Fostering a Parent & Child
Posted 23 April 2024
Forming parental relationships for some may come as second nature, but for others personal circumstances can make this time for bonding more challenging. Separation of parents and children is never an easy scenario; therefore, parent and child foster care promotes families remaining together.
The process aims to prevent separation and children entering the foster care system, instead of having parents with the developed skills to provide independent care for their child.
As a foster carer, you play a vital role in long term family stability and have a responsibility of both the parent and the child to ensure both needs are met. You provide family feel to someone who may have not experienced such environments where support levels are high.
Recently, a foster carer from Footprints commented that parents get a sense of what family is when they come into their care with the role modelling that takes place. Our carers feel the strong reward when a parent in their care has previously had children enter the foster care system, but with the carers support can this time, go home with the baby and care for it themselves.
This positive feeling shows to the carer that they have had a positive outcome from the placement.
Being a short-term placement, with the intention that the parent and child return to independent living, the care can be quite intense but as parent and baby begin to bond and form an emotional connection, the fulfilment to see such development is high.
The foster carer always needs to think of the best interests of the family in their care where taking charge would not help to develop the parent, rather guiding and teaching is a better approach.
Footprints Foster Care provide all the training and guidance for parent and child carers so that embarking the journey of being a carer increases your confidence and develops your ability to develop parents. We also have tailored training and support for better understanding emotional wellbeing and mental health that can be used in all care roles.
In the next article of this series, we will be looking into the differences between parent and child fostering and traditional foster care. If you would like to learn more, stay tuned. Or get in touch by calling 01202 573408.