Another Mother: Co-Parenting with the Foster Care System

Foreword

xi Foreword The contours of the child-welfare system in this country appear to be well defined by law and policy. Yet we have gleaned from the experiences of those directly affected by that system that it is fraught with tensions, conflicting values, and uncertainties that often undermine the achievement of the very goals the system was designed to accomplish. The ways in which the realities of foster care affect children, their parents, and their caregivers have not always been clear, however, because we have not often heard the voices of those who receive and provide foster care services. We have not had many opportunities to hear directly from parents whose children have been removed from them and placed in foster care, children who find themselves in a system that often places them with families they do not know, foster parents who are asked to provide security, nurturance, and love while at the same time not to become “overly attached” to the children entrusted to them, and foster parents who go on to adopt the children with whom they have fallen in love. Because these voices largely have been absent, we have been able to cling to a belief that law, policy, and practice govern foster care and the adoption of children from foster care relatively smoothly. We can be heartened by statistics that indicate that fewer children are entering foster care, that children are remaining in care for shorter periods of time, and that more children are being adopted. Certainly, these indicators provide hopeful “big picture” signs that children’s and families’ experiences with the foster care system are increasingly positive, and they suggest that the system is working fairly well. What these statistics do not and cannot provide, however, is an understanding of the day-to-day experiences of those whose lives are interwoven with the foster care system, who must navigate its complexities and its challenges, and for whom joy and satisfaction are in delicate balance with heartbreak and frustration. The enactment of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) marked a sea change in foster care practice. Under the new law, states were required to move more quickly to achieve permanence for children in foster care, working toward their safe reunification with their parents or, when that goal could not be achieved relatively quickly, freeing them for adoption and placing them with adoptive families. To achieve permanency quickly, foster care systems across the country implemented many changes, including an examination of the role of foster parents and a new planning approach, concurrent planning, which simultaneously considered two potential permanency outcomes for children: reunification and adoption. To implement this approach, foster parents were asked to serve dual roles: to care for children and support their safe return to their parents when possible and, at the same time, to stand ready to adopt children if reunification could not be accomplished within legally designated timelines. The theory was sound: This approach would promote children’s well-being by placing them with families who could serve as both a foster family and a prospective adoptive family, eliminating repeated changes in children’s lives. The realities of this practice, however, multiplied the complexity of the role foster parents were already expected to play. They raised numerous systemic questions: How are foster parents to be recruited and supported to promote children’s reunification with parents, becoming not too attached yet sufficiently attached to adopt the child if reunification does not occur? What is reasonable to expect of foster parents in their interactions with birth parents? What supports are provided to foster parents to navigate xii another mother the many complex systems involved in their children’s lives—not only the foster care system but also the legal system, the Medicaid system, and the Early Intervention and/or educational system? And if adoption becomes the plan for the child, how are foster parents supported in making the right decision for the child and for themselves? Another Mother: Co-parenting with the Foster Care System offers a unique perspective on these and many other issues that characterize the foster care system in the wake of ASFA—the insight of a foster and adoptive mother who not only relates her own experiences as she and her family moved into the complex world of foster care and adoption but also shares her understanding, as a professional social worker, of the broader...