Episode 30 – Helping Kids and Families Heal Through the Power of Connection with Jenni Lord

In this episode of the Foster Friendly podcast, hosts Brian Mavis and Courtney Williams interview Jenni Lord, founder of the nonprofit CHOSEN. Jenny shares her personal journey into the child welfare space, highlighting the importance of understanding trauma in foster care and adoption. She discusses the evolution of CHOSEN, its mission to support families, and the critical role of parental self-regulation in the healing process.

The conversation emphasizes the complexities of child removal and the need for ongoing education and support for families navigating these challenges. In this conversation, Jenni also discusses the evolving language around adoption and foster care, emphasizing the importance of understanding the grief children experience when separated from their families. She highlights the need for trauma education for parents and the significance of connection in the healing process.

Jenni shares insights into the services provided by CHOSEN, including telehealth support and individualized action plans for families. The conversation also features transformative stories of families who have benefited from these services, underscoring the universal need for connection in fostering healthy relationships.

Learn more about the services and resources offered at Chosen. 

 
 
 
 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Brian (00:02.222)
Hello, welcome to the Foster Friendly podcast. I’m your host, Brian Mavis, and I have with me my great colleague and co-host Courtney Williams. And Courtney, I am really excited about our interview today. So for a couple reasons, one is our guest, Jenny, is a friend of mine who I really enjoy spending time with. And secondly, she has launched and runs a nonprofit that is

profoundly important and profoundly powerful. And I’m looking forward to hearing from her and I think our listeners are going to benefit greatly. So Courtney, why don’t you introduce Ginny Lohr to our audience?

Courtney (00:51.307)
Okay. Yeah. Jenny Lord is a dedicated advocate for change in the child welfare space. She challenges systems and policies to shift from a focus on physical safety to pursuing true wellbeing and healing from trauma. In 2008, she founded CHOSEN, an organization that empowers parents and caregivers to lead change in their family, helping their children heal through their connections. She’s an engaging speaker and podcast guest.

who inspires others with passion for healing through authentic connection and family restoration that leads to systemic transformation. So Jenny, again, welcome to the podcast today. We’re so grateful for you to take time out of your schedule to join us. And why don’t you just start it by telling us a little bit more about yourself personally and your connection to this space and your story.

Jenni Lord (01:39.551)
Awesome. Thanks, Brian and Courtney so much for having me Courtney. That was a mouthful. That was a lot of syllables. Like I was cheering you on silently inside.

Courtney (01:44.141)
Yeah.

Brian (01:46.042)
Done a lot.

Courtney (01:50.351)
Yeah.

Jenni Lord (01:50.955)
Well, no, somebody’s writing was a lot of syllables. Well, thanks for having me. This is such a joy and a privilege to be with you all today. So first of all, I am married to one husband and mom to four teenagers. My husband and been, we’re about to celebrate our 20th anniversary and yeah, yay us. Two decades is a long time.

Courtney (01:54.774)
hahahaha

Courtney (02:13.879)
Us too, fun. Yeah.

Jenni Lord (02:19.553)
but it has been a lot of fun and quite an adventure to be married to somebody who is also entrepreneurial and a visionary. So there’s two of us in that mind space in our household. And then we’ve got four teenagers from 14 to 19. So we’re, it’s lot going on. And I live just in central, South Central Texas and have founded, as you said, and led the organization Chosen.

Brian (02:37.784)
Hmm? Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (02:48.941)
for the last 15 years and So that’s just a little bit at high level about me and I can tell you more about the organization I don’t know all the questions, but if you want me to start about that I can certainly jump off

Courtney (03:02.629)
Yeah, I guess I’d be curious to know what led you to that. What’s your personal connection to getting to the point of launching Chosen?

Jenni Lord (03:09.207)
Yeah, so I’ve personally been connected to this space for almost 30 years. And I know you can’t tell I look too young for that, personally for 30 and professionally for 15, I have a brother who was adopted out of foster care and he came into her home in the nineties and I was a teenager and he was a toddler. And so that experience marked my life tremendously. His adoption took almost five years to complete.

Courtney (03:18.873)
Yeah.

Brian (03:18.988)
Yeah.

Brian (03:30.851)
Hmm.

Jenni Lord (03:37.269)
So through that experience, I saw the inside of the child welfare system. I saw how a system that’s designed to protect children often brings them harm. I saw how they could fall through the cracks. And the Lord used that experience to break my heart for vulnerable children whose voices often aren’t heard. And that was kind of the starting place. And then fast forward about 10 years, my best friend adopted from Guatemala and that was my first

Brian (03:47.02)
Hmm.

Jenni Lord (04:07.743)
inside view of the international crisis and the orphan crisis around the world. And that was at the time when the church was really waking up in the 2000s. Wow, we have an orphan crisis across the world. We have a foster care crisis in our backyard and the church was really rising up to do something about it. And that was a big topic in our community. And so my best friend that adopted Clay from Guatemala, he was just a little guy, but they were navigating that.

alone. They didn’t know what they were doing and there were a lot of families in our community who were saying, wow, like I would do something too if I knew where to start or if we had the funding. And that was just kind of an ongoing conversation in my community. And what led me to start this of all the things that God could use was running. had started my family. We had a two-year-old, a one-year-old and a newborn.

So let that sink in for a second. Two year old, one year old and a newborn. And I needed some me time because it was hard to find, right? And I also wanted to get back in shape. And so I started running again just to get back in shape. And some friends asked if I wanted to do a half marathon with them. And so we signed up to do the San Antonio Rock and Roll first inaugural marathon in 2008. We trained for it for five months. It 13.1 miles and

Brian (05:09.579)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Courtney (05:10.234)
you

Brian (05:16.919)
Ahem.

Jenni Lord (05:36.299)
I loved the running. was definitely a reprieve from babies and diapers and all the things and running with my training partners. And we got to the start line with 30,000 other people. And you know, if you’ve been to any kind of major sporting event, the air is electrifying, right? Except in this case, I was not a spectator. I was a participant. And so there’s adrenaline and excitement and it’s cold and all this buildup to the day of

you know, this race and reaching this big accomplishment. And I had what I would call just a defining moment. it was like in the movies when the crowd goes quiet and all I could hear was like this loud question in my head. And I said it out loud to my training partners. It’s like, why am I doing this? I need to be doing this for something I believe in. All of that work seemed meaningless. Like it was just for me and, God used that experience to just

say, what if we were running for something like adoption? What if we were running to help kids who needed families? And so for two hours and 14 minutes, that was what we talked about is what if we had a race and raised money to help adopt a families? And then for six weeks, like the Lord just wouldn’t let it rest. And I really wasn’t trying to start an organization or nonprofit. I just had an idea to help people. And I said yes to the Lord and kind of backed into the space and an organization.

grew up around me. And so that was the starting point. It’s certainly evolved since then, but he used not what was in my hands, but what was at my feet to start me on this professional journey.

Brian (07:15.56)
So keep going. Juan, I thought I knew your story and I didn’t know about that race and that defining moment at the start. then, so you kind of unintentionally start a nonprofit and it’s also seen its iterations or some adaptations along the way. So bring us through that a little bit up to its current mission.

Jenni Lord (07:35.477)
Right. Yes.

Jenni Lord (07:45.345)
Yeah, so, you know, Brian, you know this from starting an organization and like, I say this a lot, one obedient yes to the Lord, like we really don’t know what’s on the other side of

Brian (07:56.556)
Yeah, it’s like you’re at the Denver airport and you’ve stepped, you just took one step, but it was onto a moving sidewalk. You’re like, whoa, where are we going? Yeah, all right.

Courtney (08:04.803)
Yeah.

Jenni Lord (08:07.831)
That’s good or a rollercoaster. mean, might be a rollercoaster. Let’s just say for any wannabe founders out there. Yeah, you know, was just, I just said yes. And I really, I did feel like it was an obedient step of faith. And from that, the Lord used that yes to open my eyes to a world that I thought I knew a little bit about. Like my brother at that point in time had been in our family for

Courtney (08:08.933)
Hold on.

Jenni Lord (08:39.245)
probably 12 years or so. So I had lived through the effects of trauma, which we didn’t know. Like we didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t have the resources. We certainly didn’t understand the long-term effects of trauma to the brain and how that shapes the way that child responds to the world. I just had a desire, two things, you know, I didn’t say this in the buildup, between my brother’s adoption and the idea for Chosen,

Brian (08:41.474)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No.

Jenni Lord (09:08.929)
there was a middle point where God opened my eyes to the revelation that I had been adopted. Like, He had adopted me into His eternal family. I grew up in a denomination where that was not taught when I was a child. Like, I did not have an understanding of that. So, when I got that revelation, that made adoption so much more special and meaningful to me, and it had already impacted my life in such a profound way with my brother. And so,

Brian (09:35.758)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (09:37.405)
knowing that and just wanting, wanting a child to never feel alone, abandoned. that was what got me into it. And so I said, yes. And for five years we, know, at that time, the race market wasn’t saturated. There was only really one race that was raising money for a cause. And that was Susan G. Komen today is a totally different story. Back then that didn’t exist. And so what, what we were doing was novel and that

Brian (09:59.936)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ahem.

Jenni Lord (10:06.605)
timeframe. And for five years, we raised money and helped adoptive families and we built teams around those families that community support, advocating for them, people walking along, running alongside them in their journey to bring a child into their home, championing them and so forth. We raised a significant amount of money and helped to fund about 400 adoptions. And so I loved that. It was super special. It was very meaningful in the community that I live in. We eventually had races in multiple cities across the U.S.

Brian (10:33.464)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (10:37.01)
and five years into it, I learned.

Brian (10:38.542)
Ahem.

Jenni Lord (10:43.413)
It just, it gets me every time about, yeah, about, about 10 years ago, I learned that people were dissolving adoptions and putting kids back into the system. And at that time, nobody was really talking about that. It was actually kind of this black underbelly of the adoption world where it was like talked about in whispers and you there, the Christian world, you kind of knew who to call if you needed help, but it wasn’t public. The government wasn’t tracking it. And when I learned about that,

Brian (10:44.926)
Hits you. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (10:51.937)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (10:57.57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (11:13.109)
I just thought, man, that for a child to feel that sense of abandonment again, and that alone being alone again, like I just, you know, the Lord use that understanding to like break my heart. And I said to our very small team at the time, you know, we can’t do everything, but I feel like we have a stewardship responsibility. Like we’ve been advocating and calling people into this space for years, like people who had experienced this.

Brian (11:16.938)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (11:42.199)
community in a race setting and men like maybe my family could do this too. And so good hearted, well-meaning, well-intentioned people saying yes to open their hearts and home and not knowing what they were actually saying yes to. Like we have a stewardship responsibility, like we’re giving them some funds, but who’s walking with these families long-term to make sure that they have what they need to help their child heal.

and to keep going, to stay together. And so that question was the beginning of what I call our missional evolution into what we do today.

Brian (12:18.828)
Yeah, that was a big, big change.

Jenni Lord (12:21.365)
It was a huge change, but it was a stewardship responsibility. And I went to the leadership at the board at the time and said, this is the direction that I really believe that God is leading us into to be responsive to these families’ needs. We had gone to some national leaders at the time and said, who’s walking alongside families down the road when it hits the fan and they don’t know what to do? And that national leader said,

We don’t know. We have families calling us every week in crisis and we don’t know where to send them. So if you find them, can you let us know? And because my thought was let’s just replicate something that’s working out there. Like let’s just, let’s do, there has to be a model. And at the time in 2014, there just wasn’t, we couldn’t find a good answer for what we were looking for. And so we made a change and we didn’t quit funding adoptions immediately, but we,

Brian (12:57.048)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (13:20.545)
we gradually just stepped away from that. That was how people knew us. And so there’s grief like in the community of like, we’re not doing that anymore. like, well, there’s others that are doing that, but we couldn’t find organizations that were really walking with families long-term. You know, the landscape has changed greatly in the last 10 years, but our evolution was in response to what I saw.

Brian (13:43.0)
So Jenny, before we go into kind of the looking for answers and guidance for people, I wanna take a little moment and probe the problem a little bit more. And so can you paint a picture for us of what it looks like when a family says yes and they start fostering or they adopt and they don’t understand the issues of trauma or attachment? of like what are they experiencing?

Jenni Lord (14:12.865)
Yeah. So the, the simple way that I like to explain it for people who don’t live in our space every day is that, you know, trauma, the root word, the origin of the word trauma, it actually means wound. So wounds from loss, the loss and separation from a first family that could include abuse, could include neglect, domestic violence, substance abuse, whatever they’ve been exposed to. But at underneath.

Brian (14:19.022)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (14:42.741)
all of those labels, there’s loss, because there’s separation from the first family. And all loss has to be grieved, right? And so it’s grieved in a developmental way over time. We know this from our own experiences that sometimes grief surfaces out of nowhere about something that happened a long time ago. Well, for a child who doesn’t have the language to articulate that loss, typically, they…

Brian (15:10.028)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (15:11.521)
they may not even understand it. The way that it manifests in the home is through behavior. And sometimes really challenging behaviors. you know this, both of you from being foster and adoptive parents, family’s excited, like with my brother, like, my gosh, he’s coming. We have like a couple hours notice. Everybody, when we were foster parents, like my little kids, like.

Brian (15:17.303)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (15:32.014)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (15:37.815)
They clean the house faster than they’ve ever cleaned the house before. They’re so excited. Like, well, we’re excited on our end and that child is not necessarily going to be excited or happy walking through the door. Like you, you as the new family represent loss. You represent, and the primary caregivers up to that point in their life have failed them. So if they have failed them, the,

Brian (15:39.42)
Mm-hmm, right.

Courtney (15:39.845)
Thank

Brian (15:49.176)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian (15:56.59)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (16:03.841)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (16:06.773)
Why would this little kid who’s five years old walking into your house trust you? Like who you’re just a stranger you they don’t know that you’re good and nice and you know gonna treat them well. So that because of what has happened to them most kids who’ve experienced that kind of trauma they they often live in their fear brain where it is fight flight or freeze they’re not saying I feel scared that’s how they they’re

Brian (16:08.642)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (16:16.452)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (16:35.085)
in their bodies, the cortisol, the stress hormone that’s running through them. Oftentimes we see kids who have been in survival mode for a long time. So they’ve learned to, you know, scrounge for themselves or their siblings to find food or whatever it may be. And then they, come and you bring them and plop them down into some semblance of normalcy. Well, they’re not gonna just click right in with your, the other family members, right? And so the way that they often act is very challenging for a

Brian (16:35.16)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (17:04.818)
a new family. Sometimes it’s not right away. There is a honeymoon period. Sometimes it’s not for years. But then that, because trauma is developmental and does come out at different developmental milestones in a child’s life, it manifests in the home in sometimes very harmful ways where the child is harming themselves. They’re harming others. They might be aggressive or violent even. But I like to say it like this. Y’all have kids.

Brian (17:06.467)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (17:34.793)
I have four teenagers and when they start acting crazy, my, my go-to is not to like lean in, like, let me just try to build connection right now. I’m like, no, I just like want to nip in the bud. I want to shut it down. Like you need to go or I’m going to go like, right. Like this isn’t well, that doesn’t work for a child who has experienced profound harm in their life where

Courtney (17:44.101)
Go to the room.

Jenni Lord (18:04.169)
everybody, their primary caregivers have failed them. you just start adding that up. If a kid has moved multiple times and then it’s every adult has failed them. So what is needed to build healthy attachment with a child is it is to lean in and build that connection. But when a child is acting out, that is an apparent natural tendency to like lean into build the connection and attachment. At that point, you want the crazy to stop.

And so that’s the challenge is those behaviors that often prevent healthy connection from actually happening in the home and further drive the adults away from the child rather than towards the child.

Brian (18:33.752)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (18:50.501)
Yeah. Yeah. And the late Dr. Karen Purvis says that children are harmed in relationships and they’re going to be healed in relationships. And so, you know, as you’re saying, families have such an important part of this equation, right? The families that are welcoming these kids in. So what do those family members need to do for themselves to be equipped for that journey, that long journey? Hopefully I call it a marriage of adoption. It’s not something to be broken, right? It’s supposed to be forever. What can we do?

Jenni Lord (18:58.453)
Absolutely.

Courtney (19:19.055)
to support ourselves or to be prepared in a way that supports everyone’s needs.

Jenni Lord (19:25.419)
Yeah, it’s, there’s a lot of things, right? There’s a lot of steps to what does it take to, as the adult, think before I answer that Courtney, think kind of honing in on a second problem after the first problem of like what behaviors look like from the manifestation of trauma. know, our system tends to put the onus of healing on the child. Like the services are geared towards the child.

Brian (19:51.662)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (19:55.073)
Yeah, they’re they often have, you know adequate they might have access to multiple types of therapy and so forth but a child heals in the context of a family system God’s design was family right and we have to recognize as the adults our responsibility and the burden of responsibility to build connection like that

for a child to lean in and build connection, that’s not their responsibility. That’s our responsibility. So I think it’s first just recognizing that truly as a parent or caregiver of a child who has experienced trauma, you can be the linchpin for an agent of healing for your child. And that’s what we equip families with is that knowledge and understanding of you are an agent of healing in your home. A child is not going to heal in a therapist’s office one hour a week or twice a month.

when the bulk of their waking hours are with you and you have these micro opportunities to build healthy connection to rewire the brain. so Courtney, think first is just the education. It’s one thing to be licensed and you go through the training before a child’s in your home, but then it’s like, what happens when the four-year-old is flipping you off and cussing you out in real time?

Courtney (21:14.885)
Yeah.

Jenni Lord (21:15.959)
They didn’t really tell me how to handle this in my foster care licensing training, right? How do I respond to this in a connected way? And so I would say it’s not just pre-education, it’s ongoing education to meet the child’s need that’s in your home. But I think the other thing is this, beyond just trauma education, it is what do I have to have to regulate myself?

Brian (21:43.064)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (21:44.033)
So when parents come to us or caregivers come to us, we don’t just look at the child’s history, we also look at the parent’s history and the overall picture of the home because oftentimes what we find is unhealed trauma in a parent or caregiver’s past is contributing to the chaos in the home in ways that they may not even be aware of. So they’re coming to us saying, he, the child has all these problems.

Brian (21:45.718)
Ahem.

Brian (22:05.55)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:10.766)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (22:12.577)
they’re not talking about themselves, right? They might know that they’re having a challenge parenting him, but how are they contributing to that? so understanding your own needs so that you can be regulated. An unregulated adult cannot help regulate a dysregulated child. And I have certainly learned that with my teenagers. And I wish that I had had the tools and resources that CHOSEN provides to families when I started parenting 19 years ago. I learned this stuff.

about 10 years into parenting my own kids and I had to really change a lot of the ways that I was interacting with my kids. My strategies, you know, our strategies as parents are often based on how we were raised, right? And I like to say, I got 12 weeks of birthing classes before I had a baby and then I had zero days of parenting classes. And so you’re just parenting from what you know and

Courtney (23:05.551)
you

Jenni Lord (23:08.821)
My strategy is more centered around like control and correction versus connection. And those are very different ways of parenting. And it required a lot of humility. I think that that’s one of the factors that it requires of parents is to say, how am I contributing to what’s happening in my home? And what do I need to change?

Brian (23:33.356)
Yeah, that’s huge. I love your ministry and I want to take some time for you to explain exactly what you do. people out there listening, there might be people right now who saying, I need exactly what you have, what you give. But before we go there, I just want to unpack one other thing that people, you touched on a little bit, but I want to kind of shine a light a little bit more on it.

this unrealized other layer of hurt. And that’s when you have a child who’s because of something really bad, extreme neglect or abuse of any kind, all kinds, it was determined the best thing to do to keep them safe was to remove them from their family who was hurting them. then

place them into another family for it to be fostered or maybe then adopted. What looks like the solution, and it is a solution, but what looks like the lifeline to the child, that’s yet another, ironically, another potential wound of like

So can you unpack that what again what it looks like from an adult side of things is like this is actually and maybe it’s both. mean this is something that’s healing, this moment, but it also to the child might represent another wound. Am I saying that clearly enough for you to understand what I’m trying to get at? Or even correct me if you think

I’m off track.

Jenni Lord (25:31.469)
No, think so. Courtney, were you going to say something? No. Yeah, I think, I remember when, when I first started the organization 15 years ago and in the foster and adoption space, there’s a lot of hero language.

Courtney (25:34.19)
No.

Brian (25:47.34)
Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yes.

Jenni Lord (25:49.867)
and a lot of rescue language. They’re rescuing kids. Man, that sounds really noble and good. there has been a shift, thank God, there has been a shift away from that language. I still hear it from time to time where people just don’t know because 15 years ago when people were fostering and adopting, and even still,

Sometimes as a community, we set them up for failure because we do put them on a pedestal and you hear it, people say things like, man, I could never do that. You are so amazing. Like they elevate them to this status. And then when it gets really hard for a parent and they don’t have a safe place to go, this is terrible. Like we think that we might’ve ruined our family or like my marriage is falling apart because of the stress.

Brian (26:30.542)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (26:45.006)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (26:47.735)
from bringing this child into her home. Like that, that’s not hero status. That is a recipe for isolation because people around you have said you’re the hero. So I think there is started with this notion of like rescue or like we’re saving children. And the reality is like, if, if there is any way possible to restore that first family back, then as people of

Brian (26:52.344)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (26:56.078)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (27:14.382)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (27:16.971)
You know, as kingdom minded people, we want to do that, right? Like we want to restore families back to healing. And most kids, almost without exception that I have seen, they desire to be with their first family. Like even people who were hurting them, they long for them. there’s a, there is a biological component to that. That’s just indisputable. And so when you remove a child and new family, Courtney’s new family.

Brian (27:17.366)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Brian (27:29.08)
day one.

Jenni Lord (27:46.349)
looks safe and happy and stable and you, you represent like, no, you’re the people who took me away for the caseworker is though, you though you took me away from my family. They, they kids don’t say this generally, but there is a loss of that first family. And you know, I know when we were, when we adopted my brother, we just didn’t understand like,

Brian (27:57.55)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (28:14.296)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (28:14.829)
30 years ago, you think you’re doing this great and noble thing and, and yet it is, it is.

Brian (28:19.638)
And you are, it is good. mean, but it’s, but it’s not, but it’s, yeah, it comes with some complications.

Jenni Lord (28:29.385)
And I don’t think that we had value, like first family seemed more like a threat. We didn’t make the space to value and honor what was good or what could have been good. so I think that we have made a lot of mistakes as in our sector with not doing that well to make space for grief that children feel and

Brian (28:36.504)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian (28:44.813)
Hmm.

Jenni Lord (28:56.961)
don’t have language to express about that separation of first family. And they have to grieve it, or it will manifest in very harmful ways.

Brian (29:01.336)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (29:07.274)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s good. Thank you. Yeah, just wanted our audience who may not, it may not dawn on them that that is, in a sense, ironically, another wound for the child.

Courtney (29:10.084)
Yeah.

Jenni Lord (29:24.013)
I’ll tell you a story that just and I know you want to talk a little bit about the way that we work with families but a family just came to us recently they adopted two children who are now teenagers the the kids have been in their home for over 10 years and they’re in a state of crisis Hit those teenage years and a lot of unhealed stuff from the first three years of this little boy’s life

Brian (29:29.378)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (29:40.066)
Mmm. Mmm.

Brian (29:51.352)
Hmm.

Jenni Lord (29:52.267)
just has been like buried and latent and parents didn’t know. Like they didn’t have trauma education. They came to us and you know, they were one of those families 15 years ago, like in that adoption pool, just thinking that they did a good thing and they’ve been struggling for 10 years and finally are getting some help so that their child can remain in the home. So that’s kind of an example of just like, if they, in fact, when I,

Brian (29:55.31)
Hmm.

Brian (30:06.462)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Brian (30:16.334)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (30:21.053)
ask them have you had trauma education they weren’t really connecting the behaviors that they were seeing the dangerous behaviors that they were seeing they weren’t connecting that really to him being adoption adopted he’s been home for more than 10 years he’s been loved well and they’ve raised for their kids so do you see what I’m saying

Brian (30:32.622)
Hmm.

Brian (30:37.396)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, do, yeah.

Courtney (30:43.557)
Yeah, Yeah, such good stuff. And just so true, we adopted our daughter. She was an adoptive home before her home and that failed. And so we know the added layers of loss too that is often overlooked and not even just an adoption and foster care. know, a current kid in our home has been in seven homes within a couple of years. And, you he talks about that. Like, I feel like…

You know, people give up on me for the easiest things and I’m in another home, I have to start all over again. And it’s just these things that the general public doesn’t recognize or know. And as foster and adoptive homes, if we don’t have training and understanding, we’re just going to add to that, know, add layers to their trauma. We don’t want to do that. Again, we didn’t enter this realm of foster care or adoption to be heroes, right? But we want to help aid in the healing and not add to the trauma.

Brian (31:20.622)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (31:36.407)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (31:38.501)
So tell us a little bit more about CHOSEN. Tell us what you are currently doing, how families can get involved in the education that you provide and how you help equip them.

Jenni Lord (31:47.933)
So we believe that connection is the gateway to healing and that’s based on science. It’s also based on scripture. know, God is always pursuing connection with us, even when we’re ignoring him, running away from him, turning our backs on him. He’s always pursuing our hearts and pursuing that connection with us. And that’s what we teach families is to pursue their child’s heart in the same way that God is always pursuing connection with us.

So when a family comes to us, and this is for our parent directed services, this is the bulk of what we do now. When they come to us, we have a parent coaching model and we’re going to equip and empower parents with the tools and strategies that they need to build healthy relational connection with their child to help restore those broken places in their brain that have been harmed from trauma and from the losses that they’ve experienced prior to that.

Brian (32:21.838)
Ahem.

Jenni Lord (32:43.585)
So when a family comes to us, we do a few different things on the front end. We take some clinical assessments. We look at the trauma behaviors of the children, looking at 13 different domains. So things like PTSD, aggression, anxiety, depression, and so forth. that gives us just a picture of what’s going on with the child in the home. We also look at parental stress levels and we look at protective factors in the home when we wanna make sure that kids are safe, right?

when things are spiraling, they can be at risk again. So we look at that, we take the child’s history, but also the parental history. And we also look at what else is going on with other siblings or if there are other adults in the home. We get a comprehensive picture. from that, we create something called a trauma responsive action plan. That is individualized treatment plan for what’s happening in the home. So when I say individualized, it just means it’s customized for the needs.

Brian (33:17.346)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (33:41.599)
If Brian’s raising teenagers and having problems, we’re not gonna have the same course of action for the next four to six months that we would with somebody who’s raising toddlers, right? It’s gonna look differently. And then they’re going to be assigned to a care manager who is going to meet with them at least on a weekly basis. That’s prescriptive, but we also take crisis calls and work with families after hours. We know that meltdowns don’t happen between eight and five, Monday through Friday. So.

Brian (34:06.518)
on.

Courtney (34:07.501)
you

Jenni Lord (34:09.349)
The responsiveness is huge because that really gives access to a family real time to solve challenges when a child is dysregulated. But we’re going to put together that action plan and every week they’re going to work through what it looks like to build incremental small daily doses of connection with their child. And we’re going to tackle the very first thing that they’re dealing with that is most challenging. So like with that family that I just mentioned a minute ago,

there was a safety concern. This youth has become aggressive and violent and there’s a safety concern in the home. So we have to address that immediately, right? And put some plans into place to make sure that everyone stays safe and that he’s able to continue staying at home and getting the services that he needs as well. And then from that, so it’s parent coaching, it’s real time. Like I used this example earlier, like what I learned in my pre-training.

I need to know how to apply that trauma. We don’t say trauma informed. We are teaching trauma responsive tactics to respond in a way that is trauma informed, but also connecting to build connection in the moment with your child. And we’re going to hold parents accountable to making those changes in their home. So we do that on a weekly basis and we measure four to six months after the beginning of services, we measure those clinical markers again to make sure that those domains are coming down. So.

If there was a clinical number for anxiety and depression, we’re making sure that those are going in the right direction. But from what we have seen, and just in this past year, 91 % of families say that we helped them address the largest problems in their home and to keep going. We’ve had 100 % success rate this year in keeping families together. And that’s our goal, because 80 % of them that come to us are in a crisis. They’re saying,

Brian (35:54.35)
Mm.

Jenni Lord (36:06.421)
we don’t know if we can keep going. And our goal is to make sure they have the tools that they need to keep going.

Courtney (36:13.921)
Is this a Texas thing, national thing, online? What does it practically look like?

Jenni Lord (36:20.469)
Good question. So we have a telehealth model and we have been using that telehealth model since 2017, long before COVID. So we serve families from around the country and parents love it because we can meet with them from their kitchen table or at their office. They can close the door or whatever it might be, but it allows us to meet with families on their schedule when they need it and not drag their kids to one more appointment.

Courtney (36:45.413)
And I love how you said that the trauma responsive. I tell foster families all the time, I want to help your family members, your friends, your neighbors become trauma informed, but you need to be trauma responsive. And there is a difference and understanding the difference. It is an undertaking as foster family, but it’s a commitment that we need to be willing to do to make these kids successful in our homes.

Jenni Lord (37:07.777)
Yeah, so that’s our kind of meat and potatoes, day-to-day work. We also have a content and training initiative that is releasing real-time content that is helpful for families, like things that, practical tools that you can implement in your home today, where you don’t have to have that full, you know, four to six month engagement. Those tools are being released online on a consistent basis. And we have multiple training offerings that are happening throughout the year. And those are open.

Some of those are dedicated resources like we’ve done it for certain organizations where they want the offering to only be for their families. We do that kind of work, but we also have some quarterly trainings that are offered as well. we’re addressing through our training. There’s a lot of training out there, but the training that we have honed in on is really, it’s very similar to what we do with the parent coaching. We’re filling niches.

where there are gaps in services. So as an example, one of our training offerings is addressing problematic sexual behaviors. Why? Because there was nothing out there. And that’s why homes melt down and kids don’t get placed is because of problematic sexualized behaviors. so just tools like that that are super practical and needed for families. And it’s a lower bar for engagement if you’re looking for some additional resources to learn from.

Brian (38:34.254)
So Jenny, amazing statistics. And so now I want to hear an amazing story. What’s one of your favorite transformation stories of like, here was a family, here’s kind of the before picture, and here’s their after picture.

Courtney (38:40.409)
He

Jenni Lord (38:50.817)
Yeah, so I didn’t say this before, but we really serve primarily four different types of families. We’ve talked about foster and adoptive. We also serve kinship families, relative caregivers, as well as reunified families, families who can be safely reunified to help build some of that resiliency that has been lacking. And one of my favorite stories is a recent story of a family who took in a relative. They took in a nephew from out of state, and this nephew did not know them very well.

Brian (38:59.202)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (39:07.48)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (39:19.949)
He was 11 years old when they brought them into the home. They got kind of a crisis call like, hey, mom is strung out again on drugs. She’s not safe. We don’t know where she is. the children in the home had been fending for themselves for quite some time. And so they took this relative in and the home, they had three boys of their own. So they had an eight year old, a 10 year old and a 12 year old. And they brought in an 11 year old nephew.

Brian (39:49.568)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (39:49.847)
So y’all know on this screen, when you add a kid in that mix of ages in the middle of that, like that’s already, like there’s already gonna be complications from that, right? So this is a really sweet, God-loving family. The dad, he grew up helping orphanages and kids in orphanages in Mexico when he was a kid. So he had a heart and passion for this. And he’s like, we’re gonna live out the gospel. Like, hey boys, like.

Brian (40:17.774)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (40:19.019)
This is our opportunity to like lay down our lives, you know, for this family member. he had, that gentleman had served on boards in our space, not on Chosen’s board, but on another board in this space. these are people who are going in eyes wide open. Like we understand, like this is gonna be hard, right? Well, they did not understand how difficult it was going to be. He had lived in so many years of neglect.

Brian (40:36.748)
Right.

Jenni Lord (40:48.865)
that really changes brain chemistry and changes the way that this child interacts with the world, right? And we see that a lot, but he came in, I mean, he didn’t know what sitting down for family dinner looked like. He didn’t even have some of the tools on using silverware properly. And so this family, like they’re starting at ground zero with this 11-year-old boy and they’ve had an 11-year-old.

Brian (41:05.262)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (41:18.647)
and they have a son who’s almost 11. Like they know what 11 year old boys like, need, et cetera. And except they didn’t know what it was gonna be like when he didn’t have all of those basic fundamental building blocks for a healthy relational connection within family. And so when Andrew came into their family, it was not going well. They had a very difficult time understanding his behaviors, how he was talking.

Brian (41:21.464)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (41:48.299)
his meltdowns looked more like a three-year-old than an 11-year-old, which we often see because trauma stunts the brain and he had missed some of those early milestones of just typical nurturing and caretaking and he didn’t have the skills to regulate himself. So not only was it very difficult for mom and dad, aunt and uncle who are now filling in for mom and dad, it was extremely difficult for their boys because

Brian (41:53.09)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (42:18.039)
we’re going to lay down our lives for the gospel. And now this kid is like ruining our lives. Like he’s taking things from me. He’s taking more attention from mom and dad than I’m used to getting. So it was, it was very destabilizing for the entire family. So when they came in, we started working with them right out of the gate. This is not typical. And so for any listeners out there, if you’re thinking, I might need these services, just don’t wait.

Brian (42:36.204)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (42:47.499)
Like just to wait, they didn’t wait. They knew about chosen services and they got in from the outset. That’s not typical. What is typical is like the other situation I talked about where families struggle six, eight, 10 years and the wheels are really coming off and they’re in full blown crisis. And so they were working to avoid that crisis. But in addition to training mom and dad on the effects of trauma on the brain and how that had affected Andrew’s ability to relate.

Courtney (42:48.263)
Yeah.

Brian (43:01.186)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (43:08.568)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (43:16.565)
ability to process and ability to really function was extremely helpful for them. But we gave them some practical tools that they could use with their biological boys as well to show them like, this is what happened to his brain. And Andrew hasn’t had the same opportunities and privileges that you have had in a stable family that’s always been together. And so that helped.

just their boys give them some, different layer of compassion for Andrew and to make space for him. But one of the things I loved about this family was they, so Andrew loved to draw. That was like, he, that was his world is like, he loved to draw. And so they got him some tools, you know, right when he came into the home with like, but he, he was very closed and very private about his drawings. He didn’t, that’s like his little safe world, right?

Brian (44:11.342)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (44:12.821)
And so, one of the things that the dad told me, and he broke down in tears recently, just sharing this with me. He said, yeah, we, had a meeting at the kid’s school and we saw Andrew, like, you know, they had a, like an administration meeting and they were walking out of the office and they saw Andrew in the hallway. And he, he said, look what I just drew. And he opened up his thing and showed it to him in the hallway. And the dad told me. I would have missed.

Brian (44:34.915)
Hmm.

Jenni Lord (44:42.541)
how significant that was if I didn’t have the education that I learned from Chosen because he was, because we’ve been so intentional to build connection with him, he’s finally feeling safe enough to let us into his world, to see what is he treasures and values and has kept hidden from them. And that took almost a year of working before he would allow them into his world. And so,

Brian (44:49.314)
Hmm

Brian (44:58.122)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian (45:04.663)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (45:12.619)
I just, love that story and you know that they’re, they’ve got a long way to go. Their, their services with us lasted about six months, but they’re in a much more stable place. And that story happened after we had already completed services and dad wanted to share that specifically with me because it was so significant to them. But he said, you know, I, I’ll them. And this is what the mom told me. She said, Jenny.

Brian (45:14.776)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (45:29.623)
Hmm.

Jenni Lord (45:40.371)
If I got a diagnosis that was acute, I would go get a specialist. And what we found with Chosen was with Andrew, we would just went to the specialist. Like there was no, there was no one else in our orbit that had the skills and knowledge to teach us what we needed to even attempt to build connection with this child who didn’t have any. And so I, you know, I liked that because, we’re not,

We’re for anybody. But the expertise that our team can provide to build healthy connection and to overcome any obstacle and challenge, like we believe that no child is beyond the hope of healing. That comes from our faith orientation, right? I mean, we’ve seen impossible situations. Kids who have been removed from the home and been jailed, and you’re like,

Brian (46:24.686)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (46:37.035)
that kid’s not going back because he hurt somebody else in the home. And we’ve seen those situations restored. So when she says we’re a specialist, like we are in that way because we’re going to move heaven and earth to make sure that you have what you need to keep going.

Brian (46:54.19)
Beautiful.

Courtney (46:55.781)
It’s beautiful. Well, as we close out this episode, Jenny, most of our listeners are foster parents or those that are considering fostering. So could you answer this question for us? How would you finish the sentence? What kids in foster care really need is.

Jenni Lord (47:13.803)
connection.

Brian (47:17.998)
great. it’s what you teach too. It’ll benefit every relationship you have, mean, not just the hurting child. And so for our listeners out there, again, I respect and admire Jenny, love the ministry she’s led. so Jenny,

For our listeners, some who maybe are in crisis, some who are like, I’m not gonna let it get to a crisis, some who are saying, I wanna go into this even before I have a kid understanding, but how can they find out more about you, how to get involved, what’s their next step?

Jenni Lord (48:08.191)
So our website is chosen.care. We’d love to connect with you. It’s very simple. Our commitment to you is that if you connect with us through our through the our web page, we’re going to get back to you right away. We don’t want families waiting to get services. We get you in the door as quickly as possible and address, like I said, that the most pressing need in your home. So me personally, you can connect with me on LinkedIn or on Instagram. And our website, again, is chosen.care.

and we’d love to hear from you. And I want to echo what Brian said. What I’m talking about, these principles have changed my relationship with my biological children. They’ve changed my relationship with my husband. They’re universal in application. We are wired for connection. And unfortunately, kids in the foster care space, they have had a lot of broken connections. And so we want to be the people.

Brian (48:50.798)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (49:00.536)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Lord (49:02.869)
that help restore that so that they can have a lifetime of healthy relationships going forward.

Brian (49:09.272)
Right, Jenny, thank you for joining us today. And I know people are gonna be listening to this, are going to be really impacted. And some of them hopefully are going to have their lives changed because of your obedient yes. Thank you.

Courtney (49:30.745)
Thank you.

Jenni Lord (49:30.861)
Thank you. Appreciate y’all.

Brian (49:33.4)
Bye.