family Foundations
Over 400 Individual Donors