Finding Your Community to Navigate the Foster Care Journey With
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Our Executive Director, Amber Knowles, told me something 4+ years ago when my wife and I first became foster parents—and it has stuck with me ever since:
“As a foster parent, you will have people who love you and people who get you. And sometimes, those who love you the most may get you the least.”
One of the hardest things about becoming a foster parent is realizing that the people you’ve walked through life with may not be the same people you share your foster care journey with.
I recently shared about the importance of protecting the privacy of children in care. However, as foster parents, we can’t bottle everything up. It’s important to have a community, people to go to, that we can be open and vulnerable with.
If I’m honest, our home can feel like a lot many days. And not everyone has the physical or emotional capacity to engage with the dynamics of our kids and home. So when I talk about the people who “get” us, I’m really referring to people with the bandwidth and experience to empathize with our family setup.
If you’re currently considering who you could share your foster care journey openly with, I want to offer three groups of people who might “get” you:
1) Those Considered Professionals
Whether this person is supporting you or your child, it’s usually okay (and often very healthy!) to share some of your child’s story with the professionals around you.
The goal in sharing with a professional should almost always be to increase a child’s safety and overall care. For example, you may decide it’s best to share part of your child’s story with a teacher or childcare worker because doing so will allow the child to receive the best care in a classroom setting—setting them up to succeed.
Now, having been a foster parent of both a 16-year-old and a 3-year-old at the same time, I recognize there are different things to consider with different age groups. When possible, when it comes to older kids, we try to encourage and empower them to have some of these conversations on their own with support from us.
Here’s a list of professionals you may consider sharing with:
- Counselor or Therapist
- Physicians
- Psychiatrists
- Agency Worker
- Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)
- Teacher or Childcare Worker
- Church Leader
- Non-Profit Leader
If you have access to a personal counselor or similar professional, these are great people to consider sharing openly with. As caregivers, when we get the opportunity to open up about the dynamics of our home and be cared for by another person, it gives way for us to grow, gain new clarity, and provide better care to the kids in our home.
If you need help finding an appropriate resource for your family, please reach out to us for a recommendation!
2) People With High Empathy But Low Proximity
These are people who 1) Understand you well and 2) Spend little to no time around the child in your home. This combination is incredibly helpful as a foster parent. Talking to someone like this can give you space to share what’s happening while knowing that their chances of interacting with your child are likely limited by distance or relationship.
This type of person or space might look like:
- A current or previous foster parent
- A Foster Care Support Group
- A local ministry or non-profit leader
While you always want to remain mindful about the ways you share and who you share with, having this kind of person in your life can give you the freedom to openly express how you’re feeling as a parent walking alongside the kids in your care.
The Riverside Project is connected to a large network in Houston—so if you’re looking for a support group or an organization you can lean on in your area, please let us know!
3) Safe Family and Friends
I have experienced that it’s okay to share with some family and friends, but not all.
Here’s a guideline we follow in our home: When someone in our close circle spends quite a bit of time with the child in our care, we only share the most necessary information. An example of necessary information might be specific things that help increase the child’s safety within a particular setting.
When sharing our child’s story, how do we know if someone is a safe family member or friend?
As you discern who it’s wise to share with, you may find the following guidelines helpful. In our family, we’ve found that it’s safest to open up to:
- Family and friends who don’t offer opinions after you share something.
- Family and friends who don’t connect a child’s story directly with a political issue.
- Family and friends who don’t seek more information than you originally offered.
- Family and friends who listen for understanding and offer support.
If you’d like to learn more about my foster care journey, check out this past episode of The Riverside Project Podcast:
LISTEN: Creating Safe Spaces for the Next Generation (feat. Chandler James)
Navigating the privacy of children in care can be tricky, and each family approaches it in their own way.
In our home, we tend to prioritize safety and care a little higher than privacy. Sometimes, that means we will share parts of our journey with others if it accomplishes that goal.
At the same time, we prioritize privacy over our desire to be seen and understood as caregivers. As foster parents, this is a difficult balancing act we must walk.
I hope this is helpful as you consider who you should feel comfortable openly sharing your foster care journey with, and I pray for wisdom, discernment, and love as you continue forward. The work you are doing is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone…our team would love to connect with you!
Just send us an email to hello@riversideproject.org—we’re here for you and ready to support.
This article was updated from a post I originally shared on The Forgotten Initiative blog a few years ago. You can read the original and learn more about TFI here!
