USA
Finding foster homes: Try harder and treat them better
We have fewer families today to handle the increasing influx of foster
children. Women are joining the workforce in large numbers, leaving fewer
stay-at-home moms. Lifestyles have changed. Our foster care system needs
rethinking, but that may be long and slow in coming.
What can we do in the meantime, today? Here are several strategies for
recruiting and retaining foster families. Some are new. Others are in place,
but may require a more concerted effort.
The child’s extended family is the number one resource for a temporary
placement or a permanent home. As soon as a removal is contemplated, the
caseworker should search for available, responsible kin. For reasons of
personal commitment and possible reunification, kin families come first.
With the internet beckoning, new strategies for recruiting foster
families abound. Here are a few:
- Design appealing ads using the faces of children in need, coupled
with catchy phrases. The old Peace Corps slogan comes to mind: “The
toughest job you’ll ever love.”
- Hire emancipated foster children and adoptees to use their internet
skills in blitzing YouTube and Facebook with advertising for foster
parents.
- Hire foster and adoptive parents to do the recruiting from among
their many contacts. Hire them for foster parent training as well.
- Offer premiums for those who attend a program on foster care.
Perhaps a free meal or craft items made by foster children. Award
bonuses to successful recruiters.
- Go beyond traditional family lifestyles. Target single parents, gay
parents, parents who work from home on their own time who might have
more time for child-rearing.
- Appeal to and target special families who might be attracted to a
child with different personal or cultural needs. The successful approach
of You Gotta Believe with “Ten Really Great Reasons to Foster a Teen” is
one example. Consider ethnic appeals to black and Hispanic families.
- Approach local churches directly with visits and flyers. Provide
programs to church groups on the need for foster parents. “One
church/One family” is an example of a successful religious commitment.
- Make national appeals for foster parents. This will help local and
state recruiters, and may also open the way for placements and adoptions
across state lines when parental rights have already been terminated.
- To fill in our shortfall of foster parents, we might also recruit
mother’s helpers for struggling birth parents, mentors for foster
children, and other support persons.
Foster parents do all the hard work of day-to-day child care. When things
go wrong, they bear the primary responsibility. They often suffer
allegations, many of them unwarranted.
Despite their critical importance, however, they may not even receive
notice of a conference or court hearing concerning the child in their care.
In any case, they rarely have a significant voice in conferences or in court
where decisions are made. To retain our best foster parents, we need to
treat them better. Here are some suggestions:
- Foster parents should receive notice of all case conferences and
court hearings along with an invitation or request to attend.
- Foster parents should have the right to present oral and written
reports and make recommendations. They are very likely to know the child
in their care better than any other attendee.
- Foster parents, like everyone else, need respite. Enlist other
licensed foster parents to give them an occasional weekend off.
- Customer service. A caseworker or help line should be on call to
answer questions about allegations, per diem, subsidies, medical and
school problems, issues with the birth parent, parenting, and much else.
- To find and retain the families we most need, we must do better than
simply offer a reimbursement for child care expenses. We must increase
compensation.
These suggestions may be the best we can do with today’s system. For
healthy and safe development, children will continue to need care within a
family setting. Recognizing that our past foster care system has failed to
keep pace with changing times, we need to do more than tinker. We need new
models for the future.
By Jim Kenny
23 September 2016
https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/blogger-co-op/finding-foster-homes-try-harder-treat-better/21224
PREVIOUS OPINION
Listen to this
