About darla henry
Darla L Henry is a Social Worker, Trainer, Teacher and Consultant having extensive experience in the Child Welfare field. With a mission to build a path toward healing and belongingness/permanency for children and youth in the child welfare system, Darla established and authored the 3-5-7 Model©. This model is a practice approach for helping these children explore and tell their life stories towards resolution of the pain and hurt experienced from abusive/neglectful childhood experiences. The theories and components of this model support the activities of Family Finding and Family Group Decision Making as work that is done on the continuum of permanency options from reunification to adoption. Darla’s doctoral research focused on resilience in maltreated children (Child Welfare, 1999) and provides the foundation for understanding the life experiences of children, youth and families who are engaged in child welfare services.
Her 35+ years of working with public and private agencies, universities and governments have provided Darla with history and experience that guide her approaches to support and develop best practice programs that appeal to the hearts of workers and families who provide these permanency focused services. She has been honored to bring this message through workshops and consultations on the 3-5-7 Model to many state programs: these include the California Permanency for Youth Project (13 rural and urban counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco), as a follow up to Family Finding trainings by Kevin Campbell; New Hampshire DCFS (adopted as a statewide approach to permanency work); Wisconsin (Milwaukee training academy); and, conferences in Idaho, Florida, Connecticut, Ohio, and Arizona. As a former co-director of Family Design Resources, a prime contractor of the Pennsylvania Statewide Adoption and Permanency Network, Darla has been integral to the establishment and implementation of statewide Child Preparation services which contain components of the 3-5-7 Model.
Published Work
- The 3-5-7 Model: Preparing Children for Permanency, Children and Youth Services Review, 2005.
- Resilience in Maltreated Children: Implications for Special Needs Adoption, Child Welfare, 1999.
- Resilient Children: What they tell us about coping with maltreatment, Social Work in Health and Mental Health: Practice, Research and Progress, 2002.
