Maximizing the Foster Care Experience

The basic goal of foster parenting is to nurture the child during a time of disruption and stress, providing a healthy and warm family-style life. Foster parenting isn’t easy, and it requires a special kind of person. Patience, firmness of spirit and a high level of energy are essential, as well as a good sense of humor and a willingness to accept life as it comes.

There are no magic formulas for successful foster parenting, but a number of basic guidelines have proven useful for many foster parents. The following points have served as a helpful starting place.

1. Before, during, and after foster parenting, take care to maintain and nurture your own support system. You’ll need energy to meet the needs of the children, and a caring support system can help.
2. Take full advantage of any foster parent training program available to you. A good training program can help tremendously as you meet new challenges.
3. Be aware that the social worker and agency can be an important resource in helping you meet the child’s needs. Be prepared to get involved in the decision making, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
4. Never physically discipline a child in foster care.
5. Be affectionate in a friendly way, but avoid levels of physical intimacy that could confuse or produce anxiety in a child in foster care. If you have questions about this, be sure to address them in the foster parent training meetings or discussions with social workers.
6. Speak as positively as possible about the child’s parents in conversations with the child and extend a friendly hand to them if you can. This type of respect and friendliness is good for the child in that it reduces the feeling of shame and secrecy.
7. Remember, your job is to care for and nurture the child, but also to help the child move on. Foster parenting may sometimes lead to lifetime friendships or even adoption. It’s not fair to the child or to yourself, however, to build expectations.

Foster parenting is at once very different from and very like other forms of parenting. It is not for everyone, but has been deeply satisfying to many. If you love children and have the ability to do so with patience and hope and without possessiveness, then you are on the way to being an excellent foster parent.

This article was adapted and reprinted from "Reaching Out," November 1995, published by Catholic Charities Foster Care Groups, Chicago Ill. It comes from the book TO LOVE A CHILD: A Complete Guide to Adoption, Foster Parenting and Other Ways to Share Your Life with Children, written by Marianne Takas and Edward Warner (Addison Wesley Publishing, 1992).

Family Harmony 
by Stefanie Cox

Linnea is a working mother who loves music and uses it to help solve life’s problems. Like a conductor, she leads her family through the music of life. Her aim is to create harmony and beauty while caring for herself and others. She thinks about forever, tries not to rush. The family songs sound sometimes melancholy, joyful, anxious, sad, and hopeful.

The family orchestra players start gradually, at first getting to know their own unique characters, their gifts, their voices. Their mother and other teachers help them learn their instruments, establish their identity as individuals and family members. The players each learn at their own pace, first completely dependent on others, sometimes playing a solo (finding their own place), in unison (everyone doing a job or enjoying a meal together), in a duet (spending special time with a sibling or parent), or in beautiful harmony (getting along and understanding one another). Making music is a valuable education, intellectually and socially. Each player practices regularly, struggles to overcome difficulties, gains self-esteem, learns new songs, gets a chance to shine. Linnea helps discover hidden talents and nurtures growth with loving discipline—offering encouragement and consistency, rewarding effort rather than results.

Rhythm gives the orchestra members stability and security; it keeps the family moving forward. Linnea establishes family rituals to get things done and enjoy time together, like preparing meals, doing chores and homework, practicing music, and reading together. The family celebrates and mourns together—holidays, baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Music accompanies every day. The family shares some enchanted moments when they take time regularly to talk about colors and styles, struggles

and successes, feelings and faith, life and death, right and wrong, music and school, friends and family. When they sometimes stop listening to one another, they lose the beat. Linnea brings them back together. Life has rhyme and reason when their hearts beat together in the rhythm of love.

Harmony results when the players blend their voices. The conductor leads and teaches them to like and respect each other’s differences. Occasionally the cymbals clash and the trumpets blast with selfish pride, jealousy, and individualism, but Linnea orchestrates a heart-to-heart talk. She acknowledges feelings, using honesty, sincerity, humor, and giving and forgiving to resolve dissonances to a pleasing chord. Each player must adjust pitch, tone, and volume to blend. They learn to befriend and be a friend. Together their blended sounds equal more than the sum of their parts.

Linnea plays counterpoint, balancing the family’s needs with her professional work and personal needs. She must manage finances, keep the house orderly, develop her own emotional and spiritual life, never give more than she has. She regularly takes time out to tune her own instrument. Linnea reads, listens to inspiring leaders, and shares her pain and joy with caring friends and family.

When her internal conflict is resolved, Linnea can lead her family in rhythm and in harmony. She shares her patience, love, hope, and her joy through music. She helps the family turn their days and weeks into songs of life.

Stefanie Cox, editor, is an adoptive parent of a sibling group of three special-needs children. She is a child provider with Human Service Associates. She aims to become more like Linnea.

Helping A Child Adjust to a New Home

What you need to know before a child comes that the agency doesn’t tell you. YOU MUST KEEP ASKING for the benefit of yourself and best interest of the child:

• What are the reasons for a child’s placement in your home?

• Does the child have any special problems, particularly emotional or behavioral problems?

• What is the child’s personality like – quiet, extroverted, active, passive?

Things you will need to learn:

• How child behaves when under stress.

• How to look behind a child’s behavior and see what is happening beneath the surface.

• How children communicate emotions that they cannot talk about. For example, by acting out and acting in, being over-controlled and/or extra good.

• How children test you to see how committed you are to them.

• How to establish rituals - bedtime, prayer time, reading time, leaving and going to play ground

• How not to panic and how not to let others panic you.

• How to spend time with a child doing interesting things, things which are appropriate to the child’s age in order to build a good working relationship.

• How to prepare a child for your home.

• How to keep your expectations about a child reasonable and realistic.

• How to adapt a step-by-step approach to problems.

• How to show commitment.

• How to be positive about a child’s strengths.

• How to control your own stress levels.

• How to rely on non-coercive methods of parenting

• How to make sure that there are plenty of supervised activities for children.

• How to stop problems from becoming a crisis.

Adapted from Child and Adolescent Services, Bermuda Hospital Board and the National Family Advocate.

American Academy of Pediatrics Releases Recommendations for Young Children in Foster Care

CHICAGO - On Monday, Nov. 6, 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released  new recommendations (http://www.aap.org/policy/re0012.html) designed to ensure optimal brain development in children entering the foster care system. Research has shown that a greater number of young children with complicated and serious physical, mental and developmental health problems are entering the foster care system. With that in mind, the AAP's recommendations seek to address the critical early years of these children's lives.

The new policy, which appears in the November issue of Pediatrics, focuses on children under age five, when brain growth and development are most active. Specifically, the anatomic brain structures that govern personality traits, learning processes, and coping with stress and emotions are established, strengthened and made permanent during these early years.

The new policy looks at the importance of a child's attachment to caregivers, the time the child spends in foster care and the importance of continuity in the child's care. The long-term implications of abuse, neglect and stress are also examined.

Other recommendations include the following:

Supportive nurturing by primary caregivers is crucial to early brain growth and to the physical, emotional and developmental needs of children.

Children need continuity, consistency and predictability from their caregiver. Multiple foster home placements can be injurious.

Attachment, sense of time, and the developmental level of the child are key factors in his or her adjustment to external and internal stress.

All children in foster care should have comprehensive periodic assessments of their strengths and needs and receive the services and supports necessary to make foster care a healing process.

Pediatricians need to encourage caregivers to give their children consistent and frequent love, attention, stimulation and appropriate discipline. They also need to stimulate the child through holding, conversation, reading, music, and play.

Foster care placements should always be based on the needs of the child and maximize the nurturing and healing aspects of foster care.

Biologic parenthood does not necessarily reflect a desire or ability to adequately care for a child, and while parents should be given reasonable assistance and opportunity to maintain their family, the child's best interest must be paramount.

Pediatricians and other child development professionals can and must be proactive advisors to child protection workers and the legal system in insuring that each child's needs and best interests are met.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 55,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.

Foster Care Supports, Eases Children’s Transition Into New Homes

Foster care supports, sense children’s transition into new homes.

Foster care provides a vital link from one home to another for children in turmoil. When children must leave their homes, they need a safe stable home to live in until they return to their birth families or are adopted.

Foster care in the United States

Society has always developed ways of caring for children whose parents could not care for them. The early American colonies adopted the English practice of indenture. Indenture contracts provided children with lodging and instruction in return for their work. Orphanages evolved when natural disasters or epidemics created large numbers of children without families.

The 1850’s saw the development of a form of foster care similar to today’s model. Charles Loring Brace of the New York Children’s Aid Society led a movement to transfer neglected and orphaned children to families in the Midwest. His “orphan trains” brought children from the streets of New York City to life on farms and in small towns. This method of children placement continued until this century.

A movement to protect children began to grow in 1874. A church worker found a child, Mary Ellen, who was abused by the family to whom she was indentured. The worker learned there were no legal means to protect Mary Ellen, so she approached the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which took action on her behalf. Mary Ellen was ultimately removed from the home and her caretakers were prosecuted. Publicity about her case led to formation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the first White House Conference on Children. The conference participants recommended that children be placed in foster homes with families, not institutions. They also supported development of mothers’ pensions so children would not be forced to leave their families because of poverty alone. Mothers’ pensions became a national program when Social Security became law in 1935 and eventually was re-labeled the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.

Foster care in Minnesota

Minnesota’s history of foster care reflects these national patterns. In 1885, the Owatonna State Public School began, serving 200-400 children at a time. It operated until 1945. Minnesota also had a version of indentured placement. Children were placed in homes, often with farm families, on contract to work and learn a trade in exchange for payment to be made to the state. This system was abolished in 1936.

The years after World Ward II saw a number of changes. In 1945, legislators determined that foster or adoptive placement was preferred to institutional care, and the State Public School stopped serving neglected and orphaned children.

Disproportionate numbers

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, the rate of out-of-home placement of children of color was three times higher than the rate of placement for Caucasian children. Unfortunately, this trend has continued. In 1997, while African-American children made up only 4 percent of the child population, they were 22 percent of the children placed in out-of-home care.

Conventional wisdom suggests that African-American children have been traditionally cared for by relatives or friends when their parents could not care for them. This tradition continues within the public child welfare system. African-American children are more likely than Caucasian, Hispanic or Asian children to be placed with relatives. Twenty-nine percent of African-American children whose last placement was a foster home in 1997 were related to their foster parents compared with 14 percent Caucasian children.

Ongoing trends.

While some traditions have continued in today’s foster care practice, new trends are emerging:

• While thirty years ago, foster parents were not permitted to meet adoptive families for children in their home, today’s foster parents may adopt children who are not able to return to their families.

• Relatives and others known to children may serve as foster parents. This provides children with an easier transition from their parents’ home.

• Foster parents are increasingly asked to work with children’s parents, so reunification efforts are enhanced and children are prevented from feeling torn between two families.

• Some foster parents are asked to serve as resource families for concurrent permanency planning. This means that while the family supports efforts to reunify the family, they also agree to provide children with permanence — often through adoption —if the children cannot return to their birth parents.

The challenges of foster care are increasing for families who serve as foster parents and the families served by the foster care system. With commitment, energy and skills, families can make a real difference in children’s lives.

This article was contributed by Minnesota Department of Human Services. 651-297-7717.

Update on US Foster Care
By Randy Ruth, President NFPA

We have just returned from NFPA’s National Confernece in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was a wonderful time to share information, learn new things, meet new people and enjoy old friendships. Nationally it feels like we are all ‘family’ sharing a love for America’s special children. Through the internet and e-mail, many of us are now able to stay closer...sharing ideas in caregiving to help our children achieve success and our families survive as they are ‘stretched’ beyond. Here are some of the ‘FACTS’ about our great children and families. KEEP UP THE HARD WORK!