Just found your channel!!! You are amazing and thank you for doing this! We are new foster parents! I also love the teenage age more and my husband likes the younger ages. So we work well together! He is gone for 6 months a year for construction projects and is home for 6 months. So super relatable!” With you!
I really need to hear this. We have a placement that should’ve been a level 3 therapeutic but DSS “forgot” to mention the multiple known dx. We’re a new level 1 home and completely out of our element. It’s been two months and we can’t even get mental health setup for the child. We’re not giving up but this is why foster parents get burned out and quit.
I have a question about respit, specifically since you are former foster youth. How does it feel going to a respit house? Because from where I sit as someone who wants to be a foster parent but currently can’t it seems like it could be such a kick to their mental health, especially if the family has bio kids. Just the idea of the kid knowing in someway you need to take a break without them seems really mean to me.
Interesting you should mention that because I actually had a section that I edited out of this video in regards to that. I was a never actually sent to respite when I was in foster care, for all the years, we just went everywhere with out foster parents. I don't know... I would say that there are definitely times when it's a make or break it moment with the foster parents and they either get the respite or they're calling it quits and I think in those situations it becomes a necessity. But, yeah, truth be told it would have hurt my feelings as a kid. I think when parents do it out of convenience and often then it can be really hurtful but once again if it's that or calling it quits and it's just a rare occasion used to regroup, then it can be a good thing. I do think that it's important that the foster parents and whoever is doing respite frame it in such a way that it be a fun thing. I know that can be hard to plan because sometimes the respite home is a friend of the foster parents and sometimes respite is done through the agency and is a complete stranger.
My husband and I did respite for 2 families in our church. 3 toddler boys between the 2 families. The foster parents each had 3 biological kids and sometimes they needed breaks or extra help so I think every situation is different. When they came to our house it was typically for a weekend and it would be a fun 🤩 experience for both us and the kiddos. We made it a point to take them places and do fun things with them. We were almost like the fun aunt and uncle for them lol. We have only done respite for these families so it was consistent for the kids which I think helped so it wasn’t random homes for them all the time. Hope that helps! That was just our experience and we enjoyed it. But we also choose to just help those 2 families so we could be a consistent support and we didn’t want the kids to go to random houses so we always kept our house open for just them 😊.
