Fostering 202

Living with a foster kiddo Part 2 

As a foster parent, you are not the legal guardian of a child, you are a caregiver. The ministry’s guardianship worker (the child’s social worker) is the legal guardian of a foster kid. So, every school permission slip, after school organized activity, bank account they want to open, summer camp they want to attend, the part-time job they want to get, that baby-sitter you want to send them to for a night out for yourself, or that over-night trip you want to take to the city, all of that needs the ministry’s signature on it. And you really want to get everything the ministry says to you about what you can and can not do to be in writing. If it wasn’t written, it wasn’t said – words to live by.

You also track anytime you drive anywhere for or with the child. Say you go to the grocery store and they come along, write down that trip – you’re teaching life skills. What if you drive them to school because it’s raining, write that down too. Want to go out for dinner as a family? Don’t forget to reset your trip counter on your odometer, or remember to google the distance later, and certainly don’t forget to write that down either. In fact, you should just go ahead and start documenting everything you do and where because that’s what you’re expected and required to do. Try it for a week. I dare you. It isn’t as easy as it sounds.

As you might be able to tell the day-to-day documentation of life isn’t my favourite activity, but I do understand its purpose. Luckily, my partner has taken on most of the daily documentation because I was going a little crazy with it. Basically, as the primary care-giver of a foster child, you are required to  keep a daily log of the child (what they did, where they went, who they were with, and any minor or major injuries). It sounds invasive about the child’s life, and it is, but it serves a few purposes: at the age of 21 the child can access their foster record, where they will be able to see these daily logs. It’s like a diary of their lives, kept by a third-party, which is kind of cool; it tells the Ministry what the child has been up to; it potentially protects the foster parents from abuse allegations down the road. We’ve been told more than once that it is not a matter of if we’ll be accused of abuse, but when – memories can be fickle and parents can be angry. It’s really in everyone’s best interest to keep the log. I’m just grateful that my partner has taken that responsibility on for us, because I couldn’t.

Other paperwork includes a monthly report where you list any spiritual, mental, physical, cultural concerns you might have, visits and phone calls with bio family, activities participated in, school attending including teacher(s), milestones achieved or celebrated, etc. The report is about 8 pages (including room to write) and I have two different versions at the moment. To be honest, I’m not sure which is the most recent, but no one has mentioned anything about that. So, I won’t worry about it.

Besides the paperwork, you’re required to get the kid to family visits (which could be supervised and could not) at court ordered times, be available to answer your phone as specific times for family phone calls (don’t forget to write these down, the ministry wants to know when they happened and if anything negatively impact the child happened during them). And then, like any other kid you’re responsible to get them to and from any activities they partake in (youth club, religious events, cultural events, doctor’s appointment, counselling, school, etc.).

You’re also responsible for creating/maintaining a Life Book, which really is a scrapbook of the child(ren)’s time with you. The Ministry says that they provide this for you, but to date they haven’t for us. What we’ve decided to do is create one using a Drug Store’s online photo centre. It’s been recommended that the child do not receive the original life book, but a photocopy because if they end up back in their parent’s care, it could be seen as a threatening thing to the parents, or the kid could loose it. So, the original goes into their Ministry file, which they can access at 21.

That’s really it for the legalities and defined responsibilities of a foster parent. I’m struggling with being able to write how to get to know a kid and have them live in your house in a way that you’ll be comfortable with because every kid is different. You could have a kid that seems easy - they listen, are respectful, follow the rules, but are a bit messy. This kid likely has trouble expressing their emotions, because they should be at least a little angry that their life is what it is. If they aren’t showing you that in any way, that’s concerning. You could have a kid that’s a bit of a challenge - they are constantly pushing your boundaries, or are biting or hitting. Maybe they refuse to go to school, or they sneak out at night and refuse to talk to you about anything. Here at least the kid is expressing themselves, but you’ll likely have a lot of work ahead of you about constructive and healthy ways to express anger. You could have a kid that drinks or uses drugs, they could lite fires, break things, and steal. You could haver a kid that is nonverbal, or that cries a lot. You could have a kid that you see a lot of yourself in, or that you don’t have anything in common with. Those examples don’t even bring into consideration any learning disability, physical challenges or serious mental health concerns. Every kids is different, every kid’s experiences are different and everyone of them or going to express themselves slightly different. 

It can be hard to get to know kids, and it is especially hard to get to know a kid that you know has been through a lot. The first month of having a child in your home is often called the honeymoon period. You can assume that whatever child you have is coming into your care from some sort of abuse or neglect and that it was serious enough to have the ministry involved. I’m sure everyone reading this can think of at least one child where you knew the circumstances of their life and thought why isn’t anyone doing anything. It’s because things often have to be really, really bad to remove a child. With that in mind, if you’re dealing with older kids, they’ve likely learned survival techniques that make them acutely aware of facial expressions and bodily gestures. They probably know how your feeling before you do. Kids will spend this first month being agreeable and following the rules - what they are doing is studying you and learning who you are. They are trying to figure out if you are really a safe adult, and also what they are allowed to do in your home. 

My partner and I found it helpful to sit down within the first few days with the child for a conversation. We talked about our work schedules and how this would effect the kiddo living here, as well as some basic house rules. We asked things that they were interested in doing with us, and things they liked doing. We had decided earlier that we wanted our home to be the safe place to go, so in this conversation we explained that at any time while out with friends, that if they felt uncomfortable or unsafe that they were all to come to our house. This meant that we have had at minimum 3 teenagers at our house for dinner, and I believe the most we ever had was 6. Lovingly and jokingly, we’ve started to call them our group of hooligans, and have told a few of these youth that if they are ever in any trouble they can always come here and we’ll help them figure it out. Not every foster home is going to do this, but we felt it was important. It does add an extra layer of stress because of all those growing mouths to feed, but it also takes away some stress from not knowing exactly where your hooligan is and what they are up to. It’s also a great way to get to know your foster kiddo, because you meet their friends and can hear their conversations, because lets be honest teenagers aren’t great at whispering and for whatever reason think adults are dumb.

The best advice I can give is to be yourself. Include the child in activities that you like, and participate in activities that they like and actually listen to them. For example, in the first hours of meeting this teenager I was told that they wanted a bike. I said that we’d likely be unable to purchase a bike, to which they quickly said, no I want to go to the dump and get parts and build a bike. So, for about 7 weeks, our backyard was a bike graveyard. Every couple of days (at least at first) we were going to our local dump and sifting through thrown away bikes and salvaging for parts. And now, this kid has built a bike, a bike that was built with their own two hands and is something to be proud of. On top of that, we found a skill in him that likely wouldn’t have been exposed until much later in life - this kid knows how to take things apart and put them back together again, on instinct. For a kid who struggles so much in school and has been told they are likely not going to university (how dare those adults, by the way) there is now a transferable skill that can be honed and taught - best of all it’s an innate that they enjoy. We wouldn’t have found this out if we weren’t being honest and open - so please give it a go.

The last section that I had planned to write about is letting go of a kid. In all honesty, this is going to be an extremely hard one for me to write. I know that emotionally I’m not in the best of spots and it’s is by and large because I don’t know exactly how to grieve and move forward. Writing will be therapeutic, but it will take a while to get the words written in a way that I’m comfortable sharing with all of you.

Fostering 201

Living with a foster kiddo

I’m breaking this section into two posts, because it is incredibly long.

Part 1

I imagine that kids in general turn households into tiny (or large) storms. They are so entertaining, self-involved, impressionable, malleable, and naive that I can’t see how a household isn’t completely transformed by their presence. Kids take work, lots of focused, thoughtful work and scheduling, endless scheduling. 

I want to put foster kids and non-foster kids on the same page for a second: all kids need love and attention. They all need activities, hobbies, friends, and an environment where learning and sharing is encouraged. Kids take work; all kids take a lot of work. Foster kids have the added complication of not living with their biological families and having probable trauma histories, that they may or may not want to share with you. Kids take work; foster kids take extra work, and the ministry makes you fill out paperwork about all that work, constantly.

So, how does a child live in your home when none of you have ever met before. We went from one day having no children to the next having a teenager living in our house. It was an adjustment for everyone. One day at work I got a phone call from our Resource Worker asking if we could take a child. Sometimes this phone call will come in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day. The child could be removed from their parent’s home for the first time ever and come into your home, they could have been removed previously and this is their second or third time going into foster care, or they could be moving from one foster home to another.

When a child comes into your care you are supposed to be given Ref Docs (reference documents) that tell you the basics about them - age, number of siblings, type of protection order they’ve been removed under, their interests, school, medical or psychological diagnoses, family members they are able to have contact with and how. I personally wouldn’t expect these documents at all, nor would I expect them to be up to date.

There are two types of care orders: one is a temporary care order (TCO), where the child is in foster care for a period of time until the parent’s are deemed able to care for the child; a continuing care order (CCO) means that the child will never be returning to their parent’s care and is likely on the adoption track. In our experience TCOs are issued by the courts for 6 months, and are renewed as needed. The child’s social worker and the parents attend these court dates, and depending on the age of the child they receive a copy of all paperwork associated with these court dates, served to them by their social worker.

This whole ordeal, as you might imagine, quite trying for the child. Often when they are first removed, they are told that the order is in place for a given amount of time, and then it is extended a number of times. So, in their heads, they very well could believe that they are gone from their parents for only 2 weeks, and it is a constant period of loss, grieving, and confusion when they do not go back into their parent’s home. All kids love their parent’s. They could grow up to be adults and choose to remove them from their lives, or limit contact, but as tiny little humans generally no matter what they’ve experienced, they love their parents and being in foster care doesn’t necessarily make a tonne of sense. In that vain, it’s important that any opinions or judgements that you may have or develop about the parent’s remain in your head, or in very private conversations with your partner. The child(ren) have enough going on, and do not need to hear you trash talk or make tiny slights against their family - ever.

If the child(ren) are coming into your house from a previous foster home, there can be a transition plan put into place where you meet the child a number of times prior to them coming to live with you. This includes going to where they are and saying hello - it could be 5 mins or 1 hour, depending on the child. It also means them coming to your home to see their room, and meeting your family and pets. Here it is up to you to make the child feel welcome and to have honest conversations with the previous foster family about what rules the child had been following and struggling with. The goal is to have a continuity of care in a period of change. Some foster families are open to this and others are not, but it’s an important aspect to push for. At the same time, it’s helpful to remember that everybody’s emotions are running high: the previous foster family has likely built some sort of bond with the child and would like to be able to provide more for them, but for whatever reason are unable to (read feeling of love, guilt, shame and inadequacy here); the new foster family could be eager to get all the information they need, but know that they’ll never get all they needs (read feelings of uncertainty, excitement, anxiety, and concern here); the child often does not have much warning that they will be moving and may not fully understand why they must move again (read feelings of fear, angst, that they’ve done something wrong, and lack of place or home here). The child’s social worker should be involved in this process, but in our experience they are not.

On the note of social workers, the Ministry has a mandate to provide continuity of care for all children in the system. For whatever reason, at least in this region in BC, this is not the case. In the short time we’ve had a foster kid in our care, there have been three separate social worker for the child and four separate social workers for us. On any given day, we are talking to a minimum of two different social workers who likely don’t have the best communication. It’s quite frustrating, but luckily, the past month we’ve been lucky enough to be working with three very good social workers. My partner and I keep joking that it was good that we went in with the bar being set so very low, because now when someone does their job we’re amazed, and when someone does it well we’re forever grateful - not a very funny joke, but it keeps us going.

Part 2 of living with a foster kiddo to come soon.

Fostering 101

Fostering 101

It is my intention here to write about the fostering experience from a new foster parent’s perspective, from someone who does not have biological kids. My hope is to provide what I see as the three stages of the process from my limited experience: becoming a foster parent and being ready to accept a child (or children) into your home; having a child in your home; and letting that child go either to a different foster home, or be returned to the biological parent(s). I hope to be able to write this out in three separate blog posts, but it will take some time to get them all written and posted.

Please, know that for confidentiality issues any reference to a child here I have altered information and events. The sentiment behind the words is really what is important, anyhow.

Installment 1: Becoming a foster parent

Nation wide there is a shortage of foster parents, so they (yes, the ubiquitous “they”...that’ll come up often through these posts) are pretty desperate for new foster parents to come on board. You don’t have to be married or be in a heterosexual couple, you really just have to be over the age of 18 and clear a criminal records check. If you happen to be interested in becoming a foster parent, the best thing to do is go to an MCFD office and let them know that you’re looking for information about fostering. You’ll likely get an information package with a preliminary application (this is just the beginning of the paperwork required to foster). If (and when) you bring that back, they’ll get you in touch with the Resource Worker, who is the social worker for foster parents, and then you’ll get a longer application along with two criminal record checks (aka crim checks). Every adult living in the home needs to have a cleared criminal records check.

When the crim checks come back clear you (and your partner) are interviewed (your children too, if you have them). This is called a Home Study, which can take up to or longer that 40 hours to complete. They ask you all kinds of questions about your childhood, alcohol and drug use history, school and work history, sex life, relationships and connections in your community, hobbies, habits, interests, mental health and medical history, and other intimate questions. It’s invasive, it can be uncomfortable, but if you go in knowing that its intent is to ensure the safety of children, it’s much easier to swallow having a government agent sit on your couch, sipping tea you’ve given them, while jotting down words you’ve said about your sex life. Try to have fun with it, but also remember that your words are being documented. The ease of this process really depends on your resource worker and if you click with them or not. 

During the home study, your house is also inspected. You need a fire extinguisher (recently inspected) first aid kit, working and recently tested fire alarms, a locked medicine box that stores prescription and over the counter medication, and a place to lock up dangerous chemicals and cleaners. You also need proof of house insurance (whether renting or owning), your auto insurance needs to have a minimum of $3 million liability insurance (with a recommendation of $10M), and a fire plan for your home. Get used to this part of the home study as the resource worker comes into your home every 90 days to make sure things are up to snuff.

You also need a doctor to sign off on you being medical fit enough to care for a child. In BC they have a terrible form that the doctors hate to fill out – you actually have to have your head circumference measured, which has to be a legacy of some terribly racist policy or research, I’m sure. Moving forward though, there is also a Pre Service Orientation course that you attend. It is an 18 hour course that each foster parent must attend, preferably prior to having a child in your home. It is actually a very good course. I’m sure the instructor has something to do with it, but it’s packed with great information about trauma, childhood development, relevant legislation, responsibilities of the ministry, relationships with biological families, and other care-giving related information. We took this course after a child had been placed in our home, and it was extremely helpful after being able to come up with a list of questions to ask and areas where we could call bullshit on for what fostering is presented as and what we had experienced.

On the long foster parent application you tell them what kind of commitment your signing up for: respite or relief, short-term (less than one year); long-term (more than one year); and/or emergency. I can’t stress enough that you really think about this question long and hard, and have some thoughtful discussions with whoever also lives in your house. As I mentioned before, they are short foster homes and you will be pushed to have your home open for longer that you may have originally intended. It is important that you understand what your limitations are and be firm with those boundaries from the beginning. It is one of the most difficult things I can describe to have to say no to child in need, and it is that much worse when you’ve grown to love them. If you set firm boundaries with the Ministry, you’ll less likely be pushed into a place you didn’t want to be, and being pushed into that place will show in your ability to care for the child(ren), it will show up in your relationship with your partner, at work, or some combination of the three. Trust me, you don’t want to be pushed into that corner. Put some though into those little check boxes on your application and then stick to that decision.

The long application also asks you what age range you’re interested in. Children can come into foster care at birth, and they age out at 19. It’s your pick how old or young you want to welcome into your home. You also pick gender – I’ve met some foster parents that only have boys in their home, some only have girls, others have no preference. You also are asked what physical, mental, and developmental challenges you’re willing to bring into your home. This includes FASD, ADHD, aggression, depression, mobility challenges, bed wetting, etc. Additionally, you choose how many kids you're able to have in your home, I believe the maximum is 7, but you have to have extra training to be that type of foster home.

It was about eight months from the time that we put in the long application to the time we had a kid in our home, and we did not do the steps above in the preferred order. Because of the shortage of foster parents, there are some paperwork loopholes that the Ministry uses to place kids in homes for folks who haven’t completed all the above steps. Those loopholes were used for us.

I introduced this portion of the post as saying I’d explain about being ready to expect a child into your home. There are all of the above items, as well as the material items like a bed, dresser, side table, linens, towels, etc. that I would certainly recommend you have, but I don’t think any number of words can appropriately prepare any person for the experience for caring for another person’s child. If you’ve gone through everything I’ve listed and have a slight fear of what comes next, then I think you should give it a try. Though I do encourage anyone going through this to always try to remember that being a foster parent is about giving the biological parents the time and the space they need to get their lives sorted out so that they can adequately care and love their child(ren). It’s a hard thing to love a child and know that they will eventually leave you and that you could very well never hear nor see them again. But, that’s a selfish need that we have as humans. Being a foster parent, like I imagine any bio-parent know, isn’t about you; it’s about the child and nothing else really matters.

The next instalment will talk about what it’s like to have a child in your house.