Being aware of the severe impact of trauma on child development that comes from difficult environments, starting this month, Livada Orphan Care has introduced a new area into the Foster to Adopt program structure: equipping parents with skills to care for traumatized foster children. This type of training has been adapted from Dr. Karyn Purvis and Dr. David Cross’s program and the TCU Institute of Child Development in Texas, training in which the LOC staff took part in three sessions.

Caregiver training is offered by our professional, clinical staff to help foster parents, adoptive parents, and group home/orphanage caregivers know how to better parent kids that come from difficult places. Our goal is that every caregiver will become competent in understanding the complex developmental trauma that most of these kids have gone through and are going through, and that they will learn a better way of parenting these kids in the long term to see them thrive. Dr. Karyn Purvis says, “Behavior is the voice of children who have lost their voice.” We want to help kids find their voices again so that bad behavior does not define them and so that they can become whole.