“We know healing happens in relationships. We must create space for relationships to grow and thrive, not just for children, but for their parents, grandparents...”
Elisabeth Wendel
Verbind met ElkaarWho are the ones we have to listen to in child welfare?
What does it mean to really work together ?
How can we listen, support and act from this perspective?
How to see and gather a network around children?
Why is a network necessary and how to engage a network?
How to help networks grow and coach them to a place where they can support each other to hold on?
Healing happens in the network and trough relationships...
Working together with children and their network is what we all need to do.
Inspired, encouraged and supported by the work from Kevin Campbell (Family finding), I explore , experience and share this truth and different ways to help us listen, see and act from this perspective.
Kevin Campbell is the model author of Family Finding, an American Child Protection and Children’s Mental Health Innovator and the founder of the Center for Family Finding and Youth Connectedness.
Kevin developed Family Finding, a set of strategies now utilized throughout North America, Australia, and Western Europe to engage networks of family members and other important adults to promote the safety, healthy development, and healing of children and youth involved with government systems.
Family Finding is: Seeing Parents. Seeing Children. Seeing Relatives. Seeing Community. Seeing Culture. Seeing Friendship. Seeing Love. Seeing Dignity. Seeing Capabilities. Seeing Equality. Seeing Mercy. Seeing Justice. Seeing Health.
Family Finding is Seeing and Healing Together.
Not only finding people , but rather seeing people and all the capabilities they have, ask to really connect with each other and see the power people have within themselves in their connection with each other and in creating together.
It can be messy sometimes and sometimes it's shiny ... it's real.
In my work in child protection, the connection with the work of Family Finding ask to stand in a new position, and ask yourself the question from which place you can do the most good. Safety is temporary without healing, and healing happens in the network.
When we want to honour this truth we are invited to listen, act and talk from this new place we find ourselves in.
For me Family Finding helps me to re-connect and listen, to be humble and brave, to invite and be creative, to see with new eyes and to wonder, to long for real change .... to belong.
From Kevin I learned the mindful positioning to use in my work with families or workers. I love the way in which drawings speak right to the heart and speak without words.
Here you'll find some of the drawings I use in my work. you'll find more here (link to sharing possibilities)
