For delegates only. Please note that delegate access is for 90 days.
Organised by ACAMH’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Special Interest Group, the webinar was led by Professor Heather Taussig, a Professor with joint appointments at the University of Colorado’s Kempe Center and the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. Heather presented emerging research which suggests that mentoring programs which use skills-based and goal-focused approaches produce substantially larger impacts on specific youth outcomes.
For delegates only.
Slides – Professor Heather Taussig
Key learning objectives
- Articulate the key prevention components of the Fostering Healthy Futures programme and how they emanate from a positive youth development approach that includes skills-focused mentoring
- Identify key strategies for engaging and retaining care-experienced youth (and their families) in prevention programming
- Name the impacts of the Fostering Healthy Futures programme in multiple domains
About the webinar
Support for mentoring programs emanates from considerable research demonstrating that care-experienced children and adolescents benefit from having adult support. Mentoring programs, which have traditionally taken a relationship-focused approach, have consistently produced small effects across a host of domains. Heather presents emerging research which suggests that mentoring programs which use skills-based and goal-focused approaches produce substantially larger impacts on specific youth outcomes. She presents the Fostering Healthy Futures model of training mentors to engage in skill-building and empowering activities with their mentees and the resulting short- and long-term program outcomes across a host of domains.
About the Speakers
Professor Heather Taussig, Ph.D., is a Professor with joint appointments at the University of Colorado’s Kempe Center and the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Taussig’s research focuses on developing and testing prevention programming for young people who have experienced adversity and social care involvement. She developed and directs the Fostering Healthy Futures (FHF) program, an evidence-based mentoring and skills training program, which is now being disseminated through community-based organizations. Dr. Taussig conducted a 10-year longitudinal study of youth in foster care transitioning to adulthood and is currently examining outcomes for youth and young adults across a host of domains. She is committed to using positive youth development strategies, especially mentoring, to empower youth to foster their own healthy futures. Dr. Taussig serves on several U.S. national review panels as well as on the Research Board of the National Mentoring Resource Center. Heather has been honoured for her work on child abuse and neglect from the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. In 2021 Taussig was awarded the inaugural Jeffrey Jenson Endowed Research Award and a Fulbright Scholar Award in Cardiff, Wales.
