As with all areas of life, there are things which are appropriate to say and things which are inappropriate to say…and this absolutely applies when talking to foster parents. Now…I am definitely willing to grace people out because I know that many of these things are...
Today I want to give you a few methods for improving connection and attachment within your family. There are lots of them out there and this is just a sprinkling. And…to be perfectly honest…these are great to use with almost anyone, not just kids from hard places, so...
As I have mentioned previously, as a foster parent licensed through Children’s Bureau, for each case you will have a DCS family case manager (FCM) and a case manager from Children’s Bureau. So why the overlap? Or is it overlap? There is a bit of overlap but the...
The thing I would like to share with you today is something called The ACE Quiz. “ACE” stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and an ACE score is a tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other characteristics of a potentially difficult childhood. According...
So, let’s talk for a minute about kids from hard places dealing with death. Clearly, any child in foster care has experienced loss…simply by virtue of the fact that he is no longer with his biological family. The removal, in and of itself, is a loss and it is...
So…one of the things you may have heard (or experienced if you’re already a foster parent) is that kids in care will probably need therapy of some type. I won’t lie…I’m 99% certain that virtually every child entering foster care will need therapy at some point. The...
So some of you out there who are new to foster care, or even just considering it, might be wondering how you decide what kind of placement to take. Honestly, it often depends on your comfort zone, your experience and your available space. But there is so much more...
So here’s the thing: if you are looking for lots of pats on the back or praise and accolades, being a foster parent (or any job in social work, actually) might not be for you. To be fair, it’s not that no one sees what you do or that your time, energy and effort are...
This is the last blog in this series (which was supposed to be small but ended up being about 6 more posts than I anticipated) …because there are just so many things about which I want you to be aware. I want your eyes as open as they can be. And even though you’ll...
So…court is one of those things that, at least for us, there was not really much talk about before or while we were getting licensed. Oh sure…I might have heard a foster parent say, “They had court today.” But for whatever reason I didn’t really dive in to find out...
