What is the Institute for Family-Centered Healing & Health?
Rationale
For the past two decades, Christians around the world have labored with remarkable unity in welcoming orphans and vulnerable children. Together, the entire Christian Alliance for Orphans community works to see “the people of God overflowing with the love of God so that every child will experience God’s unfailing love in a thriving family.”
Yet, to be a thriving family is no easy task in our day. Reports on the status of mental health reveal a steep decline in wellbeing, especially among young people. Divorce, absent fathers, perpetually over-scheduled and worn-out families, and broken or distant relationships - these and other signs of family fracturing are everywhere. Parenting in this era feels complex and challenging.
In recent years, many foster and adoptive parents have expressed that they are struggling to help their children heal in mind, body, and relationships and to flourish as disciples of Christ. They’re trying their best but feel as though they have very little to offer other than transporting their child to other experts, often many times a week. This can leave them feeling exhausted and disheartened.
Vision
Purpose
In response to the deeply felt needs of Christian foster and adoptive parents, CAFO has begun a new initiative, the Institute for Family-Centered Healing & Health (also called the Family Institute).
We want to curate and create excellent resources for parents, organizations, and churches that serve foster and adoptive families. These tools will be grounded in the wisdom of scripture and the best of contemporary research.
The Institute will serve as a dynamic hub for experts, practitioners, and parents that can nurture fresh insights and practices across the field.
God’s tenacious purpose is for parents and children to grow and thrive together. Healing within families is central to God’s restorative action in the world. Despite all our frailties, He invites foster and adoptive parents to participate with Him in this work. Parents can play the most central, indispensable role in their children’s healing and health over time. Indeed, no other figure can match the time, effort, influence, or love of parents expressed across childhood.
Key Principles
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The nurturing home is an essential environment for healing and health. The measurable effects of being welcomed into a caring home are so notable that it is understood by many researchers to be an intervention itself. Parents need not be perfect. The simple reality of a decent family opening their lives to a child produces powerful changes over time. When things get tough, we want to remind parents that for a child who has experienced early adversity, no intervention can match that of being enveloped within a loving family.
Life lived unto God is distinctively good for us.
We have confidence that the committed Christian home - supported by a healthy church - is epicenteric for the day-to-day process of healing and growth for children who’ve faced adversity. Again, the standard is not perfection but an earnest commitment to living out together the core commitments of the Christian life. When families practice confession, forgiveness, and gratitude … when they serve and honor one another … when they bear with each other’s shortcomings and cultivate humility - good things happen. Research now affirms the age-old Christian understanding that there are deep and lasting benefits for both individuals and communities when these sorts of practices are woven into the fabric of daily life. The Institute will work to help parents integrate the basic practices of daily Christian life and habits within their homes.
True health involves the whole person - the body, mind, spirit, and relationships. Easyto-overlook things like sleep, diet, physical activity, time outdoors, and cultivating strong relationships with God and others impact our mental health significantly. Even small, intentional shifts in physical habits make a remarkable difference in our emotions and our perceptions of ourselves and others. So, when we want to help someone heal mentally or emotionally, we must take a view of the whole person. The Institute will offer guidance for practical ways to apply this understanding in the habits of the home.
Most positive growth involves small, daily practices patiently sustained over time. Some challenges may require the involvement of specialists, counselors, and other professionals. At times, crisis interventions are needed. However, even in the most difficult situations, the real work of transformation usually needs to be worked out in small, countlessly repeated actions guided by loving parents amidst daily life. This, in fact, is how Christian discipleship happens as well - it involves all of life over a lifetime. So, the Institute stresses the vital work of cultivating and maintaining simple practicesfor both parents and kids - that contribute to healing and health over time.
Sample Family Institute Resources
Current Trauma Research: A Collaborative Review
The Powerful Role of the Body in Mental Health: Getting Good Sleep
The Powerful Role of the Body in Mental Health: Being Physically Active
The Powerful Role of the Body in Mental Health: Healthy Eating
Human Health and Gifts for the Christian Life
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Addendum: A Public Health Perspective on the Challenges and Opportunities Faced by
Foster and Adoptive Families
The Family Institute is committed to seeing foster and adoptive families thrive. While many are indeed doing well and experiencing relational and mental health, many others are not.
This has led to concerning questions. Why are many foster and adoptive families not thriving? Are these the kinds of outcomes we should expect? Can we hope for something different?
Certainly, parenting children who have experienced significant adversity can be tremendously challenging and is sometimes associated with increased risk - anxiety, depression, and behavioral issues, among others. Overall, however, remarkable recovery and growth in every domain have historically been the norm.1
Yet, for those who serve in foster care and adoption, there is a shared sense that poorer outcomes have notably increased. This could amount to anecdotal evidence. Those who serve up close tend to hear more of the difficult struggles families face. Also, there has been a significant increase in adoption among Christians in the past two decades. A rise in challenges could be associated with this expansion of adoption. Still, such explanations don’t fully account for the distinct struggles families are facing.
Importantly, we can’t ignore the broader massive decline in wellbeing among young people generally. Anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide have increased at an alarming rate. The CDC reported a 30% increase in suicides in the US from 2000 to 2016, with rates rising in all age groups, but especially among adolescents.2 The CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Data Summary & Trends Report: 2009-2019 found that 1 in 3 high school students say they experienced such persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year that they couldn’t participate in regular activities, a 40% increase since 2009. For female students, there was an increase of 50%.3 These declines likely affect vulnerable populations equally or even more than healthy populations.
Experts are beginning to identify key factors that act as levers - promoting well-being or contributing to worsening mental health - based upon their presence or absence in daily life.
1. There is strong evidence that excessive digital media use - social media, gaming, online shopping, video chatting, and texting - plays a significant role in worsening depression and anxiety.4
2. Basic habits of health have significantly declined in the U.S. These habits include getting enough sleep, being physically active, eating a reasonably healthy diet, and spending regular time outdoors. Each of these areas is scientifically proven to play a major role in mental and emotional health. (See The Powerful Role of the Body in Mental Health Series above.) It is reasonable to assume that declining habits of health are impacting the corresponding decline in wellbeing.
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3. Family structure and parenting play a significant role as well. Research shows that a child whose parents have a healthy, stable marriage is much more likely to have better long-term mental health outcomes.5 Also, a certain kind of parenting, called authoritative parenting, has consistently been shown across a variety of research to be a key ingredient in positive mental health outcomes.6 Authoritative parenting combines affection and responsiveness with limit-setting, consistency, and following through. This form of parenting can be contrasted with permissive parenting on the one hand and harsh parenting on the other, both of which are associated with poorer mental health outcomes. Kind authority that is consistently present in a child’s life is vital for well-being. And this, too, appears to be on the decline, as permissive parenting has become the norm in many American families today.
4. Finally, regular commitment to Christian life and community - which includes a multitude of practices associated with higher levels of flourishing - has significantly decreased.7 Why do people flourish when they are more committed to their faith? Some benefits come from belonging to a healthy community.8 But that’s not all that is producing this significant effect. The values and practices of people of faith are distinctively good for us, according to research. There is abundant evidence that practices like confession, forgiveness, kindness, generosity, gratitude, service, prayer, and meditating on scripture and other uplifting ideas are immensely beneficial. These practices are central to the teachings of the scripture and distinctively reflect the values of the Christian tradition. It is worth noting that the absence of these practices is not a neutral experience. When we don’t confess, we undergo more shame. When we don’t forgive, we become bitter and angry. When we are consistently not kind, generous, or willing to help others, we find ourselves absorbed in ourselves and experience more depression and anxiety. When we don’t practice gratitude, we are less satisfied, feel more entitled, and are more easily offended. The practices of the Christian life turn out to significantly contribute to human thriving.
Thoughtful limits on technology, basic habits of health, a sturdy marriage, authoritative parenting, and active participation in the Christian life are all associated with better mental health. However, each of these is in serious decline today.
How does all this relate to children who’ve experienced varying degrees of adversity?
It turns out that it matters a great deal. Children who are at risk because of negative early environments and those who have genetic and neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities benefit from more attentiveness and persistence in each of these areas.
Digital Media
Vulnerable Children in a Digital Age, a booklet produced by the CAFO Research Center, highlights the special vulnerabilities children who’ve experienced early adversity have to the harms associated with digital media. An array of other studies show definitively that even modest reductions in screen and/or social media use can dramatically decrease mental health problems and increase mood, well-being, relational connection, and more.
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Basic Habits of Health
Basic health habits, such as getting enough sleep, being active outdoors, and nutritious eating, may seem to be minor concerns when families are facing major emotional and behavioral problems. In fact, these “small” habits are among the most consequential choices for long-term healing and health. Indeed, an immense variety of studies confirm that their cumulative effects dwarf the potential benefits of medications - yet without the costs and dangerous side effects. Such habits are just the edge kids with special vulnerabilities need to be set up for success.
Authoritative Parenting
Authoritative parenting is especially significant for children who’ve experienced early adversity. Research from the Institute for Family Studies shows that avoiding adverse childhood experiences makes a difference in improving mental health outcomes, but the quality of the parent-child relationship - especially marked by authoritative parenting - is the most powerful predictor of good mental health (8.6% compared to 23% higher probability). Evidence increasingly reveals that more significant than early adverse events is the presence or lack of the innumerable positive and protecting factors that come from the kind authority of parents. (See Section B. What Role do Positive Inputs Play?)
Faith Practice
The benefits of active participation in the Christian life are especially healing for a child who has experienced harm or neglect. The need to forgive, to learn new relational behaviors, to experience the agency of generosity and service, and to learn to see with eyes of gratitude is essential for the healing and health of children who’ve been wronged and missed so much vital relational learning.
What is needed at this juncture for Christian foster and adoptive families?
Certainly, becoming trauma-informed can be valuable. Professional intervention and medication sometimes may be necessary. Critically, it must be remembered that the most wise and loving parenting in the world does not guarantee positive results. Like the loving Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, many godly parents experience deep pain and uncertainty over the choices their children make.
Still, these core areas of human experience are vital contributors to family and societal flourishing. And, in the years ahead, they will be among the most critical factors needed to promote the long-term healing and wellbeing sought by foster and adoptive families.
1. Van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Juffer, F. (2006). The Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 2006: Adoption as intervention. Meta-analytic evidence for massive catch-up and plasticity in physical, socioemotional, and cognitive development. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 47(12), 1228-1245.
2. Miron, O., Yu, K. H., Wilf-Miron, R., & Kohane, I. S. (2019). Suicide rates among adolescents and young adults in the United States, 2000-2017. Jama, 321(23), 2362-2364.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). Youth risk behavior surveillance data summary & trends report: 2009-2019.
4. Ferguson, C. J., Kaye, L. K., Branley-Bell, D., Markey, P., Ivory, J. D., Klisanin, D., ... & Wilson, J. (2022). Like this meta-analysis: Screen media and mental health. Professional psychology: Research and practice, 53(2), 205.
5. Wood, R. G., Avellar, S., & Goesling, B. (2009). The effects of marriage on health: A synthesis of recent research evidence. New York, NY: Nova Science.
6. Chen, Y., Haines, J., Charlton, B. M., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2019). Positive parenting improves multiple aspects of health and well-being in young adulthood. Nature human behaviour, 3(7), 684-691.
7. Chen, Y., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2018). Associations of religious upbringing with subsequent health and well-being from adolescence to young adulthood: An outcome-wide analysis. American journal of epidemiology, 187(11), 2355-2364.
8. VanderWeele, T. J. (2021). Effects of religious service attendance and religious importance on depression: examining the meta-analytic evidence. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 31(1), 21-26.
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