What’s It Like to Be In Foster Care: Former Foster Youth Speak Out
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
07/21/21
•66m
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In this episode we talk with a panel of four former foster youth to find out what it is like to be raised in foster care and what they wish foster parents knew about the experience.
In this episode, we cover:
- What was the experience of being removed from your home and taken from your parents?
- Was there something that your foster parents could have done when you were first placed in the home to help alleviate some of the trauma?
- Did you feel fully included in your foster family? What can foster parents do to help the child feel included?
- This wasn’t relevant when you were in foster care, but what are your thoughts on blurring out the foster child or putting stickers over their face when posting pics on social media?
- Relationships with the children of the foster family.
- Who did you feel like was on your side? Who could you go to if you needed help?
- Do you think enough was done to help your biological parents before you were removed?
- Do you think enough was done to help your biological parents with reunification? Or do you think they were given too many chances?
- Do you have pictures or keepsakes from the time you were in foster care? Would these have been or are they important to you now? What can the system do to make sure these are preserved?
- While I’m sure you carry the scars of your early life trauma, you have all become successful and--at least from the outside looking in—emotionally healthy adults. What factors contributed to this?
- Tips for foster parents.
This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Previous Episode
Handling Social Media
July 14, 2021
•67m
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What issues do you need to think about when using social media as an adoptive or foster parent? What issues do you need to consider for your teens and tweens as they engage in social media? We talk with Katie Biron, Director Fostering Connections for Families and Program Manager of the Family Connections Program; Laura Jean Beauvais, licensed professional counselor with New Wind Counseling; and Dawn Friedman, a licensed professional clinical counselor with supervisory designation at Building Family Counseling about handling social media with adopted, foster, and kinship children.
In this episode, we include:
Some of the most popular social media platforms include:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Snapchat
Social Media pre-adoption
- Keep in mind that states have varying laws on matching online and advertising for an expectant parent. You need to know what is allowed.
- How much information can you or should you post after you have been matched with an expectant mom during her pregnancy?
- How much info can you share post birth and after the baby comes home, but before the adoption is finalized?
- Is it OK to “snoop” on expectant family and birth family online pre-adoption? You should know that the expectant family will also be checking you out online.
- Should you friend the expectant mom and family pre-adoption?
- How, when, and if to announce a child coming into your family through adoption.
Social Media as an Adoptive Parent
- How much of your child’s adoption story should you share online?
- How much should you share of your child’s birth parent’s online presence with a school aged child or younger?
- Sharing photos online. How to handle differing opinions between adoptive and bio family on sharing pics. Common scenario is adoptive parent doesn’t share online pics and bio family does.
- Friending biological or first family or accepting friend requests from biological family.
- How to seek help online without divulging your child’s personal information or oversharing.
- Post anonymously either on your own or ask group admin.
- Ask general questions without personal details.
- How to juggle the ups and downs of adoption groups on social media.
Social Media as a Foster Parent
- Differing rules and expectations on social media use between foster child and foster parent will be discussed later in the interview.
- Can a foster parent post a foster child’s picture online?
- Ask you caseworker
- Confidentiality is essential
- Use the Reasonable Prudent Parent Standard
- Discussion in online forums. How open can you be?
Social Media with Adopted/Fostered Teens
- What age do adolescents start having access to social media without adult supervision?
- How to handle and navigate social media with the teens in foster care?
- Benefits of social media for adopted and fostered adolescents.
- Maintaining social ties. Social media is how many youth connect with friends, both old and new. May be especially important for young people who have been moved from their communities and families.
- Support. Through either organized online groups for youth in similar situations or informally.
- Family connections. Youth may be able to with biological family members between family visits, where appropriate and approved by the caseworker.
- Self-expression. Social media is where many budding poets, artists, videographers hone their skills. It is also a place where young people shape their identity and can contribute to healing from childhood trauma.
- Risks: While all youth may be at some risk for unsafe online s
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Next Episode
Parenting a Child with Prenatal Exposure
July 28, 2021
•60m
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What are the long-term impacts of prenatal alcohol and drug exposure and how can we parent these kids to help them thrive. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Mona Delahooke, a clinical child psychologist and the author of Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges.
In this episode, we cover:
Long term impact of prenatal alcohol and drug exposure: Research has found that most drugs that are commonly abused easily cross the placenta and can affect fetal brain development. In utero exposures to drugs and alcohol thus can have long-lasting implications for brain development resulting in behavioral challenges and mental and physical health implication. Some things to consider:
- The amount of drugs and alcohol used by the mom and the timing in the pregnancy matter, although this is information that is seldom available to adoptive or foster parents.
- Very often children are exposed to more than one substance in utero. For example, it is not uncommon for a pregnant woman who is drinking alcohol to also use drugs.
- Untreated drug abuse/addiction often coincides with poor nutrition and prenatal care, which increases the risk further for pre-natal and post-natal trauma with potentially lifelong impacts.
It helps to begin with understanding how alcohol and drugs exposure in pregnancy can affect the child not just in infancy but throughout their life.
- Alcohol
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASDs) is characterized with a broad range of deficits. Children with FASD may not have the facial dysmorphology and other physical abnormalities associated with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). - FASDs currently represent the leading cause of mental retardation in North America.
- Of all the substances of abuse (including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines), alcohol produces by far the most serious neurobehavioral effects in the child and into adulthood.
- Alcohol exposure can cause a host of cognitive and behavioral impairments, including:
- Low to average IQs (IQ can range from mental retardation to normal)
- Poor executive functioning skills
- Poor information processing skills
- Lack of social and communication skills
- Lack of appropriate initiative
- Discrepancy between their behavioral age and their chronological age (i.e., acting younger than they are)
- Difficulty with abstract concepts, such as time and money
- Poor judgment
- Failure to consider consequences of actions. Doesn’t learn from mistakes.
- Poor concentration and attention
- Social withdrawal
- Other drugs: Methamphetamines, Amphetamines (speed and also some of the medications used to treat ADHD), 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)- street name Ecstasy, Opioids-(including heroin, fentanyl), Methadone or Suboxone, cocaine (including crack), and marijuana. While there are distinctions, after reviewing a lot of research it is fair to say that the following long-term impacts are often found.
- In newborns: growth restriction, decreased weight, length, and head circumference, but these don’t necessary follow the child through life.
- Executive function impairments. (Executive function is a set of mental processes for the management of cognitive operations that include attention, behavior, cognition, working memory, and information/problem solving.)
- Attention and impulse control issues.
- May include some learning difficulties.
- Increased child externalized behavioral problems.
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
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