When a foster child leaves your home

I would also suggest, if it's workable, to keep a copy of the child's lifebook, possibly on a CD. Don't send that with. Maybe make a copy of the CD and have it put into the child's file that the foster care worker keeps, and keep a copy yourself.We had a child in pre-adoptive placement for two years back in the eighties. Her placement disrupted, and her lifebook was sent with her when she left.We were reunited with her about three years ago. The next year, she had twins. I was talking to her on the phone one day and she was very upset about the fact she had lost her lifebook over the course of being moved around. She was upset because she had no pictures of herself as a small child and didn't know if her babies looked like she had then. I looked around and found what pictures I had from her time with us. I also had just a few pictures of her from before her placement with us at age six, including a couple shots of her as a baby about nine months old. We made copies of all the pics and put them in a simple book for her, then sent them to her for her birthday. She called her sister (our daughter) when she got them, and our daughter told us she was crying and crying with joy because she could see how much her twins looked like her at that age. Those few pictures were just priceless to her, and if we hadn't saved them after the agency sent them to us and she left our family, they would have been lost forever.We did not send her the originals. We know, with her chaotic life, she will most likely lose the pictures again and we will have to copy and re-send them at some point.That's why it seems like a good idea to keep a copy of the lifebook. I wish we had thought of it at the time. Any text can be just typed on the computer and saved along with the pics on a CD. It doesn't have to be fancy or time-consuming. Nice lifebooks are important and we had nice ones for our kids, too, but it's the information that holds the real value. Should your foster kids ever be in contact with you later, you will easily be able to provide them with that crucial information.