Hannah’s desire to help others came at a very young age, but her foster care journey began six years ago. In 2014, during the border crisis, she and her husband knew they wanted to help. Hannah’s husband, Jesús, is bilingual. When they became certified foster parents, they wanted to serve all children in need, especially unaccompanied immigrant minors who needed a bilingual family. The Origel family went on to foster a Hispanic youth from Guatemala and more than 15 other children over the last six years. 
In 2018, Sara and Joshua Glover became foster parents to a 13-day-old medically fragile infant. Special medical needs, doctor’s appointments and specialized care became part of their routine. Thankfully, the Glovers are trained foster parents through the Pressley Ridge Treatment Foster Care Program. The program helps to provide a stable family life for infants and children up to age 21 who have been affected by trauma, and as a result, may have behavioral or emotional needs. Treatment foster parents are specially trained to support a child’s emotional and developmental needs and are continually supported by Pressley Ridge professionals who provide a caring network of support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Now, the Glovers are a beautiful family with three children – two are biological, a boy and a girl, and their newest addition. “We knew we wanted to have him as part of our family, but we also knew that the first goal was to try to help him go home,” said Sara. “The Pressley Ridge Treatment Foster Care training helped prepare us for both, and kept us informed through the process. We are a multicultural family living in a wonderful Pittsburgh neighborhood reflecting our diversity, and we feel very blessed”, said Sara Glover.
Many of our students have unique needs that require additional problem solving to ensure their health and safety. At the Pressley Ridge School for the Deaf, we are offering clear face masks for both students and teachers so that facial expressions are visible when communicating. At the Pressley Ridge School for Autism, in addition to traditional masks and face shields, we are also offering face shields that clip onto the brim of a baseball cap for those students unable to tolerate anything on their faces. Disposable hospital gowns and latex gloves are available for staff who need to assist students with feeding, toileting, or other physical tasks that they are unable to complete on their own.
Pressley Ridge Delaware recently received a generous donation from the Redd Heart Foundation. The staff were able to deliver boxes of food to all 47 treatment foster families as a small gesture of gratitude for their dedication to our children during this challenging time.
Teachers and staff from Pressley Ridge School for Autism celebrated student Tony’s birthday with a drive-by parade. Seeing so many familiar faces brought joy to Tony and his family and to the staff members, as well. PRSA is looking forward to creatively celebrating more birthdays, graduation and the last day of school throughout the next month.
By Jeanni-Marie Williams
In 2017, Pressley Ridge’s Social Research and Innovation Center (SRIC) with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation began analyzing trusting relationships between providers and clients through a series of research studies. The initial results identify the five essential skills that youth and family workers use to develop and maintain trust with those they serve.
Child welfare and behavioral healthcare services are inherently relationship-based fields, and perhaps the most critical challenge that service providers face is developing healthy relationships with the people they serve. A sense of mutual trust between providers and youth/families may be the most significant component of a strong working relationship. Providers who can establish trust often provide higher quality care and may achieve more desirable service outcomes than those who struggle to develop mutual trust. However, engaging difficult or traditionally hard-to-reach youth/families is one of the most pressing challenges in the field of child welfare, as many individuals in care report a lack of trust between themselves and their service providers.
In one study, the researchers asked a diverse group of service providers from various states and services (residential treatment, special education, community-based, outpatient, foster care, etc.) to identify how they build trust with youth and families.
Researchers used group concept mapping – an approach that uses advanced statistics to analyze comments –to tabulate responses and categorize them into five overarching themes. Within each theme is a menu of practical skills, attitudes, and techniques that provers use to develop trust. These themes constitute a core model for building trust with youth and families usable by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
The study is the first of its kind to assess how staff from across the service array actively build trust. Previously, many believed that the ability to create trust is an innate ability, something that is difficult to teach. Results from this study suggest that providers can learn how to build trust, and that program managers and supervisors can support staff to create healthier relationships built upon trust.
“This study identifies practical and important skills that staff use to build trusting relationships with youth. By building these skills with our staff, we will better position them to engage and partner with our youth and families,” said Michael Valenti, Senior Research Coordinator, Organizational Performance.
“Our organization has a long and distinguished history of measuring the impact on the people we serve, and the working alliance is such an important piece of knowing how well we connect with people to ensure we are having a positive impact on our communities, kids, and families,” stated Susanne Cole, President and CEO
The project also included an official field test of Pressley Ridge’s Alliance Building: Learning to Engage (ABLE), a new model for developing and tracking supportive relationships, or “working alliances.” ABLE combines working alliance theory with practical feedback tools that reinforce that our relationships (with individuals, groups, teams, etc.) are at the center of everything we do. ABLE was developed specifically to increase communication and collaboration across a wide variety of people, services, and systems.
Pressley Ridge is currently sharing the results with staff and examining how the ABLE intervention might support trust-building efforts. The organization will continue to explore how employees create and maintain trust with youth and families. For more information about this work, please contact Michael Valenti, Senior Research Coordinator (mvalenti@pressleyridge.org).
The Pressley Ridge Social Research & Innovation Center is excited to announce the publication of a new article that discusses the results of a study examining alliances between families and residential treatment family workers. Published in the Children and Youth Services Review Journal, this article demonstrates that sharing working alliance feedback with residential treatment staff can be effective in improving working alliances with families. This study adds to our knowledge about the working alliance and helped to build the foundation for our Alliance Building: Learning to Engage (ABLE) model.
All across our regions and programs, Pressley Ridge children, families, and staff have so much to celebrate this holiday season. Thank you for your dedication and for continuing to do whatever it take for those who depend on our services.
