Okay, so not “we” as in Brian and me, but “we” as in our church community. Over the last couple years we’ve been blessed to have a bunch of little foster babies make their debut. Some have been with us just for a season, or for a weekend of respite care and some have ended up permanent members of our community. I couldn’t be prouder of how families have chosen to help children in crisis either by fostering or by supporting our foster families.
But it wasn’t always this way in our fostering journey. In part because we weren’t always such vocal advocates for fostering and didn’t feel so bold about making our own needs known. Sometimes it’s easier to push for changes that help support other families because you know what kind of help you would have benefitted from. I remember the day after one of our foster babies arrived at our home I was balancing her on my hip while trying to make a meal for a family who had just brought their baby home from the hospital (one they made the old fashioned way). In retrospect, I probably should have found somebody else to make that meal or just brought them some takeout. I needed to be focusing on building a relationship with this new child in my arms who really didn’t know or trust me, but I was working hard to keep up appearances that I was capable of doing it all. I let assumptions go unchallenged that since I wasn’t going through a physical recovery after a birth, I didn’t need help. It’s now important to me to be sure as a community we are thinking through the VERY real challenges of building a relationship from scratch with a child who may have been in a difficult prenatal and home environment and doing what we can to make that just a little bit easier on foster families.
There has been a learning curve as we have become a community that strives to support foster care and adoption. The kind of support that is best for a family who has a baby of a race/gender/age/medical need they weren’t aware of or prepared for just the day before is very different from the kind of support we are used to offering new parents. Nine months to get ready for a baby and 90 minutes (which is more than what we had between the time we got a phone call about the placement of our daughter and the time she actually arrived) are two very different situations. If your church is wanting to come alongside fostering families, here are some guidelines about how to make this work.
Supporting Families with a New Placement
Respect privacy. Different states and even different foster agencies within the same state may have differing regulations about what kind of information can be revealed about foster children. It is best to err on the side of respecting privacy. Don’t have a church-wide email that states the child’s name or has a picture of the child. Don’t post anything about the child on social media. Don’t ask too many detailed questions about the biological family’s situation. Be understanding if the foster family is vague in their answers. We need to be guardians of that information in the child’s best interest. Once we’ve said something, it’s impossible for people to unknow that information and we can’t always control where that information goes. We don’t want to create prejudice towards the family we are trying to help.
Provide meals. Bonding is hard work. It is extremely helpful to not have to worry about meals for a week or two as you’re beginning that important process. One of our kids was born too early and with medical needs. One of them came to us with trust issues and near constant crying for weeks. It would have been incredibly helpful to have had at least that one aspect of family life covered so we could focus on meeting a child’s need. Just because a woman isn’t recovering from the physical process of birth or spending her time breastfeeding doesn’t mean she wouldn’t benefit from being cared for by her church community as she meets the full-time needs of a young child.
Help with initial diaper/clothing/equipment needs. I can only speak for the state of Nebraska, but right now we are not receiving any kind of stipend up front to help with the initial financial needs of a new placement. As you can imagine, the expense of taking on a child you were unprepared for can be pretty immense. While there is financial compensation involved in foster care, it generally happens after the first month of care has been provided. If there’s any way the church can help with the initial expenses by loaning baby equipment/supplies/clothing or providing the first box of diapers, that would be really helpful.
Know and be connected with community resources. In our area there is the Foster CARE Closet that exists to help meet the first clothing needs of kids coming into foster care. WIC exists to meet some of the nutritional needs of foster kids. There may be other groups in your area that provide services for foster kids (toys at Christmas, advocacy, free tickets to the zoo, family pool passes, educational services, etc.) that foster families need to be connected with. It doesn’t make sense for us to double-up on services that are already being provided by an equipped agency. It’s great when we can support them in their work all through the year so when our families have needs we are easily able to connect them with people we trust.
Provide emotional support. Be a listening ear. Have kindness in your heart towards all involved– the family, lawyers, judges, caseworkers, and the child. One of the best sources of support is other foster parents. They know the mixed emotions that exist in foster care and can help connect families to solutions through their hard-earned experience. If there are multiple foster families in your church community, they should be meeting together regularly to share burdens, joys, and resources. If there aren’t multiple foster families, see if there’s a way to provide your building for foster support so you can bring families to you. Be connected with agencies that provide support to foster families and see how you can help.
Lower your expectations. Foster kids may come with issues. If your expectation is that they will act just like the kids in your community who have been in safe, secure homes since before they were born, you need to lower your expectations a bit. Foster families may also need lowered expectations when it comes to what kind of responsibilities they take on outside their home. They need time to adjust to this new family, so give them a little space. If you have an expectation that what seems (in your eyes) to be “in the best interests of the child” will happen, you may need to lower your expectations. We sometimes expect that a case will be clear-cut or go quickly, but that rarely happens. Learn to live with the tension of not knowing where this child is going to end up without putting stress on the foster family to make things clear for you.
Be background checked. Foster parents may need babysitting or respite care (a weekend away). This can only be provided by approved caregivers, which generally means having a background check. Talk to a foster family about how to make that happen, or have an agency that provides foster care come to your church to give information about respite care and distribute background check forms.
Have a prepared church nursery/children’s church. Be sure you have appropriate sign-in and sign-out procedures so a non-custodial parent wouldn’t be able to collect a child from your nursery without your knowledge. You also need to be sure your nursery workers are background checked for the protection of the kids and your liability as a church. This may just be particular to me, but I am a little weird about who changes my foster children’s diapers. I am trying from their earliest age to protect them and teach them that only people they know and trust are allowed to deal with their private parts. This means I communicate to nursery workers that I should be contacted if there’s a diaper problem instead of having the nursery handle it. So be prepared that foster parents may have unusual requests about how kids are handled in nursery or children’s church (if they put them in there at all) that we may need to be flexible about.
Foster parents, I know when you’re feeling overwhelmed with the needs right in front of you, it’s hard to get your head above water enough to communicate what would help. I hope this list is something you can pass along to your church to help them be a support to you. Often it isn’t that people don’t want to help, it’s that they don’t know how and don’t want to overstep their boundaries. We’ve got to be sure we’re giving them opportunities to help in ways that are truly helpful.
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