Cathy Fitzgibbon, aka the Culinary Celt, is a keen promoter of the best of local and seasonal Irish produce and foodstuffs. Today The Menu wishes to give a warm nod to a production of her own, a lovely book/workbook, Eat With the Seasons, which is designed to foster a more mindful and healthy relationship with food and eating, by tuning in to the natural rhythms of the growing seasons. Anyone struggling with emotional eating patterns will find it to be a canny little tool when it comes to reappraising and understanding better their relationships with food and eating. It is full of practical and meaningful ways to self-reflect and recognise personal eating patterns, allowing the reader to develop a more positive relationship with food.

theculinarycelt.com/product/eat-with-the-seasons-2/

Wine in the Big Smoke

Whenever The Menu goes up to the Big Smoke, he very often stays with a doughty comrade in Terenure whose home comes with the additional allure of being just around the corner from David Gallagher’s very splendid Green Man Wines, which The Menu reviewed in August. What began as a retail wine outlet has now evolved into one of The Menu’s most favourite places to put on the nosebag and fill his glass, all the more so since new chef Dan Smith came on board.

Dan has a penchant for hale and hearty fare, and there is no greater pleasure than simply getting up from the table at GMW to select a bottle from the retail shelves and, with a small and fair corkage, instead open it there and then for consumption on the premises with your meal. Gallagher also hosts regular wine dinners and the next should be well worth the trip, an evening of very special Portuguese wines of Luis Seabra (Sept 27).

greenmanwines.ie

Setting the bar high

The Menu doesn’t get overly bogged down in listing awards doled out in the world of food and hospitality for they are many and very varied, ranging from the select few with any real credibility to a staggering amount of bottom feeders simply in the business to hoover up shekels from unsuspecting hospitality practitioners.

The Menu, however, is more than prepared to take the Irish Bar of the Year awards at face value and that is based alone on the list of very fine winners in 2023, including many in Cork and Munster which would easily crop up on his own list of personal favourites.

In this Rugby World Cup season, Best Bar To Watch The Match Gold Winner went to the Woolshed Baa & Grill, in Cork, while The Montenotte Hotel picked up gold for Best Designed Bar. The Locke, in Limerick, got the People’s Choice Award, while The Shelbourne on MacCurtain St thoroughly deserved its gold for Whiskey Bar of the Year. However, it was their near neighbour, Paladar, just around the corner on Bridge St, that truly triumphed on the night, with the new cocktail bar picking up Best Newcomer and crowning that achievement with the overall prize of Bar of the Year.

baroftheyear.ie

Supper club

One of The Menu’s most favourite venues in Dublin is Overends Kitchen, sited as it is in the splendid Airfield Estate, a 38-acre working farm and gardens in Dublin City, so the prospect of an autumn/winter supper club hosted by Gather & Gather in the same venue has him sliding around in a puddle of his own drool.

Each evening sees a guest chef showcase their menu in collaboration with the team from Overends Kitchen and Airfield Estate where much of the produce on each evening will be sourced, and the lineup for 2023 includes Jordan Bailey with Majken Bech-Bailey, Surya Davies with Isobel Farrelly, and Jess Murphy.

The Menu was extremely privileged to host the wonderful husband and wife pairing of Jordan Bailey and Majken Bech-Bailey at his Grub Circus extravaganza, at All Together Now, in Co Waterford this August.

The duo, most recently of Aimsir, where they earned the restaurant a staggering two Michelin stars within six months of opening, now operate their own hospitality and events consultancy, Bech-Bailey, and will stage a five-course feast menu for a special two-night residency (September 29 & 30) at Overends.

airfield.ie/overends-kitchen/

TODAY’S SPECIAL

The Menu’s diet ebbs and flows with the seasons and a recent drop in the temperature has him once more dipping his toes into the hot bath of comfort that comes with more wintery fare.

So the fresh produce of his summer breakfast went by the wayside on an especially wild and blustery morning when he wrapped his paws around a big bowl-sized mug of café au lait and chomped on hot sourdough toast, dripping with melting butter and smeared with marmalade. An especially fine classic Seville Orange Marmalade, from JamShack, in Wicklow, was his choice; they do a very nice line of preserves. Set to perfection, still retaining a wobble on the spoon but never likely to split or run, and sublimely sugared someway south of excess so that bittersweet citric orange flavour combo dances divinely across the palate, this marmalade is perfection indeed!

facebook.com/jamshackpreserves/

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All foster children experience the trauma of separation from their birth parents — and too many others have experienced other adverse experiences like neglect or abuse. In light of these challenges, Michigan’s child and family service agencies are working to provide the mental health services foster kids desperately need.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity.” ACEs include traumas like domestic violence, sexual abuse, substance abuse in the home, the daily experience of racism, or separation from a parent due to divorce, death, imprisonment, or loss of parental rights. 

“Almost 100% of the foster care children have experienced some form of trauma, different traumas at various levels,” says Michael Williams, president and CEO of Orchards Children’s Services, a child and family services agency with locations in Genesee, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties. “Leaving your family is traumatic for any child. Neglected children sometimes don’t have as many traumatic episodes as the ones that were abused, but nonetheless, it affects all of them.”

The Michigan ACE Initiative shares that children who experience ACEs can develop the resilience needed to live healthy, happy, and productive lives. And many Michigan organizations are helping them do just that through behavioral health services.

Eastern Michigan: EMDR and an emphasis on education

In addition to making traditional therapies available to the foster children it serves, Orchards Children’s Services has found Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to be an effective way to help kids build resilience after experiencing trauma. This evidence-based form of psychotherapy uses eye movements or other bilateral stimulation while processing traumatic memories. EMDR helps the brain to alter the emotions, thoughts, and responses associated with the traumatic experience. 

Orchards has trained all its therapists and staff working in child welfare in EMDR. Williams says EMDR helps children immediately rather than waiting on time-consuming, continuing diagnoses.
Michael Williams.
“EMDR helps us to find solutions to help that child to better understand how to deal with the trauma or any of the emotional issues that he or she has experienced,” he says. “Some children do better with talk therapy, based on their ability to have cognitive understanding of some of the issues that they face. I think in order to be effective in treating them, you need to have both options available.”

Northwest Michigan: summer camps, horsing around, and traditional therapies

With offices in Gaylord, Harbor Springs, and Traverse City, Child and Family Services of Northwestern Michigan (CFS) supports the mental health needs of its communities, particularly foster children and foster parents. In addition to traditional therapies, CFS offers an Equine Assisted Therapy program, summer camps, group therapy, and support groups. In the near future, CFS will introduce trauma-informed parenting classes for foster parents and other child caregivers. Many of these services are available virtually.
Michelle Nichols.
“We’re going to also resurrect our support group for adoptive parents, foster parents, and possibly other parents,” says Michelle Nichols, site manager and family resource specialist with CFS. “It’s more of a prevention effort to try to keep children in their placement as long as possible.”

CFS contracts with mental health providers like Megan Morrissey, a therapist who often works with foster kids.

“Almost all children in foster care meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder,” Morrissey says. “Many of them also have attachment disorders, which is the preliminary to developing personality disorders in adulthood and puts them at significant risk for substance use disorders, as well as other things that are not necessarily mental health conditions but are connected, like being victims of domestic violence in adulthood.”

Morrissey notes that many children in foster care also experience high levels of anxiety and depression. Because of these underlying mental health issues, children in foster care may experience difficulty sleeping, nightmares, wetting the bed, and food-related issues like hoarding food, stealing food, overeating, chronic indigestion, overeating, or undereating. They often express emotional dysregulation, which can manifest as not being present (dissociation), lack of motivation, withdrawal, or temper tantrums.

“Foster parents are going to be the ones who see the vast majority of symptoms,” Morrissey says. “Often, children who are in foster care have a history of being bullied and a lack of social skills because those aren’t being demonstrated for them at home. That can result in a lot of social anxiety, a lot of self-consciousness. Children who’ve experienced a lot of trauma can be either hyper-aware of their bodies or don’t feel their bodies. They are numbing up.”

Lansing-based agency builds trust, works on attachments

Based in Lansing, Child and Family Charities (CFC) has sent five of its practitioners for training in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development. These five will, in turn, train CFC’s other staff members in the modality, which is designed to meet the complex needs of children who have experienced adversity, early harm, toxic stress, or trauma. These kids often find it difficult to trust the loving adults in their lives, so they act out.
Dr. Andrea Calabrese.
“It’s a trauma-based model of looking at behavior differently — less shaming and more supportive for not only the child, but teaching the parent how to be more supportive, listening to the child, and understanding where the behavior is coming from,” says Dr. Andrea Calabrese, CFC’s chief operations officer.

Calabrese notes that kids who have been abused or neglected often have difficulty with attachment issues. Removing children from their birth homes can exacerbate those attachment issues. Calabrese shares that foster children also experience ambiguous loss, a loss felt strongly when their loved ones are alive but not present.

“Some of our children act out violently. Some of our children withdraw. Some of our children self-harm, from ingesting substances and burning or cutting themselves to putting themselves in serious situations, such as human trafficking,” Calabrese says. “A lot of these behaviors come from disrupted attachment.”

TBRI seeks to heal the child’s ability to make healthy attachments by building trust.
Mary Corrigan.
“Sometimes foster parents come in thinking, ‘Well, I’ll just love them. And as a result, this child’s behavior will change.’ Love is a good starting point. But it’s a slow trajectory,” says Mary Corrigan, CFC behavioral health therapist. “Foster parents hate when I say this, but I tell them to keep parenting but let go of the results. The ongoing support we provide them is crucial to them continuing to have a healthy perspective.”

State of Michigan “very attuned” to foster childrens’ mental health needs

At the state level, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Bureau of Children’s Coordinated Health Policy and Supports (BCCHPS) enhances access to and oversight of behavioral health services for children who receive Medicaid, including foster children. MDHHS also provides incentive payments to community mental health systems at the regional level for these children.
Dr. Jeanette Scheid.
“There also are trainings and conferences that foster parents can come to and hear from other foster parents and from local, regional, and national experts,” says Dr. Jeanette Scheid, medical consultant at MDHHS’ Children’s Services Agency. “Our mental health systems are also very, very attuned to the importance of the systems of care principles that include family-driven, youth-guided principles for parents, broadly speaking, and parents who are in the foster parent role.”  

MDHHS also requires foster parents going through the licensing process to take formal training that addresses foster children’s mental health needs, the impact of trauma, and the emotions and behaviors that these children express. In addition, MDHHS provides Foster Parent Navigators who not only help potential foster parents with licensing but also offer them ongoing support.

“As a society, we all share the value of supporting the health and wellbeing of children,” Scheid says. “We have three main goals in child welfare — permanency, safety, and wellbeing. We’re trying to work on lifting all of those up. Part of doing that is identifying and addressing mental health needs as early as possible.”

Estelle Slootmaker is a working writer focusing on journalism, book editing, communications, poetry, and children’s books. You can contact her at Estelle.Slootmaker@gmail.com or www.constellations.biz.

Michael Williams photos by Steve Koss. 

Andrea Calabrese photo courtesy of CFC. Michelle Nichols photo courtesy of Michelle Nichols. Mary Corrigan photo courtesy of Mary Corrigan. Jeanette Scheid photo courtesy of MDHHS.

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COLUMBIA — After years of fostering mostly infants and younger children, Greenville nurse Jennifer Tice and her husband, Benjamin, knew that some foster kids, especially teenagers, were forced to sleep overnight in Department of Social Services offices.

About two years ago, when they agreed to take one of those teenagers as an emergency placement, they learned just how tough it can be.

The 15-year-old girl the Tices took into their home one weekend told them of sitting in a cubicle for hours as her case manager desperately tried to find a home for her, Jennifer Tice recounted. Finally, the girl fell asleep in the chair, only to awake to her traumatic story being retold over the phone time and time again and hearing families say they couldn’t take her in.

Jennifer Tice soon learned more.

Many offices don’t have beds, so they use air mattresses. One office told her they would have “upwards of six” children sleeping on mattresses in a conference room. Other department employees said they just wished they had a table kids could eat on during the long waits.

What Tice was hearing about was the beginnings of a surge in children forced by an acute shortage of foster homes to sleep in state offices or be shuttled around South Carolina to a succession of temporary homes.

As The Post and Courier reported this week, the problem of children staying overnight at state offices began to emerge in earnest around the time Tice learned more about it — in late 2021 and early 2022. After initially tamping down the problem, it’s soared since the beginning of this year.

In March, 16 children spent 49 nights in offices. By May, just over 50 children spent 144 nights in offices. In June, 62 children spent 251 nights in offices, according to the independent monitors’ report. Foster kids spent 132 nights in offices in July, a sharp drop from the month before, said Emily Medere, deputy state director for child welfare services. The state said earlier this year it needs 2,000 more foster homes to meet demand.

“As a mama, I could not stand the idea of a child that’s already been through a traumatic experience separated from their biological family … and only having an air mattress to sleep on,” Tice said. “I can only imagine it makes them feel like, ‘Who’s thinking about me?’ ”

Report points to mental health crisis

The foster home shortage and the kids sleeping on office floors that result are problems all over the country, not just South Carolina, and have been building for years.

About half of U.S. states have only half the foster families they need, said Serita Cox, co-founder and CEO of iFoster, a national group that provides support to foster families.

North Carolina has seen the number of licensed foster homes fall from about 7,000 to 5,500 since the COVID-19 pandemic, leading counties and community organizations to buy property to keep kids in while they wait for a home, Gaile Osborne, the executive director of the Foster Family Alliance of North Carolina, told The Post and Courier.

Experts and state officials agree it was the pandemic that pushed the system beyond the brink.

“When schools closed down, all of a sudden foster parents are homeschooling their foster children, which they didn’t sign up to do,” Cox said. “You can’t just call up a babysitter. To take care of a foster child, you need another licensed foster parent to come in and take care of the kids just for you to go on a date night.”

The burnout thinned the ranks of foster parents significantly, and because the pandemic also impeded recruitment efforts, their places often went unfilled.

“We’re just constantly chasing our tails trying to get these foster care homes up and running,” said Cindy Bogan-Baber, president of the Berkeley County Foster Parents Association. She is currently fostering three children.

Cindy Bogan-Baber (center) laughs while sitting on the couch and talking to her two adopted sons, Josiah Baber, 7, and Jeremiah Baber, 10, at their home on Aug. 1, 2023, in Summerville. File/Gavin McIntyre/Staff

By Gavin McIntyre gmcintyre@postandcourier.com

At the same time, the children coming into the department’s care are increasingly teenagers with mental and behavior health challenges who require intensive support that many foster families are unable to provide. Those are also the children most likely to end up on an air mattress in a conference room.

Of the 109 children that slept overnight in an office from April to June this year, 79 percent had a mental health diagnosis, 31 percent had a history of suicidal thoughts and 15 percent had active substance abuse problems, the monitors’ report found.

The key cause of the latest instability in the foster care system, the report concluded, is South Carolina’s dearth of mental health care for children.

“Finding a child psychiatrist is like finding a leprechaun,” one department case manager told the monitors. South Carolina is the lowest-ranked state in the country for youth diagnosed with major depression who do not receive treatment, the report found.

The pandemic accelerated trends of declining mental health among youth, which plunged headlong into the Palmetto State’s treatment void.

There are not enough mental health care specialists in the state, especially in rural areas. South Carolina has only one 24-hour crisis stabilization unit, but it is only open to adults, and the state has had a moratorium on developing new rehabilitative behavioral health services since 2015, according to the report.

The state’s leaders have said improving mental health services is a key priority, and the state’s new 988 crisis hotline is showing promise.

Yet parents’ desperation has become so great, they are increasingly refusing to take their children back into custody after they are hospitalized for a mental health crisis because they cannot care for them, leaving them in the care of the department, the report found.

“Some of these parents are willing to submit to allegations of child neglect because they are desperate for help for their child,” the report said.

Those children, with acute mental health needs, are very difficult to place with foster families and are more likely to bounce from home to home when they are placed, leading to the current crisis.

Troublingly, the monitors found the crisis feeds on itself: The longer children don’t have a stable home, the worse their mental health and behaviors become, making them ever harder to place.

“Though DSS leadership has been rallying staff in a collective effort to stem the crisis for months, a severe insufficiency of services and supports for families is fundamentally preventing progress,” the report states.

Department searches for solutions

S.C. Department of Social Services Director Michael Leach. File/Provided

Provided

Michael Leach, director of the Department of Social Services, told The Post and Courier this month he is well aware of the problems, and the department is doing its best to address them.

The department is providing families with the most-challenging children 24/7 crisis support, extra training and a behavioral specialist; began providing day services in the Midlands; resumed directly recruiting foster parents and contracted with a third-party organization to work on keeping children in a consistent home, officials said.

The department has begun building out its own youth mental health support system to tackle the problem at its root, he said.

“I think it’ll take time for us to be able to expand all of those before we see a marked impact,” said Medere, the deputy director.

Monitors urged the department to go further. It should pay full-time professional foster parents, redouble their already successful efforts to place foster children with relatives and work with law enforcement to reduce unnecessary child removals. It calls on the rest of state government to act swiftly to improve the state’s mental health care system.

In May, Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill that allows the department to provide relatives who care for foster children with the same reimbursements foster families receive. That could play a crucial role in alleviating the crisis by making it easier for relatives to take in children, said Cox of iFoster.

But Jennifer Tice wasn’t willing to wait. In March 2022, she and her husband resolved to do something.

Working with the support of the Upstate business community and the department, they began renovating department offices, adding couches, rocking chairs, tables, TVs, Nintendo Switches, books and beds — real ones.

In March 2022, Jennifer and Benjamin Tice, foster parents from Greenville, founded a nonprofit called Lily Pad when they learned that foster kids were sleeping on air mattresses in conference rooms when they couldn’t find a stable home. Since then they’ve been renovating county Department of Social Services offices to make them more comfortable. At left is a “before” picture of the Anderson County office, and at right is an “after” photo. Lily Pad/Provided

“They go from just having an air mattress in a cubicle to having an entire room that doesn’t even look like they’re in an office,” she said.

They’ve renovated eight county offices, all in the Upstate, but have an aggressive plan to reach the rest of the state. But it’s a problem Tice said she’s sad it even needs to be solved in the first place.

“If we ever get to a point where these rooms aren’t used for overnights, then praise the Lord,” she said.

The best of health, hospital and science coverage in South Carolina, delivered to your inbox weekly.

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By Sara Tiano and Jeremy Loudenback

” decoding=”async” width=”1024″ height=”683″ data-src=”https://imprintnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/newsom-1024×683.jpeg” alt class=”wp-image-66264 lazyload” data-srcset=”https://imprintnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/newsom-1024×683.jpeg 1024w, https://imprintnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/newsom-300×200.jpeg 300w, https://imprintnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/newsom-768×512.jpeg 768w, https://imprintnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/newsom-1536×1024.jpeg 1536w, https://imprintnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/newsom.jpeg 2048w” sizes=”(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px” />California Gov. Gavin Newsom outlines his budget at a briefing in May. Photo provided by the Office of Gavin Newsom.

Despite a massive budget shortfall, California will increase spending on financial aid for foster youth attending California colleges, and offer more housing support to young adults who live in high-cost areas of the state and are aging out of the child welfare system.  

After recent years of budget surpluses, in May Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) projected a deficit of nearly $32 billion, due in large part to a downturn in the stock market — which in turn lowered state revenue from income taxes. The revenue picture was further complicated this year by mass extensions on tax filings to aid residents impacted by winter storms. This year, state taxes are not due in California until Oct. 16.

Still, amid significant cuts to other social programs, the governor and state lawmakers have agreed to make several key investments in foster youth in the $310 billion spending plan signed last week. 

“I want to thank the Legislature for their hard work on a budget that prioritizes the needs of Californians while keeping the state on strong economic footing,” Newsom said in a press release.

Debt-free college

The newly minted budget will provide foster youth with access to debt-free post-secondary education at any of the state’s public higher education institutions, including schools in the University of California, California State University, and California Community College systems. The state will invest $5.2 million in the coming fiscal year toward the benefit, augmenting an existing scholarship fund with increased access for foster youth. 

“These additional funds will be a game changer for many students.”

— Debbie Raucher, John Burton Advocates for Youth

The financial aid will be available to young people who were in foster care after their 13th birthdays and are pursuing bachelor’s degrees, which are now available at California community colleges. Students will still be required to fulfill the scholarship program’s “self-help obligation,” meaning they must contribute $7,898 to their school costs before the remaining unmet need is covered. 

The new California budget includes $14 million for the Student Success Completion Grant, allowing current and former foster youth who attend community college to receive up to $10,500 annually. This is a sizable increase from current annual awards, which have been limited to $2,596 per year for students taking 12 units and $8,000 for those carrying 15 units. 

“With financial challenges being cited repeatedly by students with experience in foster care as the greatest barrier to college completion, these additional funds will be a game changer for many students,” said Debbie Raucher, director of education for the nonprofit John Burton Advocates for Youth. “Whether a student is facing housing instability, food insecurity, challenges obtaining childcare, or needing to work to ensure their basic needs are met, these additional resources will allow them to focus full time on their studies.”

Housing help

On the housing front, a bill to increase rent payments for young adults in extended foster care failed to make it through the Legislature, but was revived in the budget by San Francisco Democrat Assemblymember Phil Ting, who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee.

In an effort to combat the high rate of homelessness among young adults in extended foster care, state funds will soon cover a new supplement to the allowance for Supervised Independent Living Placements. This housing option, referred to as a SILP, provides 18- to 21-year-olds with a stipend for rent and other living expenses such as food and utilities. The youth find and secure their own living arrangements, which can be apartments with or without roommates, college dorms or rented rooms, but they must be inspected and approved by social workers.

The arrangements — relied upon by roughly 40% of these older foster youth — gives the young people financial support and a measure of independence as they enter adulthood. 

But SILP payments have failed to keep up with the cost of living. Currently, SILP participants receive $1,129 each month regardless of where in the state they live. That number has only increased by 41% over the past decade, failing to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of rent in most parts of the state during that time.

“Other youth have their families, but we don’t have that.”

— Christina Torrez, formerly in extended foster care

“The end result for many youth,” Ting’s office noted, “is a cycle of homelessness and falling deeper into poverty.” 

Under the new budget, those supplements will be determined by the fair market rent in each county, providing higher stipends for young people living in high-cost regions. The supplements in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties will be $772.30 and $1,255.30 respectively. In rural Modoc County, it will be $77.30.

Roughly half of all foster youth in California experience at least one bout of homelessness between the ages of 18 and 21, and a third face multiple episodes of homelessness, according to researchers at Chapin Hall, based at the University of Chicago, who have tracked this demographic group for years. 

In a report published by the John Burton Advocates for Youth, former foster youth Christina Torrez described struggling with homelessness in extended foster care, and noted that higher payments could have saved her anguish in that period — allowing her to pay rent and keep her lights on, and maybe even save up a bit of an emergency fund. 

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“It’ll allow them to have a fall-back,” Torrez said. “Other youth have their families, but we don’t have that.”

The supplement amount will vary based on the county, accounting for the vastly higher cost of living in some parts of the state, like Los Angeles and the Bay Area. 

The stipend increases will cost the state almost $19 million a year beginning in fiscal year 2025-26. 

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