Transcript Hawaii Foster Parent Association Conference Honolulu, Hawaii October 14, 2005 Responding to the Challenges of Foster Parenting.

Hawaii Foster Parent Association Conference
Honolulu, Hawaii
October 14, 2005
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Responding to
the Challenges of
Foster Parenting
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Statistics About
Hawaii’s Children and Youth in Foster Care
Children/Youth in Care
(as of 09/30/02)
 523,000 children/youth in U.S. Foster Care
 2, 762 children/youth in care in Hawaii
 1, 491 children/youth in family foster care
 1, 078 children/youth in relative care
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Statistics About
Hawaii’s Children and Youth in Foster Care
Age of Children/Youth in Care
 8.6% are under age 1 year
 55.1% are between 1 and 10 years old
 36.3% are between 11 and 19+ years old
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Statistics About
Hawaii’s Children and Youth in Foster Care
Exits from Care
 60% of children/youth reunified with family
 17% were adopted
 11% left to legal guardianship
 12% left to “permanent arrangements”
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Statistics About
Hawaii’s Children and Youth in Foster Care
Race/Ethnicity
 16.2% Asian
 31.6% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
 33.5% Two or More races
 9.7% White
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Official Roles
of a Foster Parent
 As a foster parent, you are responsible for
the temporary care and nurturing of a child
or youth who has been placed outside his
or her own home. During a time of
disruption and change, you are giving a
child a home.
 At the same time, your role includes
working with the caseworker and the
child’s family so that the child can return
home safely, when appropriate.
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Unofficial Roles
of a Foster Parent
 As a foster parent, you will be asked to care,
nurture, and love as if they are your own, a child or
youth who has been taken from his or her family.
During a time when they are very upset, scared
and angry, you are giving a child your home.
 At the same time, you must be able to work with
the caseworker and the child’s family so that after
all this work the child can return home to this
family, when appropriate.
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The Official Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Provide temporary care for children or
youth, giving them a safe, stable, nurturing
environment.
 Cooperate with the caseworker and the
child or youth’s parents in carrying out a
permanency plan, including participating in
that plan.
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The Unofficial Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Provide what you have been told is
temporary care for sometimes two years or
more for a child or teen, providing a safe,
stable, nurturing environment, maybe for
the first time in the child’s life.
 Cooperate with the caseworker and the
child’s parents in carrying out a
permanency plan (that you may have some
very strong feelings about) and participate
in that plan by attending meetings and
conferences.
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The Official Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Understand the need for, and goals of,
family visits and help out with those visits.
 Help the young person cope with the
separation from his or her home.
 Provide guidance, discipline, a good
example, and as many positive experiences
as possible.
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The Unofficial Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Deal with family visits and help out with
those visits, and deal with the aftermath of
those visits when they go well, and when
they don’t go well.
 Be there when the child is weeping over the
separation from his or her home.
 Be a counselor, a disciplinarian, a role
model, and provide as many positive
experiences as possible.
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The Official Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Encourage and supervise school
attendance, participate in teacher
conferences, and keep the child’s
caseworker informed about any
special educational needs.
 Work with the agency in arranging for
the child/youth’s regular and/or
special medical and dental care.
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The Unofficial Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Make sure the child is up and out of the
house every day attending school, receive
lots of calls to attend teacher conferences
to discuss their “issues”, and be willing to
call the child’s caseworker frequently and
leave many voice mail messages.
 Attend endless medical and dental
appointments, that are much resisted.
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The Official Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Work with the child/youth on creating a Life
Book – that can help young people
understand their past experiences so they
can feel better about themselves and be
better prepared for the future.
 Inform the caseworker promptly about any
problems or concerns so that needs can be
met through available services.
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The UnOfficial Role of the Foster Parent is to:
 Work with children (in your free time) on creating
Life Books – that they may never want to work on –
so that in 15 years they can understand their past
experiences so they can feel better about
themselves and their families.
 Be willing to make numerous calls to the
caseworker to give a “heads up” about any
problems or concerns, so that needs can be met
through sometimes available and sometimes
unavailable services.
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One of the Toughest Jobs
“Foster parents have one of the hardest jobs in the
world. We ask them to take care of a child that
they did not give birth to, to care for that child as if
they were their own child; to love them, and
nurture them and then to be willing to give that
child up, when a group of professionals decide
that the child is ready to go home to a family that
may be very different than the foster parents’
family.
We ask a lot of them. We compensate them
inadequately, they are not treated as though they
are professional staff of the agency, and yet, they
are probably the most important persons in the
entire placement that child has.”
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A Resource for Foster Parents
Toolbox No. 2: Expanding the Role of
Foster Parents in Achieving
Permanency by Susan Dougherty.
2001. Child Welfare League of
America Press. www.CWLA.org
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Foster Parent as Nurturer and Caregiver

Foster parents should provide the children in their care with daily
adult supervision, emotional support and affection, personal
attention, and structured daily routines and living experiences; and
should meet the children's clothing, hygiene, and personal needs.
(CWLA, 1995, p. 57).

This is the role that most people would identify as the primary,
traditional one for foster parents. It is, in effect, the "job
description" one would expect for substitute, temporary parents.

It is the role that many families envision when they begin to think
about fostering, and it is the one that most probably feel they can
fill on the basis of their past experience, often as parents of
biological children. There is a certain percentage of foster parents
without prior parenting experience who nonetheless feel they can
fill this role. And there are probably many potential foster parents
who do not make an initial contact because they don't have that
experience and don't know if they can fill the role.
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Foster Parent as Child Development Support
 The biological parents of children who are developing within
normal guidelines generally manage to provide
developmental support to their children with informal help
from extended family and friends and periodic advice from
their pediatricians.
 They may consult books or school personnel with specific
questions, but often are seeking confirmation of their own
practices and techniques. It is only when they are faced with
unusual situations -- a developmental lag, peer problems,
school problems, a death in the family, trouble with drinking,
drugs, or the law -- that they seek out experts.
 Furthermore, whatever problems their children are
experiencing have been observed over time, and are either
caught early or can be identified as belonging to a specific
pattern of events.
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Foster Parent as Child Development Support
But foster parents are often faced with developmental
challenges that arrive at their doorsteps as full-blown
problems with little or no known history to help with an
understanding of how they occurred. They have to be ready
to meet the development needs of the child by:
 helping them cope with separation and loss,
 facilitating attachment,
 building self-esteem,
 affording positive guidance,
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Foster Parent as Child Development Support
 promoting cultural identity,
 using discipline appropriate to the child's age and stage of
development,
 supporting intellectual and education growth, and
 encouraging and modeling positive social relationships and
responsibilities.
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Foster Parent as Disciplinarian
 All children need guidance and discipline; it is part of the
socialization process.
 The children who come into foster care have been exposed
to forms of discipline that range from severe physical
punishment to a total lack of consequences for any actions.
 Foster parents are expected to incorporate children with all
backgrounds into their families, often with other children
who have been reared with disciplinary techniques of various
types. Most agencies have policies prohibiting the use of
corporal punishment, particularly with children who have
been the victims of abuse, yet many foster parents have
raised children using spanking and other forms of physical
punishment as standard disciplinary tools.
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Foster Parent as Disciplinarian
 So not only do foster parents have to deal with behaviors
that may be especially disruptive and challenging, but they
may have to treat foster children differently than biological
children because of agency regulations.
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Foster Parent as Supporter and Advocate in School Issues
 For school-aged children, foster parents fill the
role of meeting educational needs on a day-to-day
basis, although ideally birth parents will also be
involved in school planning, contact with
educators, and support.
 Foster parents are the ones who provide space,
tools, and help for homework. They are often the
ones who meet with teachers and guidance
counselors regarding testing, individualized
educational plans, special support, and discipline
for school-related behaviors.
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Foster Parent as Supporter and Advocate in School Issues
 Due to developmental delays, lack of support from
birth families, and previous poor experiences with
school, these activities may be more complicated
than foster parents have experienced with birth
children.
 Foster parents may find that they have to be
persistent advocates in order to obtain an
appropriate level of support for foster children in
their schools.
 To complicate this issue, some foster parents have
limited experience working with the educational
system, or may even have a negative view of
schools and educators from their own or their
children's school days.
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Foster Parent as Recruiter, Trainer, and Mentor to New Foster
Parents
Media coverage of the problems children bring with them into
foster care has made the general public aware of the
difficulties of fostering and has probably frightened many
people away from considering it for their families.
One way to counter these negative images of fostering is to
employ positive messages directly from those who have
achieved a level of satisfaction -- successful foster parents.
These are people who can present a positive yet realistic
view of the rewards as well as the challenges of fostering.
Many experienced foster parents would be happy to be
included in recruiting, training, and acting as mentors to new
families.
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Foster Parent as Recruiter, Trainer, and Mentor to New Foster
Parents
Foster Parents Speak:
Crossing Bridges & Fostering Change
An Award Winning Training and Recruitment Video
Produced by the NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children &
PhotoSynthesis Productions - http://www.nysccc.org
A 20 minute video that explores foster parenting today through the
experiences and insights of foster families. Foster parents speak
candidly about the challenges in developing and nurturing shared
parenting relationships with birth families and professionals to
benefit the children in their care. They share real life techniques
and strategies for improving communication and cooperation to
create partnerships that support children in the foster care system.
$50.00
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Foster Parent as Mentor to Birth Parents
Perhaps the biggest change in the role of foster parents
has been the movement toward having foster parents
provide direct services to birth families in the form of
mentoring, modeling, and friendship.
Permanency planning professionals have begun to see
the value of having people who display good parenting
skills share their expertise with parents who need to
make changes in order to secure the return of their
children.
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Foster Parent as Mentor to Birth Parents
Who better to share effective parenting
techniques than the people who are currently
employing them with one's children?
Yet asking them to offer direct help to the
people who abused or neglected the children
for whom foster parents are caring can be a
delicate matter.
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Foster Parent as Facilitator: Supporter of
Relationship Between Child and Child's Parents
 Not every foster family will have a personal
relationship with each birth family.
 However, there must always be some level of
positive support of the child's relationship with
his or her parents.
 Foster families need to understand the
importance of the parent-child bond, even when
the parent has been abusive or neglecting or
the parent is no longer physically a part of the
child's life.
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Foster Parent as Facilitator: Supporter of
Relationship Between Child and Child's Parents
 One technique for maintaining family
connections is the lifebook.
 Lifebooks began in adoptions practice as a way
to bridge the gap between birth and adoptive
families. The essence of the lifebook is the
story of the child's life, told in words, pictures,
and documents. It allows the child to be able to
review the important people and events in his
or her life, understand connections with the
people who loved and cared for him or her, and
place them in an overall context of chronology
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and emotional wholeness.
Foster Parent as Potential Adoptive Parent
 Agencies have become more willing to consider foster
parents for adoption. However, there can often be
confusion on the part of the foster family about the
likelihood of that occurring.
 In addition, the current movement toward concurrent
planning allows the agency to pursue two possible
goals at the same time -- reunification if possible,
termination of parental rights and adoption if not.
 This may place foster parents in an even more difficult
position as they form attachments with children they
want to adopt but are expected to also support efforts
toward reunification with the child's birth family.
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Foster Parent as Team Member
 The traditional view of foster parents places value on
parenting, but on little else. It was not uncommon for
agencies to drop children off at all hours and with little
notice, to remove them just as abruptly, and to provide
foster parents with little or no input into planning for the
child. Families were expected to accept children of all
ages and needs, regardless of the family's ability to
care for them.
 The view of foster families by child welfare
professionals has evolved, at least in theory, to that of
accepting foster parents as members of the
permanency planning team. Unfortunately, many
agencies pay lip service to the team concept, but
continue to treat foster parents as less valuable and
less professional than staff members.
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Foster Parent as Team Member
 Foster parents are truly members of the
permanency planning team when their
contributions in the areas of assessment,
service planning, and decision making are
valued by all members of the team.
 In addition, they should be provided with
opportunities to grow and learn through
preservice and inservice training and
attendance at professional conferences.
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Credo One
Nothing prepares you for
falling in love with a foster
child . . .
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Credo Two
Real love is given when
nothing is expected in
return . .
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Gerald P. Mallon, DSW
Professor and Executive Director
National Resource Center for Family-Centered
Practice and Permanency Planning at the
Hunter College School of Social Work
A Service of the Children’s Bureau/ACF-DHHS
129 East 79th Street
New York, New York 10021
(212) 452-7043/direct; (212) 452-7475/fax
Email –[email protected]
Website – www.nrcfcpp.org38
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www.nrcfcpp.org
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