this was too good not to share. 11 ways for your agency to work with you as a foster family.

11 Ways for Your Foster Care Agency to Maintain Foster Families
From Carrie Craft,


Foster care agencies often work hard to bring in new foster families. How about keeping the foster families that they already have? Here is a list that I created along with the help from foster families in my area as well as with Allysa, a foster parent in New Zealand. The feelings seem to be mutual no matter where the foster care agency or foster family is located.

1. Treat the foster parent as a professional part of the team. We have been trained to work with the children and the birth families.

2. Remember that the foster parents have had the child in their care 24 hours a day, so they know the child. Listen to what they have to say about the child's behavior and needs.

3. Return phone calls/email messages as soon as you can. We know that you are busy, but when we are not heard we feel alone in this process.

4. Visit the child you have placed in our care. Don't just place the child and never make face-to-face contact with that child or our family.

5. Make sure that the child and our foster family are suited for each other. Refrain from leaving out important information about the child just to find a placement at 5:30pm on a Friday. Placing a child who has been in 7 different homes due to behaviors with our new foster family may also be a bad idea.

6. Provide foster families with information on how to obtain support if the need arises. Phone numbers and a calendar of support groups may be very helpful to us.

7. Acknowledge our foster family when a placement ends, for the part we have played in the child's care, and let us know how important we are/were in the life of that child. Allow us to grieve without guilt.

8. If an allegation should be made against our foster family remember that we will need a lot of support.

9. Sympathize with the stress of our daily tasks. Validate our feelings, even if you think we are over reacting at times. Allow us to vent our feelings without minimizing them. When we know that we have been heard we can do a better job.

10. Allow our foster family to have a time out every once in a while. Whether it be a short respite or a few months off in-between placements; letting our family be ourselves from time to time rejuvenates us and helps us prepare for the next child/ren.

11. Help us keep better files by making sure we have all the needed paperwork when a child comes into our home. We will need a medical card, medical release form, placement papers, and the child's immunization record. (The forms needed will vary based on country or state in the U.S.)