A foster parent takes in and provides a home for children who are in crisis situations. Foster parenting requires a lot of love and patience. Many of the children in foster care come from difficult home situations. The foster parent can offer the hurting foster child or children safe homes. Foster parents receive a stipend to help cover the foster child’s expenses.
Foster Parent Responsibilities
A foster parent becomes a full-time parent to the child or children in his care. He will provide clothes, toys and a safe environment. He will help the foster child with homework, will make sure the child gets to school or daycare on time, and will take the child to various appointments like the doctor and the dentist. Children in counseling will often require rides to and from the counseling appointments.
Foster Home Types
A traditional foster parent provides care for the foster child until he can be reunited with his birth parents or guardian.
Short-term foster parents provide care for children when an emergency situation causes them to be placed in foster care for a temporary time period.
Respite care foster parents provide short term care for foster parents who need a break or have a family emergency.
Therapeutic foster care is needed for children who are ill or who have been through extremely hard situations. In most cases, these children will not be reunited with their parents. Foster parents in this situation will specialize in providing specialized care to the foster child.
Foster Parent Training
A potential foster parent has to pass a home study before being approved as a foster home. He will fill out paperwork explaining things such as the family finances and a personal bio. He will submit to a criminal background check and will gather references from friends and family. He will also take special classes before being approved. The classes will train the potential foster parent in areas such as child development, child attachment and discipline.
Foster Child Relationship
Foster parents need to be flexible in their expectations because they never know how long a foster child will be with them. The parents need to be able to love a foster child while knowing the child won’t be permanently in the family home. Some foster placements will last a few days, while others can last years. In some cases, where the parental rights are terminated, the foster parent will have the opportunity to adopt the foster child.
The decision to become a foster parent shouldn’t be made on a whim. The position is hard, but it is also rewarding. A foster parent will work with a traumatized child and will need to be tuned in to the foster child’s personality and behavior, especially if other children reside in the home. A foster parent will also need to go into foster parenting experience knowing how hard it will be to love a child and then to have to let him go when the child is reunited with his parent. Though this is a tough thing for most people to do, it’s also very rewarding to know the family is on the road to restoration.
Paige Dooly - Paige Dooly is the author of nineteen books and novellas and has written and published over 200 articles. As a homeschooling mother of ...
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