Minutes 05-29-2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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- They are good foster care prevention strategies - They have both immediate and longer benefits to children and their families, including enhanced child cognitive and social emotional development, academic success, and strengthened child-parent interactions - They reduce barriers that office visits create such as transportation, fuel costs, and no shows. KidSCope is the only program in Orange County singularly focused on children birth to five, their families, and caregivers. We all want families to succeed and children to have happy, healthy childhood experiences that lead to a lifetime of productivity and responsible citizenship. Over the years, KidSCope has been able to help families tackle problems that interfere with children's healthy development. This past year, 210 Orange County children and family members were served just through our Outreach therapy program. Over 1000 Orange County citizens were served in other projects under KidSCope. With your partnership over the years we have been able to find the resources to use innovative ideas to promote child mental health and head off problems sooner rather than later. But times change and increased needs become reality. The increased funding that we are asking for will be a proactive approach to insuring Orange County's young children a successful life and affecting our community's well being. Thank you for your time. Kathy Eden read from the following written comments: Hello, my name is Kathy Eden. Thank you for supporting KidSCope and our work providing therapy with very young children. Doing therapy with the very young is a specialized type of work that is very focused on the family and is best delivered in the home. When therapy takes place in the home, the barriers can be understood and the rest of the family can be drawn in to supporting the child. Many of the families I work with are referred through involvement with CPS child protective services and have difficult lives. Many of the families I work with are grandparents raising their grandchildren or children in foster care, and the issue of how to raise children who have been exposed to toxic stress is our focus, and seeing those children in their homes is more helpful for seeing what their triggers might be and helping them feel secure. It simply helps to see the child within their context. There are many parents I work with who have transportation problems or problems paying for gas and the financial barriers are there even though they don't have to pay a co-pay. Working with families in their homes makes sense from a logistical point of view for the families, and it gives me an opportunity to see many more family members who would not attend a child's therapy appointment. Working from a multi-generational point of view and having the child's various caregivers all understand what the child needs are, helps changes need to be made. Many of the families I work with have been fractured and traumatized and meeting them in their home presents the opportunity to understand the barriers as well as the opportunities they have for supporting their children. Many of the parents I work with have their own mental health issues and organizational problems. Having therapy take place in their home can help them practice the interventions in a more genuine way rather than through discussion in an office setting. I have worked with families who do not really want to help initially but are referred through Child Protective Services. I worked with the mother of a very young child who had nearly died because of her lack of experience and failure to recognize her infant's needs, who, the entire time we met, denied any need for my help, but because I came to the house she would open the door. Came to find out through her CPS worker that she was telling him the very things I had been talking to her about for helping her child. It wasn't until much later that she was willing to accept the fact that she benefitted from therapy.