The Facebook "Rule"?

We cant post any pics to FB at all. From what Im told, we cant even "talk" about the FK on FB, even if done anonomously. I broke that rule before I knew...wanted all the family and friends to know we were adding to the family. I didnt use names or anything, just that they were girls and their ages. They say it is for "our" protection as well as the kids, but I think they just dont know where to draw the line so they make it an all or nothing deal. My girls are TPR'd= with NO BIO contact (have been for 8+ months) so youd think we could post pics, but NOPE. Come July/August I will post like crazy though...my friends are gonna be sooooo tired of seeing their faces! LOL

We are kinship providers and I always post pics of my foster kids on fb. I even use their real names, however, I have never been given any instruction by anyone not to. I try to put pictures up often as the kids bio mom is my fb friend and I feel she can look at my pics and see that the kids are doing well.

We were kinship providers, too. We were told to ABSOLUTELY NOT post any pics on a social site. I was able to email them to relatives, though, because that was private correspondence.

Beware of this though...... if you tag any friends or family it automatically makes it available to their friends. You could send them pics in a private message or a group message so just that select group could comment on pics in private.

Absolutely! I never tag people in the photos & they've all been informed that they are not to tag, copy, or post photos of my kids (any of them, not just fd) without my express, prior permission.

Same here. Bmom WANTS pics posted so she can download to her phone and share them herself.

I figured the rule was not to put pictures on FB as it was when my in-laws were still foster parents a couple years ago. There's a friend-of-a-friend who's a new(ish) foster parent. She has over 100 pictures of her three foster children with comments like, "My sons" or "our daughter" or with the children's names. It's creepy as these kids haven't even been with her long. Everyone knows these are her foster kids, but no one's told her she might want to change her page to private at least (I'm not her "friend" but saw her page a couple of times thanks to our mutual friend commenting on things).

There is a privacy setting for this! I use it on my foster and non-foster FB profile. Click on the little setting wheel top right Select Privacy Settings Then Timeline and Tagging Set "Review posts friend tag you in before they appear on your timeline" to ON Then, you actually have to approve it before it shows up with your name. My sister tags me on the silliest things. I guess she doesn't know how to do the @MyName to point me to a comment/photo so she tags my name to it. ANNOYING!

The wonderful thing about living in Florida is that with the push for normalcy, the state has recognized that by treating our foster kids exactly as we would our own, it actually helps our kids in the long run. By being able to celebrate our kids, we add normalcy to their lives and help remove the stigma of being in care. So we don't have to worry about the "Facebook rule" anymore... we just cannot say that they are foster kids... other than that we're free to post using our best judgment about what we should and shouldn't post.

Thanks for all of the feedback! I did post one pic of Daisy, set to private except friends. It is her profile too so pretty unidentifiable. Here there is no hard rule against it in the SOP, but I think it is discouraged. I was curious to see how it was handled other places. Sounds like it varies a lot!

I have my settings on that set to review. Ive been tagged in pics that I just allowed to sit in limbo, never responding one way or another to the tag request. Next think I know a friend adds a comment to it! Its not even supposed to be showing up. This has happened several times. Anyone adding the @yourname (or anyone else's name) in the comment section has the same effect as tagging the pic itself. It'll open it up to the friends of the @name.

We can't post anything about ur kiddo on Facebook. It was in the documents we signed about social media. So for now I am enjoying our special moments with BE and doing a lot of LOL when people post pics of their kids couple times a day. It just reminds me not to become "one of those crazy kid obsessed parents".

They never covered FB in our area. I post pics of the boys all the time but none are ever a face shot.

When we learned we weren't supposed to post photos of the kiddos on FB, we took them down right away. However, a friend of mine took a photo of one of our kiddos with her child and she posted it on HER FB page and, since we are friends, of course it ended out on my page. Its her photo, so I can't take it down. The ease of taking photos these days with our cell phones and ipads, etc. has the general public taking a lot more photos of their day to day activities...and with social media what it is now, it is pretty much impossible to think a photo or two of our FKs isn't going to make it on FB.

We started as kinship and were given no rules on Fb. Now that we are ff our county has rules. But the rules are not enforced because he is still family from another county no way can tell everyone not to take picture. I created a secret group where I post his pics now so no sharing only people in group can see. But all his pics from when he was kin are still posted and shared!