One woman's incredible journey to survive foster care and discover her true identity. This is a complex, intriguing story filled with twists and turns as Liz unravels her complicated past. Part memoir, part guidebook, this book offers support and resources for agencies, foster youth and foster parents.

This is a book about children who have to grow up apart from their biological parents, the impact of this on their lives and on those who look after them, and how we can respond to the challenges this poses in order that they can grow and develop in healthy directions. It provides a systemic framework to describe working with children and adults who are or have been in care or adopted, as well as working with their adoptive parents and carers, highlighting their own narratives and those of professionals working with them. The authors have tried to make space for multiple voices to speak and describe aspects of the care system and life beyond. There are contributions from those who have been brought up away from their biological parents, their adoptive parents and foster or kinship carers. There are also contributions from researchers and professionals with expertise in working with children in substitute care, who describe their theoretical and clinical approaches, privileging the voices of those with whom they work.

I’m Still Here is the story of one woman who experienced the trauma and pain of child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and wife battering. She was seventeen when she married, and by the age of twenty-two, she had three children and was terrorized by her husband. She escapes the marriage after eleven tumultuous years but must leave two of her three children with their father, only to end up with a man who manipulates and dominates her. She leaves him, and years later lives with another abusive man. Elizabeth has to ask herself: why? What is it about her that draws her to abusive men? And why is her behaviour so troublesome to her? Through several forms of therapy by many therapists and reading self-help books, she begins to understand her thinking, her behaviour, and her physical ailments from the time she was a child. Finally, in one year, she took a monumental step in self-awareness by writing her memoir, I’m Still Here. During research and writing this book, she discovers, the process has become a yearlong therapy session, and she is the client and the therapist. I’m Still Here helps her understand how her life experiences molded who she has become based on science and her life. And hopefully, my story will provide insight for those struggling with trauma from family violence or sexual abuse, and, for Victim Assistants and first responders.

There are great rewards that come along with being a foster parent, yet there are also great challenges that can leave you feeling depleted, alone, and discouraged. The many burdens of a foster parent's day--hurting children, struggling biological parents, and a broken system--are only compounded by the many burdens of a foster parent's heart--confusion, anxiety, heartache, anger, and fear. With the compassion and insight of a fellow foster parent, Jamie C. Finn helps you see your struggles through the lens of the gospel, bringing biblical truths to bear on your unique everyday realities. In these short, easy-to-read chapters, you'll find honest, personal stories and practical lessons that provide encouragement and direction from God's Word as you walk the journey of foster parenting.

The actress and dancer describes her origins as a mixed-race child from the Maine foster care system, her efforts to build her career, and the remarkable women who supported and inspired her.

Shortlisted for the CMI's Management Book of the Year Award 2018 and the Business Book Awards 2018 Twenty-five years after the arrival of the Internet, we are drowning in data and deadlines. Humans and machines are in fully connected overdrive - and starting to become entwined as never before. Truly, it is an Age of Overload. We can never have imagined that absorbing so much information while trying to maintain a healthy balance in our personal and professional lives could feel so complex, dissatisfying and unproductive. Something is missing. That something, Julia Hobsbawm argues in this ground-breaking book, is Social Health, a new blueprint for modern connectedness. She begins with the premise that much of what we think about healthy ways to live have not been updated any more than have most post-war modern institutions, which are themselves also struggling in the twenty-first century. In 1946, the World Health Organization defined 'health' as 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.' What we understood by 'social' in the middle of the last century now desperately needs an update. In Fully Connected Julia Hobsbawm takes us on a journey – often a personal one, 'from Telex to Twitter' – to illustrate how the answer to the Age of Overload can come from devising management-based systems which are both highly practical and yet intuitive, and which draw inspiration from the huge advances the world has made in tackling other kinds of health, specifically nutrition, exercise, and mental well-being. Drawing on the latest thinking in health and behavioural economics, social psychology, neuroscience, management and social network analysis, this book provides a cornucopia of case studies and ideas, to educate and inspire a new generation of managers, policymakers and anyone wanting to navigate through the rough seas of overload.

Liz Sutherland grew up with literally no identity. She has no memory of the first few years of her life, other than the jarring experience of being dropped off at a stranger's house when she was a child. She and her siblings lived with their 'grandmother' who abused and mistreated the children every single day. When she finally escaped that life, Liz was thrust into the foster care system. The day she turned eighteen, she was put out on her own. Her book, No Ordinary Liz, chronicles her journey through foster care and beyond as she struggled to find her way in the world and discover her true identity. Along the way, this far-from-ordinary woman found out her birth story was more complex than she had ever imagined, filled with twists and turns that brought her through an incredible journey towards unraveling her past. This book, both memoir and guidebook, is designed to offer hope for those in and out of the foster care system, as well as support and resources for agencies, youth aging out of foster can and foster parents.