Fostering Friday: Staying In Touch With Families While Child Is In Your Care

Welcome to Fostering Fridays! 

Our hope is that you will be able to get a taste of what it's like to foster by reading 

our experiences and thoughts!

Keeping in touch with your foster child's family is so important...
If it's healthy for a child. Sometimes it isn't. Every situation is different. 

When we switched from fostering school-aged children to 0-3 years last summer, we started praying immediately for the families that we would come into contact with. Our desire is to see families re-united, to see parents get healthy, clean and ready to be parents again. Or to possibly see children be placed within their own family to continue having that relationship with their family.

Apparently, we are an anomaly to many! There are many who don't understand why we would want to have contact with parents who may be drug-addicted, alcoholics, mentally-ill or have no clue how to parent. Simple: Very few of these people have family or friends that believe in them. And without someone to believe in them, support (not enable) them, and help them, they give up hope. We want to shine Christ's light and let them know there is HOPE!

We realize that we are not perfect. However, God has chosen us to reach out to these hurting parents and let them know that we care about them. That we are not trying to steal their children away. That we want to see them be parents again.

So how do we do that? There are several things that we do to have contact with the parent in and out of DHS. I thought it might be helpful to share some of them in case you are a new foster parent, an experienced foster parent who needs ideas or simply curious. So here we go:

• At visits, I make a point to have interaction with the parent. I usually go in at the tail-end of the visit and give them updates on the child's health, talk about any appointments coming up, answer any questions they have for me and positively comment on as much as I can while I am there watching them interact with their child/children.
• If any other family members such as grandparents are there, I interact with them as well, letting them know that they are a treasured member of this child's family.
• I exchange phone numbers with the parents and grandparents so that I can keep in contact outside DHS. I send encouraging text messages, pictures and check up on them to let them know I care.
• If I can't have contact at a visit due to my schedule that day, I will send a card with the child giving the update the parent so desperately wants to hear.
• Pictures!! Lots and lots of pictures. My kids call me the "Mamarazzi" and I suppose that is true! I want to capture every moment for these parents that I can. I know that if I was in their situation, I would be hungry to see what my children are up to.
• I invite the parents to Dr's appointments. They rarely come, but they know that I want them there. Sometimes just knowing you are wanted is enough. I hold onto the hope that as the parents get healthier, that they will want to know more about their child's physical/emotional/mental well-being.
• I also put up pictures on the walls of the child's bedroom of their family so they can see them at all times.

Those are just a few things that I do to make a connection with these parents and prayerfully offer them hope. There are other things that the Lord has brought to my mind to help a particular parent. The one thing that I think about is what would I want if I was them? What would make me feel better and make me want to fight harder to get my kids back? 

I hope this is useful to you! Next week, I will talk about ways you can help parents after their kids are back home with them so they continue to feel supported.

Till next time...

Have a blessed day and embrace the craziness in your life!

Heidi

Numbers 6:24-26