Time to Move On

When the time comes for a child to move on from your home it is a bitter sweet time! You are excited the family is reuniting but sad that the child is no longer going to be in your home. If you have other children in your home you have to prepare them as well.

When you send a child home from your house you have to be prepared to get things together and help the transition the best you can. To help a family transition the best you can you have to think ahead and get as much together as you can. The below are just a few things you should consider before sending a child home to their birth parents:

• Get together the child's daily schedule and any medicine they might be currently taking.
• Get together the names and addresses of any doctors the children have been seeing so that they can continue to get medical care for the children. (Include any upcoming doctor appointments)
• Complete the Life Book that should come with every child who comes into your home to document their growth and big events! As well as putting together a type of scrap book within the Life Book to document through pictures their time in your home.
• Write down important information regarding the growth and milestones the child has accomplished while in your home.
• Put together a list of important people in the child's life so that the birth family knows who the people are the child will be talking about or the next few days or so.
• List anything the child may need, ex-the child is about to grow out of the pair of shoes they currently are wearing or they need more socks etc.

Most of the time you get the transition schedule and this allows you to prepare the children for their return home to their birth parents. The transition schedule will give you the time DSS will pick up the kids to take them to their birth parents and the time they will come back to your home. Usually a few visits are made for extended period of time to ensure the visits are going well before the Foster children will be permanently sent home. Once they are home you can ask for visits but we have found once they transition home it is best to let them reconnect with their family rather than interfere unless the child specifically asks for a visit once they are home.

It is hard to say good bye but if you think about why we are foster parents, we are here for the short term. We are trying to help families heal, get control of their lives and hopefully return their children to their home - which is more safe than when they left! We have a job to do and if we do it right and stand up for the children and their rights then we must trust that the courts will do what is best for the family!

While we heal after this trasition we have another opportunity to help another family in need. Hopefully this blog has brought some light onto the subject of Foster Children being Returned Home to their Birth Families!

And incase I don't get to tell you face to face; have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!