Blog

By Nancy Hafer, M.S., Director, Resource Center for Family-Focused Practice

Victor smiles as he, his wife Lucy and their kids Yuriah, age 10, and Aubrey, age 7, begin to describe their experience with Wraparound.

By Janine LeSieur, Program Analyst, Family Centered Practice Unit, California Department of Social Services

Healthy behavior is linked to improved well-being for individuals, families and communities.  The challenge of addressing unhealthy behavior can be complex and often depends on sustained behavior change at the individual level. Motivational Interviewing is a counseling approach that can help people identify their feelings about behavior change, resolve inconsistencies with how they feel about making behavior change(s), and then make a plan to follow and update as needed.

The January newsletter theme, change, inspired us to contact expert Dr. Melinda Hohman about motivational interviewing (MI).  Dr. Hohman’s background as a clinician, educator and author contribute considerable knowledge and insight about making life changes.

By Kat Baysmore, Lead Parent Partner, Olive Crest

My name is Katherine Baysmore, but my friends, peers and clients call me Kat. I have three amazing children. My youngest has special needs, and I can say he has taught me the most about advocacy, patience and understanding needs without spoken words.

Submitted by Erin Houston, Seneca Youth Partner, in September 2021

By Karen Nikos-Rose

A trek of 4,000 miles between Alaska and Pennsylvania is a long trip even in three planes with today’s technology, observed Lauren Peters, days after the University of California, Davis, doctoral student and her family made that journey. She and her two sons were returning her grandmother’s aunt to her native St. Paul Island, on the Bering Sea, after her disinterment at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

According to UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education–Human Services instructor May Orr, supervisors are the most critical factor in the transfer of learning for the staff and teams they lead. Beginning this fall, UC Davis Human Services is rolling out a new tool to help its training participants transfer what they’ve learned in class into practice at their organizations. To support the goal of increasing learning and skill development, each course offered through a county contract will now include a Supervisor Transfer of Learning (TOL) Tip Sheet. 

This past July saw UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education—Human Services host the 16th National Tribal TANF Institute. The virtual conference hosted 230 participants from 44 tribal and governmental agencies from across the U.S.  and featured an expanded schedule, with 40 workshop options. This year’s theme was “Empowering Our Spirits”, centering the importance of cultural values to provide the basis for healing, rejuvenation and growth.

Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith, Resiliency research pioneers, define Resilience as “In the context of exposure to significant adversity, whether psychological, environmental or both, resilience is both the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to health-sustaining resources, including opportunities to experience feelings of wellbeing, and a condition of the individual’s family, community and culture to provide these health resources and experience in culturally meaningful ways" (Ungar, 2008).

By Danielle Martinez, Parent Partner, San Diego Center for Children, Wrap Works

When my son was young and in the process of being diagnosed, I was trying to figure out what to do to help my son and keep him in public school. I had questions like “What does this diagnosis mean? And will he be ok?”