When you open your heart, home, and life to fostering a child, you know there will be a day when your child is either adopted by a forever family or reunited with their parents or guardians. While fostering to adoption is common, there are cases where birth families have put in the work to raise their children in a stable and loving environment—this is the ultimate goal of foster care. While it’s hard to let your foster child go after developing a trusting bond, it takes collaboration and communication with not just the birth parents or guardians, but with the social worker as well. How can you be supportive during this transition, and what should you expect with the fostering and reunification processes?
What Should You Know About Reunification as a Foster Parent?
Reunification is the objective for foster children. Children come into foster care because a judge has declared the birth parents or guardians unfit to care for the child. There are many heartbreaking situations as to why children end up in foster care, and those children need a responsible and safe adult to care for them in the meantime. This is where foster parents enter the picture. When you decide to become a foster parent, you’ll agree to provide a safe, stable, and loving home up until the birth parents or guardians have a safe place for the child to return to.
The birth parents or guardians work on their goals to be able to have their children in their home, and they are allowed to have supervised visits with their children. With reunification, the birth parents or guardians can have unsupervised visits that can include overnight and weekend visitations with their child. While this process can be hard at times, the social worker’s goal is to make the reunification process go as smoothly as possible so that the child will feel at ease once they can stay with their birth parents or guardians permanently.
How Can You Support Reunification?
Supporting reunification isn’t easy, but it’s possible! If you’re finding that letting go of your foster child to be too hard, you can always talk to the social worker who will be more than willing to help you with the reunification process. Being a team player is a very crucial aspect, and there’s importance of community in foster-care.
There are also other professionals like judges, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and family members who all play a big role in the foster child’s life. By being a positive role model to the birth parents you can show your support in working together with them to make sure your foster child has the best life possible.
If the birth parents have worked hard to prove that they can care for their child again, let them know how proud you are of them! Show them the utmost respect and compassion, and make them feel welcome when it comes to visitations. When possible, involve the birth parents with decision-making processes like getting the child’s haircut, helping them with back to school shopping, picking outings that everyone can enjoy, and so much more. You can be supportive; and by showing your unwavering support, you’re showing your foster child that everything will be okay—no matter the final outcome.
How Can I Help My Foster Child With This Transition?
Your support plays a huge part when it comes to the transition; your foster child might have mixed feelings about being reunited with their birth family. It’s possible that your foster child could worry about caring more about you than their birth parents or vice versa. So, what are some ways to help your foster child feel at ease?
Show Emotional Support:
Reunification can bring many emotions for both the child and the birth parents, so by being emotionally supportive, you can make all the difference. Listen to any concerns and show empathy as your foster child might feel excited and nervous about being reunited. Ask your foster child or the birth parents if they need anything from you, and compassionately reassure them that you’re there to help. Be respectful and courteous to all parties involved, but don’t hesitate to tactfully speak up for your foster child when needed be.
Be Their Advocate:
Sometimes, visits and reunifications don’t always go as smoothly as planned. If your foster child seems upset after a visit with the birth parents, ask them about their feelings and encourage them assuring that you’ll listen and trust what they have to say. Communicate with the social worker about any negative situation that arises, and work together for a plan of action that will benefit your foster child, while also remaining encouraging.
Encourage the Relationships:
Your foster child might feel an array of feelings about meeting with their birth parents. Be a voice of encouragement while also listening to the child’s feelings. Let them know how wonderful they are, that their birth parents love them and that you will always love them. Tell them that things will be alright and that although their parents may have made mistakes, they are better now and ready to properly care for them.
Plan Bonding Activities:
There’s tons of great bonding activities that you can plan for when visitation day arrives. You can create arts and crafts, pick out a comfort item to take with them, go to the park, go to a school event together, and so much more.
Your Heart Will Go On
Once the reunification process is complete, you know you’ve done an amazing job caring for your foster child. It’ll be hard at first to let go after caring for someone special who was only in your home for a short while, but they will forever be in your heart. Talk to a therapist who specializes in foster care, a social worker, or join a foster care support group. You might feel like you can never heal, but with the love and support of the people that have helped you along this journey, you will heal again. One day you’ll be ready to foster a child that needs you and you’ll be ready to open up your heart and home to prepare for another reunification!
