Foster/Adoptive Parent Resource Guide

169 Pages·2003·0.71 MB·English

Foster/Adoptive Parent
Resource Guide

This Guide was developed FOR prospective foster and adoptive parents
BY foster and adoptive parents. The staff of the Department of Children
and Families are grateful for the contributions of these families in
promoting and ensuring safety, permanency, and well-being for children in
foster care.

Group Preparation & Mutual Selection: Model Approach to
Partnerships in Parenting
Resource Guide
Table of Contents
A Note From the Florida State Foster/Adoptive Parent Association, Inc.......................................................4
About the Resource Guide............................................................................................................................5

SECTION 1: FOSTER PARENT RESOURCES..........................................................................................6
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................7
Making Your Foster Care Placement Successful.........................................................................................8
Goals for Children in Foster Care...............................................................................................................14
Birth Parents’ Rights and Responsibilities..................................................................................................16
Foster Parents as Professionals – The Code of Ethics..............................................................................17
Working With the Agency............................................................................................................................18
Working With the Child................................................................................................................................27
Home Safety and Licensing........................................................................................................................35
Administrative Issues..................................................................................................................................42
Child Welfare Laws and Requirements.......................................................................................................44
Foster Parent Resources and Contacts......................................................................................................63
Forms and Worksheets...............................................................................................................................77

SECTION 2: ADOPTIVE PARENT RESOURCES...................................................................................102
Tips On Managing A New Adoption..........................................................................................................103
Adoptive Parent Support Groups..............................................................................................................106
Adoptive Parent Resources and Contacts................................................................................................110
Adoption Subsidy......................................................................................................................................116

SECTION 3: SPECIAL TOPICS..............................................................................................................129
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): Reducing the Risk....................................................................130
7 Tasks for Parents Developing Positive Racial Identity..........................................................................134
Helping the Premature Infant or Prenatally Drug-Exposed Baby Attach and Develop.............................138
Child Development and Signs of Loss, Abuse, or Neglect.......................................................................141
Additional Resources on Special Topics...................................................................................................151
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SECTION 4: GLOSSARIES.....................................................................................................................153
Glossary of Foster Care & Adoption Terms...............................................................................................154
Glossary of Special Needs Terms............................................................................................................163

SECTION 5: THE ADOPTION COMPANION: A GUIDE FOR ADOPTIVE FAMILIES..........................167
About “The Adoption Companion”............................................................................................................168

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Resource Guide

SUZANNE STEVENS, PRESIDENT

A Note From the
PO BOX 34, MT. DORA, FL 32756
FLORIDA STATE
352.735.3999 (OFFICE)
FOSTER/ADOPTIVE PARENT 352.735.0733 (FAX)
ASSOCIATION, INC. E-MAIL: [email protected]

www.charityadvantage.com/fsfapa
Dear Parents:
This letter is to acknowledge the care and support that you will provide to our children and
youth in family foster care and kinship care. You open your homes and your hearts. You
assist children and their families in countless ways each day. Your efforts strengthen our
common goal of providing a safe, stable, nurturing environment for all children in order to
help them become productive, self-sufficient adults. It is with great pride and honor that I
take this time to say “thank you” for making a fostering commitment to our children.
Foster parenting is an opportunity to make a difference in a child's life. Caring for a child
who has been abused and/or neglected until his / her parent(s) can resume the
responsibility, or a permanent home can be found. Fostering is a commitment to help
children and their families through a difficult period. A foster parent must learn and
develop the parenting skills needed to meet the unique needs of each child. A foster
parent must also be able to provide love and guidance…and then let go. You have taken
the first steps to begin your fostering experience.
In America, on any given day, there are over 580,000 children and youth in foster care.
From babies to teenagers, foster care provides those young people with a safe, secure, and
stable home. Between 1986 and 1996, the number of children in foster care jumped 90%,
while the number of foster families fell by 3%.
Each year more than 20,000 - 25,000 youth reach their 18th birthday out of foster care.
Too often this means an end to ongoing support and guidance of caring adults. Most of
these young people are not ready to assume all the burdens and responsibilities of
adulthood. Our obligation to help them become successful adults should not be tied to the
calendar. Individuals as well as public and private sector organizations must join together
to assure educational opportunities, job training, safe and affordable housing, as well as
permanent connections to caring adults for those young people making the difficult
transition to adulthood. For young people, the end of foster care cannot mean the end of a
community's caring.
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As you begin your opportunity in fostering I would like to invite each of you to attend our
quarterly meetings. Our meeting schedule is listed in our newsletter the Florida’s
Professional Parent and our web site. Please mark your calendar and come see us.
Each of you will a make a difference for Florida’s children and youth. Thank you so very
much for your caring!
Sincerely,
Suzanne Stevens, President FSFAPA

Enhancing Parents and Partnerships
Mission Statement: Strengthening foster/adoptive families through support, training and advocacy with the aim of nurturing child safety,
well-being and stability while enhancing teamwork and partnership with the entire community.
About the Resource Guide

This Foster/Adoptive Parent Resource Guide was designed to provide support and information to new or
existing foster/adoptive parents in the state of Florida. It is designed as a “companion guide” to the Group
Preparation & Mutual Selection: Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting (GPS: FL MAPP) training
program. Although attendance in the GPS: FL MAPP program is required for all prospective
foster/adoptive parents, the program is designed primarily to help the agency and prospective parents
make an informed decision about whether to move forward with fostering/adopting. At the end of the 10-
week program, participants receive this Resource Guide to help them transition from a GPS: FL MAPP
participant to the realities of fostering or adopting.
This Resource Guide has been developed by a diverse team of individuals including foster/adoptive
parents, agency workers, and agency training and development staff. Information has been compiled
from many resources including foster/adoptive parents, books, articles, training programs, the agency,
and via the internet. This guide will need to be periodically updated to remain useful for our readers.
This Resource Guide is divided into five main sections:
Section 1: Foster Parent Resources
Section 2: Adoptive Parent Resources
Section 3: Special Topics
Section 4: Glossaries
Section 5: Adoptive Parent Companion: A Guide for Adoptive Families
Foster parents are encouraged to read Section 1 and review Sections 3 and 4 as needed. Adoptive
parents are encouraged to read Section 2 and Section 5, and review Sections 3 and 4 as needed.
This Resource Guide is a “work in progress” and will be revised on an ongoing basis. As you get more
familiar with its contents, you may have suggestions on how we can improve it. Please let us hear from
you!

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Section 1: Foster Parent Resources
Resource Guide
Introduction
Foster families provide homes for children whose own families are unable or unwilling to care for them.
Those who enter foster care have often experienced the most serious forms of family breakdown. This
breakdown may have resulted from physical or mental illness, alcoholism, neglect, child abuse or a
variety of other tragedies. For this reason, foster children often have greater needs for security, love and
concern than children in their own homes. Foster parents are often called upon to give more of
themselves than is natural.
Another reality is that foster care works best as a temporary arrangement, and every effort should be
made to avoid having a child remain in this program longer than absolutely necessary. Often a child's
parents can be helped to provide an acceptable home, enabling the child to return to them. When this is
impossible, termination of the parent-child relationship should be sought in order to place the child for
adoption, making long-term foster care an increasingly rare occurrence.
The temporary and complex nature of foster care places great demands on foster parents. They are
asked to take someone else's child into their home, care for them and treat them as a member of their
own family. At the same time, one of their most important tasks is to support and encourage positive
aspects (when they exist) of the child's relationship with his/her birth parents and to prepare foster
children to leave the foster home when a more permanent plan has been made.
These unique realties have led some foster parents to think of their responsibilities as "parenting plus."
They not only face what all parents face, but must also accept challenges resulting from the child's
special needs coupled with the temporary nature of foster care.
We hope that this manual will help foster parents face the special challenges of parenthood and improve
their abilities to care for foster children.

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Making Your Foster Care Placement Successful
Frequently moving from one placement to another can be a traumatic event for foster children.
Preventing these disruptions, which usually occur at the request of the foster care family or the placement
agency, has been a goal of the child welfare programs for many years. Boys Town has valuable
information that can empower you as foster parents to be more involved in crucial decisions and help
make the placement of a child in your home a positive and lasting experience.
Research has shown that disruption occurs for one or more of these reasons1:
(cid:122) A mismatch between the child and the foster family or adoptive family
(cid:122) Inadequate preparation of the child or family
(cid:122) Inadequate post placement supports and services
(cid:122) Family strain
(cid:122) Inability to use resources or a lack of resources
Foster families and agencies can work together to address these issues prior to placement by following
the steps below.
Matching Children and Foster Families
Children and youth who require foster care today present a wide range of emotional and behavioral
challenges. Therefore, it is more important than ever for the foster family to be a part of the
referral/matching process.
1. Educate Yourself. The first part of the process is learning about the child’s needs before
accepting the referral. Requesting a case file to review is the best way to understand the child’s
history and needs. If this is not possible, try to find answers to these questions:
(cid:122) How many previous placements has the child had?
(cid:122) What are the child’s treatment issues?
(cid:122) Why did the child enter foster care?
(cid:122) Why did the child leave the last placement?
(cid:122) What is the child’s medical history and who are his or her medical providers (doctors,
dentists, etc.)?
(cid:122) What medications does the child take?
(cid:122) Does the child have any special needs? What are they?
(cid:122) What are the child’s behavior problems?
(cid:122) Is the child involved in therapy? What kind?
(cid:122) Are there any other activities or duties involved in this child’s placement?

1 Festinger, T. (1986). Necessary risk: A study of adoptions and disrupted adoptive placements. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.
Barth, R., & Berry, M. (1988). Adoption and disruption: Rates, risks and responses. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine DeGruyter.
Child Welfare League of America (1993). Preventing disruptions training, session eight, Washington, D.C.: CWLA Press.
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2. Arrange for Pre-placement Visits. If the information you gather indicates that a placement
would be appropriate for your home, you may want to request some supervised visits before
accepting the child. These visits should be brief and can include meeting the child for a meal or a
soda. While the foster child will probably be on his or her best behavior, this is an opportunity for
you to briefly assess the child’s personality and determine how he or she would adapt to your
current family structure.
3. Attend Placement Meetings. Placement meetings are another excellent way to prevent
miscommunication and approximately match children and families. These meetings allow
everyone involved in the child’s care to gather and discuss the child’s needs and placement
requirements.
Placement meetings should include these people:
(cid:122) Prospective foster parents
(cid:122) The child’s parents
(cid:122) The child’s caseworker
(cid:122) Therapists
(cid:122) Other professionals involved in the child’s care
The following topics should be discussed and agreed upon to prevent future complications:
(cid:122) A permanency plan
(cid:122) Length of placement
(cid:122) Additional services the child may need
(cid:122) Visitation schedule (frequency, location, supervised or unsupervised, transportation, and
length of visit)
(cid:122) Phone call schedule
(cid:122) The child’s medical history and medical care providers
(cid:122) Educational or vocational services
Preparing the Child and the Foster Family for Placement
There are a number of ways to prepare for the placement of a child in your home. Proper preparation can
prevent problems and make the child’s transition to and stay in your home smoother.
1. Get as Much Training as Possible. Through training, you as foster parents can:
(cid:122) Learn and gain a better understanding of how children come into the system and what their
issues are.
(cid:122) Improve your ability to help these children become successful members of a new family and
eventually return to a permanent placement.
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2. Identify appropriate discipline techniques and consequences. These are necessary for
managing behavioral problems and teaching the child how to live in a health family environment.
(cid:122) Determine what kinds of consequences you can use to motivate or correct the child.
(cid:122) Learn and practice various teaching methods that can be used to praise the child, teach skills
that he or she will need in future situations, correct misbehavior, and defuse situations where
the child loses self-control.
3. Know your state’s licensing regulations and stay in compliance. Knowing and following the
rules and laws that govern the placement and care of children help ensure a safe environment for
youth and proper documentation and record-keeping. It also gives your home credibility as an
effective place of treatment for young people.
4. Set clear expectations. When a child enters your home, be sure to set clear house rules and
explain predictable family events to the child to reduce fear and prevent confusion and
misunderstandings.
A child may come into your home with a history of sexual abuse. Clear house rules can help
protect your family and the foster child by decreasing the likelihood of inappropriate behaviors.
We recommend that foster parents set simple house rules on the following issues and review
them with a child before he or she moves into a new foster home:
(cid:122) Mealtimes
(cid:122) Bedroom and bathroom privacy
(cid:122) Appropriate affection and boundaries
(cid:122) Clothing
(cid:122) Touching
(cid:122) Appropriate playtime activities
(cid:122) Daily routines
(cid:122) Keeping secrets
By reviewing rules with a new foster child and having your own children respect the same rules, you can
prevent many placement problems by keeping kids safe.
Identifying Adequate Post-Placement Support and Services
If a child has multiple needs, take whatever steps are necessary to receive additional services. This can
be done most effectively prior to placement if you identify the needs in the referral information.
1. Locate and join sanctioned foster parent support groups in your area.
2. Use respite services before they are needed. Respite time can be most effective when it is taken
during “calm” periods (rather than just during crises).
3. Using support and other services is not a sign of failure; it is a professional, proactive move to
preserve a placement.
For more on seeking services after adoption placement, see Section 5: The Adoption Companion, A
Guide for Adoptive Families.
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