At SPOON, we believe that no child should be denied the right to obtain their highest level of health and wellness due to disability or family status. This includes children right here in the United States. Through distance learning, SPOON has launched a new phase of our domestic program that aims to end malnutrition for children experiencing trauma, including foster children and children at risk of family separation.
Our Local Impact
SPOON has been working in Oregon’s foster care community for over five years. Our work began with a needs assessment in December 2015, which included nearly 400 foster parents and child welfare workers. This assessment revealed that many foster children experience challenges such as difficulty chewing or swallowing, poor appetite, hoarding, overeating, and food preoccupation, and respondents requested training and resources to address the nutrition and feeding challenges of the children in their care.
In response, SPOON developed a trauma-informed curriculum and a set of resources called the Nourished and Thriving Children Toolkit and an in-person training-of-trainers program to equip foster parents and child welfare workers to address the malnutrition and feeding challenges of foster children. Since the launch of our program, we have trained hundreds of parents and professionals to understand the underlying causes of unhealthy food behaviors, develop trusting relationships, and support foster children in building healthy habits, resulting in reduced malnutrition.
Adapting and Expanding
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing challenges for Oregon’s marginalized families by increasing food insecurity and limiting access to health services, and trends show that an increasing number of children are entering foster care during the pandemic. While SPOON’s in-person trainings were cancelled in early 2020, we worked with key local partners including Morrison Child and Family Services and Oregon State University Extension Service-Columbia County (OSU) to meet the needs of Oregon’s vulnerable children through distance learning.
A New Phase
Our adaptations during the pandemic have led SPOON to a new phase of our project that expands both the impact and scope of our work in Oregon. We are transforming our Nourished and Thriving Children Toolkit into an online training package to support biological and foster parents, child welfare workers, and medical professionals to meet the feeding and nutrition needs of children experiencing trauma, including foster children and children at risk of family separation. Our online courses will equip trainees with trauma-informed interventions so they can build children’s resilience and ability to overcome food-related responses to trauma, resulting in improved health and developmental outcomes and supporting family stability.
Participants will be able to access self-paced training courses online, fitting modules into their daily schedules and eliminating travel time required for in-person training. Beyond the pandemic, this will increase the accessibility of our trainings, allowing SPOON to provide support to parents who could not access our in-person trainings previously due to remote location, socioeconomic status, or their children’s needs.
Our Future in Oregon and Beyond
Going forward, SPOON will continue to work with existing partners to disseminate our online training package. We will also seek new partnerships with organizations and medical professionals to help connect biological and foster families to our online resources. Ultimately, we aim to replicate our model in other states to ensure that all children, regardless of disability or family status, have the opportunity to grow and thrive.
