Archive

UK foster parent training fills need in state
Kentucky's artists featured in exhibit of museum holdings
University Y2K compliance deadlines set
Book previews ­ 
"Japanese Landscape: Where Land and Culture Merge" 
"The War To End All Wars"

UK foster parent training fills need in Kentucky

Many parents struggle at some point or other to connect with their children. Although it can be hard to understand tantrums or depressions, the answer is often right there at home. For foster parents, however, the answers are not so easy to grasp.

"You're sort of alien to the world many of these kids come from," said Mark Brockman, a seven-year foster parent and staff assistant for the University of Kentucky's Foster Parent Training Program. "Most foster parents come from fairly stable backgrounds and families. While you have compassion for the children, you can't always understand their problems."

To help foster parents understand, the UK Foster Parent Training Program offers meetings, conferences, classes and mailings targeted to explain problems and solutions, make parents aware of services and educate them on foster parenting techniques.

The UK program is part of a consortium of eight Kentucky universities serving the Kentucky Department for Community Based Services (DCBS). The consortium's goal is to strengthen the state's child welfare, family preservation and juvenile service components of the social service system through staff training and education programs. UK's unique mission in the consortium is to offer statewide foster parent training directly to parents.

"A foster parent brings an unknown child into their home and needs to learn to understand where he has been and what he has experienced. This may be very difficult and have a major impact on the foster family," said Angela Sparks, director of the UK program. "We want to teach the foster parent and the child to be a team. That can be really hard, and some have to do a lot of work."

Every DCBS foster parent in the state has to have at least six hours of training each year. Special needs parents require even more training. Although the DCBS does occasionally offer classes, regular statewide, in-service foster parent training is generated and supported largely through the UK Foster Parent Training Center's program.

The center offers regular classes on foster parenting issues, such as how to deal with children's past abuses, understanding records and rights, recognizing behavior problems and symptoms and noting possible disorders. Classes are offered at various locations across the state through distance learning technology, and regional and state conferences allow parents and service providers to meet for several days annually. Foster Friends, a statewide newsletter published by the center keeps all Kentucky foster parents up to date on scheduled classes, events and issues.
Over 6,000 children are in foster homes each year, with 2,000 of those being new children. There are 1,900 registered foster homes in the state. Each home can house up to six children based on resources.

"The need for foster homes is great, especially for teen-agers," Sparks said. "A lot of kids can't live with their parents for many reasons. They need places to go, and foster parents need the training to help them."

Sparks said many people become foster parents only to eventually become adoptive parents. Over 50 percent of the children adopted in Kentucky are adopted by their foster parents, she said.

"Because of that a lot of the state's training is the same for foster and adoptive parents," she said. "They still have the same issues to deal with."

Brockman and his wife, Jennie, know the issues very well. After three years as foster parents, they made the transition to adoptive parents for foster children by adopting their daughter. After seven years and almost 40 children, they are in the process of adopting another and are considering yet a third. And they still intend to be foster parents.

"We may run out of rooms in the house soon," he said.

For more information about the UK Foster Parent Training Program, call 257-2690. To find out more about becoming a foster or adoptive parent, call 1-800-232-5437 or contact the local Department for Community Based Services.

By Selena Stevens

Kentucky's artists featured in exhibit of museum holdings

"Untitled," a photo from 1960, is just one of several works on display as part of the University of Kentucky Art Museum's exhibit "Made in Kentucky: Regional Artists in the Collection Part I: 1800 to 1980." The photo is by Ralph Eugene Meatyard of Lexington.

The exhibit, the first part of a year-long survey of the museum's holdings, opened Aug. 30 and will remain open through Dec. 24. It includes works by Clarence Boyd, Frank Duveneck, Hattie Hutchcraft Hill, Raymond Barnhart, Paul Sawyer, Thomas Noble and Frank Long, in addition to Meatyard.

For more information about "Made in Kentucky," other museum exhibits or hours of operation, call 257-5716.

Staff report

University Y2K compliance deadlines set

For the past year, the University of Kentucky Year 2000 project team has focused on creating an inventory of equipment and systems that provide services vital to UK operations. Depending on the level of potential impact to the University, each piece of equipment or system was classified into one of three priority categories. Equipment and systems were deemed to have either a critical, major or minor impact depending on the scope and severity of their effect on University operations. Those levels are:

· Level 1: Critical; University-wide disruptive impact, such as the potential to affect Human Resource Services or critical life/safety systems such as facility fire alarms.
· Level 2: Major; possible departmental or college-wide disruptive impact, such as impairing a department's accounting software thereby interrupting the payroll system for that department.
· Level 3: Minor; impeding departmental and/or office operations, such as computer malfunctions.

University Y2K coordination team members have contacted vendors and suppliers of software and equipment to find out if the hardware and/or software was verified to be compliant, or, if not, what needed to be done to reach compliance. That information was summarized in a report distributed in July and October. Copies are available by contacting the Y2K office by phone at 257-9888 or e-mail at Y2K@pop.uky.edu.

University departments need to not only move aggressively to assure compliance of equipment, but also must test existing and adapted/upgraded equipment to assure they will actually perform after January 1, 2000, said Doug Hurley, associate vice president for Information Systems.

"To ensure that all equipment and systems are tested in a timely manner, early this month, UK chancellors and vice presidents sent all department heads in their areas a memorandum alerting them to upcoming planning and testing deadlines established in the University's Y2K compliance time line," he said.

The deadlines are as follows.

· Dec. 1: Each department must prepare a plan for testing and/or making compliant all Level 1 and 2 systems and equipment. The plan should include the method or process the department will use to reach compliance and how the equipment or system will be tested to verify compliance. The testing and compliance plan is to be sent to the department's Y2K sector coordinator by Dec. 1. This plan should include test plans for all Level 1 and 2 equipment and systems, including those that the vendor has indicated are Y2K compliant.
· March 1, 1999: All equipment and systems classified as Level 1 and 2 should now be compliant ­ necessary upgrades have been obtained and installed, equipment has been replaced and others, for example. Testing of all Level 1 and 2 equipment and systems should be under way.
· April 1, 1999: Testing should be completed. Primary users/owners of each piece of Y2K-inventoried equipment and systems will sign off on Y2K-compliance status.

When the University began its Y2K initiative over a year ago, Y2K coordinators were appointed for each University sector. The coordinators were charged with guiding and supporting the sector's departments and units throughout the Y2K preparation process.

"All sector coordinators are members of the University's Y2K team, so they can provide up-to-date counsel on all aspects of the University's strategy and agenda for fixing problems related to the Year 2000 problem," said Rick Willmott, Year 2000 project manager.

To find out about the latest millennium information, technology and communication systems news ­ including listings of the Y2K sector coordinators and project team members ­ visit the Information Systems Newsline and the UK Year 2000 Project Office Web sites on the UK home page.

By Sande Gray

Book preview ­ "Japanese Landscape: Where Land and Culture Merge"

Name: "Japanese Landscapes: Where Land and Culture Merge"

Author: P.P. Karan, head of Japanese studies at the University of Kentucky; Cotton Mather, scholar in residence at the New Mexico Historical Society; Shigeru Iijima, professor of cultural anthropology in the Tokyo Institute of Ethnology.

What it's about: The authors draw on years of observation and experience to explore the interaction of culture, time and space in the Japanese landscape. They discuss the land's general attributes, then apply those characteristics to subjects such as gardens, sculpted plants, flower arrangements, roadside shoulders, utility lines and walled urban areas.

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Book preview ­ "The War To End All Wars"

Book: "The War To End All Wars"

Author: Edward M. Coffman

What it's about: "The War To End All Wars" commemorates the 80th anniversary of World War I and deals with the administrative and logistical aspects of the War Department, as well as strategic and diplomatic efforts at the high command level. From explaining how the draft system worked to conditions in the training camps to the final events leading up to the armistice, Coffman's book presents a detailed picture of America's first great world military engagement. The book was originally issued in 1968 by Oxford University Press.

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky