Foster Care

1
Foster Care Adoption

• Case Methods

2
Tasks of Foster Care

• Family foster care must fulfill five critical
  tasks
• Protecting and nurturing infants, children, and
  youth
• Ameliorating developmental delays and meeting
  social, emotional, and medical needs resulting
  from physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect,
  maltreatment, exposure to alcohol and other
  drugs, and HIV infection
• Enhancing positive self-esteem, family
  relationships, and cultural and ethnic identity
• Developing and implementing a plan for permanence
• Educating and socializing children and youth
  toward successful transitions to young adult
  life, relationships, and responsibilities

3
Stresses of Being a Foster Parent

• FC designed to be temporary (love them, but be
  prepared to let them go)
• FP asked to handle a variety of behaviors
  (withdrawn, explosive, set fires, etc.)
• Provide foster care while still considering the
  needs of their own family members
• Constantly under observation by agency (parenting
  skills observed)
• May also feel scrutiny from natural parents
• Visits by the natural parents

4
Factors Predictive of Foster Care Success

• Comfort of foster parents in their several roles
• Motivated to take a foster child by a genuine
  liking for children
• Foster mother possessing strong emotional
  coherence
• The ability of the family to tolerate
  unassimilated aspects of the child

5
Reactions of Birth Parents

• Resentful and angry
• Feelings of failure
• Feelings of inadequacy
• Despair
• Feelings of relief

6
Reactions of Children

• Sadness I think I did a lot of crying that
  people never knew about. I suppose I was scared.
  I never let my mother see me cry when she
  visited. I always felt that I had to be strong
  for her. I knew that she hadnt wanted us taken
  away but she just couldnt kick her problems long
  enough to take care of her kids. I cried alone in
  bed at night and just wished sometimes that the
  world would end.
• Lonely and abandoned
• Guilty
• Shame
• Wonder why they are different from other children
• Internalizing the guilt (too dangerous to blame
  adults)

7
AdoptionEffects on children

• Question why their parents gave them updistrust
  and confusion
• Grieving
• Later loss of relationship might provoke
  individual to feel confirmed that they are
  unlovable and unacceptable
• Identity crisis for transracial adoptions (Who am
  I? What culture is mine?)

8
Issues for adoptive couples

• Powerlessness (not being able to have children,
  powerless in the relations with the agency,
  adopted children may also feel like they didnt
  have a say in the matter)
• The bad seed mythgetting a child genetically
  predisposed to negative behavior
• Adoptive issues how to explain adoption to
  children
• Needing to be a perfect parent

9
How/when should a child be told

• Most recommend using the word adoption early
• Before 6, children can accept that they are
  adopted but do not comprehend the significance
• Close to 6, children begin to worry and focus on
  why they may have been given up
• 8-11 children finally begin to understand the
  complex nature of adoption, with its losses and
  changes, and some fantasize that birth parents
  will appear to claim them
• Adolescence children are more able to understand
  the legalities, rights, and responsibilities of
  adoption
• Not telling children until after they are 5 can
  bring negative results parents keep a secret,
  and children may later resent not being told
• Use adoption in a loving way, but dont overuse
• Open, honest, confident telling in
  age-appropriate ways correlates with successful
  adoptions

10
Foster Care/Adoptive Methods

• Take care of mental health needs of children,
  foster, adoptive birth parents
• Life booksfor children