c7172

Child's name: Sammy
Number: C7172
Birthdate: 4/96
State: Washington
Listed: October 2008

If you have completed an adoption homestudy and would like to have your information forwarded to this child's worker, contact us.

SAMMY (4/96) is very intelligent and loves academics and learning. This very social preteen enjoys hanging out with his mates, and playing basketball and wrestling. Of course, he also enjoys playing video games and watching movies.

Legally free, Sammy came into foster care May 2006 with his four younger siblings. In early 2008, his brothers and sister were placed with an out-of-state family. Contact between him and his siblings will be important for Sammy as he is growing up.

Since October 2007, Sammy has been benefiting from being in a residential center where the structure and daily routine help him feel safe. He also is benefiting from the therapeutic child care and interactions with counselors, volunteers, and other boys in residency.

Sammy’s counseling program is focused on helping him to become more willing to cooperate in following directions and rules, develop tools and tactics to handle his frustration in acceptable ways, and strengthen his boundaries. Having a behavioral plan in place in his adoptive home with very attentive parental supervision will provide good support for Sammy while he is learning to self-manage his behavior. Sammy also has medication therapy to help him experience better internal control and to lessen his feeling of sadness and agitation. It is likely that Sammy will continue to benefit from having counseling and medication therapy for the foreseeable future.

An outside mental health therapist is providing individual counseling to Sammy to assist him with sorting through and dealing with his feelings of grief, loss, anger, and abandonment.

For the 2008-2009 school year Sammy is in sixth grade, where he has an individual plan with behavioral and academic supports.

Sammy needs adoptive folks who have had some meaningful experience parenting, teaching, counseling, or mentoring at-risk youth who have a history of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Sammy should be an only child or the youngest of much older teenage siblings who are emotionally and socially healthy and adept. Such siblings could be good role models for Sammy as he continues to work on his healing and recovery.

Subsidy and Purchase of Service may be available.

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