Student who works in school for children with special needs has insight about crisis prevention intervention training

    I work in a school with children who interact a lot with social services. I have several students in foster care homes, but usually when they are put into foster care they get bounced from house to house and school to school. This is unhealthy for the child because they never have a chance to form meaningful relationships. The students I work with have behavioral disorders, so they are not typical foster children; they require extra resources and care. Most times these kids are removed from their biological home and placed into a foster home. 

Once they get to the home they have a grace period where they are not comfortable enough to display their typical behaviors. After this period they start to display their behaviors, which can be violence or running away, and so forth. A lot of times when a child has a burst of violence or displays aggressive behavior, the foster parents give up on fostering the child. I think this could be avoided in most situations if people were properly trained and educated on how to deal with these situations. 

As a requirement for my job I have to attend CPI training every year. This is Crisis Prevention Intervention training. It teaches people how to deescalate others in times of emotional crisis. It also teaches how to block most physical attacks (from children) and how to safely restrain a child if necessary. It also touches on trauma-based care. All of these things would be very helpful for a foster parent dealing with aggressive behaviors. 

I knew a foster parent who had a foster son for over a year and they were both very good for each other, but one night the foster son lost his temper and started hitting and kicking the foster mom, she was afraid to do anything other than call DCFS for fear of being accused of doing something harmful to him (he has been known to make false abuse allegations). The foster mother was a DCFS worker and if she were CPI trained she probably could have safely deescalated the situation without fearing for her own safety or livelihood. One big thing CPI training teaches is to take a step away from your emotions and assess what the risks are of the child’s behavior, this lessens the risk of the foster parent losing their temper or becoming overwhelmed and responding to a situation in an unsafe or abusive way. 

I think this training should be required for all foster parents who take children with behavioral/ emotional disorders, and maybe all foster children (considering that they have all experienced ACES). I think providing this training would not only keep children in foster homes longer, which is better for the child’s mental wellbeing and financially beneficial for everyone, but also it could make foster homes into a healing place. If the foster parents learn how to properly support and care for their foster children, they can be the positive caring role models the child needs in their life. The longer a foster child is with a good foster parent, the better off they will be. If they do not get bounced from house to house, the child is less likely to be funneled into an institution. Most children will be much better off if they can stay in a home setting rather than being put in an institutionalized setting.