Lack of Mental Health Training

Through my recent research, I have encountered multiple articles by CASA and medical professionals that claim that there is a lack of training among mental health professionals as well foster parents. Foster parents are the most affected by the lack of training because they usually don't have any formal training in dealing with mental health issues. I have also posted a web page that deals specifically with ways to help foster parents deal with these issues. There are also specific case studies done by CASA in the first link I posted. Hopefully in the upcoming week i will hopefully be able to interview a mental health professional that deals with foster children. Only 3% of mental health professionals are trained to deal with foster children. Therefore, interviewing one of these rare individuals will surely add to my knowledge and research on the subject.

First Post

In my first post i wanted to go over what I have done as far as researching and interviews and also give a brief overview of what i have planned for the next few weeks . For my first interview I went over to the Kids Matter offices to interview a woman named Susan who works closely with foster children through the CASA program. It was in this interview where I began to develop an interest in the effects that the foster system has on a child's mental health. Susan, who works with foster children on a daily basis, informed me that the most prevalent issue with these children is anger management. Through research that I have done since the interview I have learned that while many children in the system deal with anger problems anywhere between 40-80% of children in the system have a mental health disorder. Many of these disorders even require psychiatric treatment. I have posted my first link to my page so please take a look at it. It is a journal article from CASA and has a lot of useful information about mental health issues in foster children. Hopefully sometime in the next week i will be interviewing a mental health professional who deals directly with the foster kids. I will be posting to this page frequently in the next few weeks.