“The connection of children in care to their biological parents remains incredibly powerful, even when strained by abuse, anger or guilt. The family unit is the child’s identity and their past, present, and future. In order for a successful reunification to occur, it is vital that this bond be sustained and nurtured.  Even when there is no plan for future parental involvement, the child must be able to resolve their relationship to their parents and the role their parents have in the child’s identity.”.

 --New Hampshire Division for Children Youth Families Foster Parent Handbook   Working with Bio-Families by Norma M. Ginther, MSW, LISW

“When one door closes another opens, but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

--Alexander Graham Bell

• Connecting With Birth Families
• Working With Bio Families
• Guidelines to Work With Primary Families
• Breaking the Ice on That First Visit
• Creative Ideas for Birth Families

Connecting With Birth Families
by Jan Feuer, New Hampshire Foster Share

I had a visit the other day from a former foster child. This adorable little girl (I have still not fully accepted that she is now a beautiful young woman) named Faith (not her real name) came to live with us when she was twenty months old and stayed with us for over five years until her subsequent adoption. It was very clear from the beginning of the placement that Faith would never return home. So here is a child whose biological parents’ rights have been terminated, and who has been adopted into a loving and supportive home. What is the importance of connecting with primary parents in such a case?

Now that Faith is a young adult (okay, I admit it), she has become curious about her past and her biological parents. She is hungry for information. Not where they live or how she can reach them. She is anxious to know who they were, what parts of them are in her. What was the home she was born into like? Was her mother’s hair curly like hers? That blanket that she always use to hang on to; did they give it to her? Did her father ever carry her on his shoulders; because she thinks she remembers that? It seems to me that over the course of a foster child’s childhood we as the foster parents are often the greatest connection to who they are and where they have been.  Much of their memory during this stressful period can be blocked, or perhaps they were just too young to remember. Since that visit with Faith I have given some thought to my work with primary parents.  We try our best to take lots of pictures, to save report cards and merit badges; but these are just things. I feel lucky and thankful for each opportunity I took to interact with Faith’s parents. I made an effort to get to know them, to understand their situation and their relationship to their children. It gives me so much pleasure to be able to reach into my memories and share them with Faith. We take so much for granted, let so many opportunities slide. The truth is that every connection is vital. Every phone call, every visit, every idle conversation; each interaction that we have with primary families helps us to understand who they are and where they are coming from. This can only aide us in our work to help them grow and learn to parent effectively. And as is the case with Faith, each of those connections is a gift that we may someday be lucky enough to share with our foster children. By the way, Faith’s mother’s hair was not curly at all – but it was the same shining brown color as Faith’s. And I can still see her father’s smile as Faith sat up on his shoulders tugging at his thick curly hair.

Working With Bio-Families
by Norma M. Ginther, MSW, LISW    

The current best practice standard of child welfare is to enhance attachment between parent and child in an effort to reduce risk and reunite the family.

Many foster parents feel that working with the child’s parents is the least desirable part of their work. After all, the parents neglected or abused the foster children in the first place, they feel. They don’t deserve to be parents.

The problem with this point of view is that most of the foster children we deal with are very attached to their parents. Even though the parents may seem inadequate to foster families, a strong bond usually exists between the foster children and their parents. The current best practice standard of child welfare is to enhance attachment between parent and child in an effort to reduce risk and reunite the family. Social workers and foster parents agree that children should be safe and protected. Children can be protected best in their own homes, if their safety can be assured.

Foster families can be extremely helpful in achieving reunification, or, if absolutely necessary, transitioning to a permanent alternative placement outside the child’s family.  To understand the foster family’s role, we should first understand what family centered practice means to current best practice.

Family centered practice

Family centered practice in child welfare can be defined as the provision of planful social work and auxiliary services, like out of home care, that strengthen families, and that enable them to provide safe care for their children within their own homes, communities and cultures.

Family centered practice also presumes that families have the capacity to grow and change when given the proper enabling and supporting interventions.  Family centered child welfare asserts that properly delivered family services can strengthen most families sufficiently to enable them to care for and protect their children.

Family centered practice is not limited to working with families whose children are at home. When a child is placed in substitute care, we strive to involve the child’s family in planning the placement, maintaining a strong relationship with their children while in placement, and developing and implementing a plan for reunification. This can most often be done best by foster families who are linked to the primary family through the child and focus on the child’s best interests. A case plan may involve placement of a child to assure the child’s protection. Placement is a legitimate child welfare intervention, albeit an intervention of last resort.

Resources the foster family can offer the primary family

It is important to engage the primary family early in placement and establish a strong relationship before fear and animosities can develop. If the two families wait to work together, the primary family may incorrectly fear that the foster family wants to keep their child and sabotage the efforts to reunify. Here are some of the resources a foster family can offer a primary family: 

• Model of family living.  The foster family can model ways to live in a functioning family unit.  The foster family can share house rules, house meetings, and non-violent conflict resolution with the primary family.

• Knowledge of community resources.  The foster family can assist the primary family to use such resources as community housing, headstart programs, employment services, hotlines, school related services, service clubs, and food banks. 

• Home management skills.  The foster parents can show in a natural manner how they manage resources. Such activities as clipping coupons to save money or making up menus so that you know what food to buy can be eye opening events to some primary families. 

• Child care skills specific to the children of the primary family. The foster parents can share what discipline techniques work with their children, and general “tricks of the trade” in dealing with children with very difficult behaviors. 

• Knowledge of child development. Many primary families grew up in homes that lacked warmth, encouragement and nurturing.  They may simply not know how children are to be cared for and what children are like at various ages. Foster parents can share their knowledge in a non threatening way. 

• Knowledge of the agency. The foster family is in a prime position to assist the primary family to get what they need from the agency. The foster parents know who really gets things done and can assist the primary family to work with that individual. There are probably other ways a foster family can model behaviors that will help a primary family. 

Each situation is different, just as each foster child is different.

Sources of conflict for the foster child

Another basic reason to work with primary families is to reduce the stress on the child.  Simply being in foster care produces many conflicts for the child.  These include: 

• Torn loyalties.  Many children feel that they can only love one parent figure.  To love a second is to be unfaithful to the first. These problems are intensified when the foster parents want to be called “Mom and Dad”. 

• Conflicting values and lifestyles and codes of conduct.  The child may feel that he or she is constantly being told the primary family is “bad” when the foster parents say things like “we don’t act like that in this house”. 

• Identity as a foster child. Just being a foster child makes the child feel different from other children. 

• Lack of control. The child may feel that he or she has no control in his life. The child may try to assert control by being defiant or refusing to participate in foster family activities. 

• Feeling of being punished. Many children feel that they were sent away from their parents because they were “bad”.  They may spend lots of time trying to figure out what they did that was so terrible. Many of these conflicts can be minimized if the child believes that the foster parents and his own parents are working together and that he will be going home when the time is right. Working with the family can ease their sources of conflict for the child.

Guidelines to work with primary families

In order to work best with primary families, the foster parents should achieve these guidelines: 

• Respect for one another. The primary family is often working under great handicaps which are not of their choosing. They have strengths as well as deficiencies. Foster parents should view the primary parents as caring adults, and focus on building strong relationships between parent and child. 

• Seek conflict resolution. The focus of interaction with primary families should be the child. Do not spend energies that could go to the child in conflict on unrelated issues. 

• Clear communication. “I said what I meant and I meant what I said” should be the foster parent’s motto, tempered with tact, good judgement, and common sense!

*Some materials in this article were taken from Rycus and Huges,  Fieldguide to Child Welfare, Child Welfare League of America, 1998. Norma Ginther is a trainer and consultant with the Institute for Human Services in Columbus, Ohio. She has worked in the field for 32 years, including 18 years as a foster parent. Norma trains foster parents and social workers in New Hampshire frequently.

How do you break the ice on that first visit in you home?

At my house it’s all about the table . . . and what’s on it. Sometimes it might be a big bowl of fresh popcorn, sometimes a partially completed jigsaw puzzle. I might leave some of the child’s recent school papers or home work that needs to be completed lying in view.

Something to do or talk about that is non-confrontational is a great way to get people to relax and feel more comfortable in your home.

Try to avoid things that would inhibit interaction like TV or magazines, and instead look for things that will encourage conversation.

Do you have any good ideas for welcoming visiting families into your home?  Visit The New Hampshire Foster Parent Corner at: http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/paq and post your ideas, or contact the editor. They will reprint the best ones in the next issue of Foster Share. 

Creative Ideas to Share With Birth Families of Children in Out-of-Home Care

Children in out-of-home care and their families face issues of loss, separation and grieving. Here are some creative ways families can stay in touch as they heal their complex life situations.

1. Create an add-on story with your child through a letter or email. You start the story and let the child add on to it.

2. Send a jar with M&M’s that have the exact number of M&M’s until your next visit. Instruct the child to eat one a day.

3. Pick a star in the sky to say good night to each other on.

4. Say prayers for each other.

5. Share a life lesson on recipe cards and write your child a note of what you have learned that week to help bring your family back together. Have the child participate by writing a skill he or she has learned. Save them in a plastic shoe box.

6. Choose a photo you can send with your child. Or have the foster parent or social worker take pictures of the two of you together and get a double set to share - one for the child and one for the birth family.

7. Make a video tape of a happy day in the foster home that the parent can watch and the child can give as a gift to the birth parent.

8. Send your child a postcard or have the child send the birth parent a postcard.

9. Have a photo of yourself put on a pillow case at the mall. Put a little of your perfume or favorite smell on it for the child.

10. Have the child write parent note on child important things - favorite pieces of paper, stickers, pictures, coasters, napkins, restaurant tray liners.

11. Set the phone on speaker (if you have it) and let the child have dinner with his/her birth parent.

12. Tape record the birth parent reading or singing to the child on a cassette tape.

13. Play an internet game with the parent like Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune. There are also chess games, golf games, checkers you can play over the internet. Access to the internet is available at the public library.

14. Set up a specific time each day you promise to think of each other.

15. Ask the child how the birth parent shows love to the child in the most special way and then tell the birth parent so they can use this as a family building skill. 

Foster and Adoptive Care Association of Minnesota
P.O. box 48716
Minneapolis, MN 55448-0716
612-233-3399

Articles have been reprinted from News and Views of Our Families 1992-2004