The sad reality of what can happen if foster parents don't get help
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- This is a long one today but an important one for new and hopeful foster parents 💛
Nearly half of foster parents quit in the first year. Burn out is real. But so much can be prevented.
Do you see the places in this story where things could have gone differently? Let me know your thoughts in the comments! ⬇️
#fosterparent #fosterparenting #fosterchild #fosterkid #fosterfamily #fostercare #childwelfare #socialworker #socialwork #burnout
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This applies to so many areas of care labour. You cannot take care of anyone else if your own needs aren't met. Look after yourselves, folks. You deserve it.
Thank you! Special needs mom x2 saying thank u. My dream is to foster autistic children when mine are graduated and gone(weird goals I know but if u knew me totally makes sense) however doing hospice care atop homeschooling and I agree with that bc it took nurses to tell me that I needed some priority. God bless our caregivers!!!
You cannot pour from an empty cup
For real though. Foster patents, nurses, literally ANYONE doing care for others. The burnout is SO REAL.
People need time to recuperate and take care of themselves
This was painful to watch, like a match burning up. Thank you for highlighting the need for support for foster parents.
Not a foster parent, but a mental health worker going through burnout. One of the most challenging lessons I’ve learnt is that you can go into something to help with all your heart and good intentions, and the more you give, the more the world takes from you until you get sick 😔 and sometimes when you advocate for your needs, you might be treated as the bad guy
Going through that right now!
That hits way, way too hard.
@@foolishlyfoolhardy6004 O_O I feel like this is illegal for them to fire you in this situation but I don't know all the details
That was my childhood summed up. Gaslight city
As a single working mom of four, two autistic, I ended up with stress induced heart failure. This is real folks.
I got sick as a single mom too. I just pushed sleep back so far and kept going even when I knew I “couldn’t”. I thought I didn’t have a choice.
Ended up getting so sick I couldn’t work for 9 months. I needed family help financially.
I seem to be on the other side, but I had to step way back. I’m grateful to be alive. Burnout isn’t just mental. It’s real and very important.
@@goblinguy3103 I don't think that's a reasonable request. Autism makes kids harder to care for, just like most other disabilities. They're not saying that autistic kids are inherently "worse"; that's an unfair reading. Would you want her to not mention if her kids were blind, paralyzed, or had epilepsy? Why should autism be given special consideration over other disabilities?
As someone who was a disabled child and is now a disabled adult caring for a disabled parent, the disability is what makes you need extra support, and sometimes there's no amount of support that can fill the void. If your child wasn't disabled, you wouldn't need so much help, and the amount of support you get would probably be adequate (or at least not as insurmountable). Things would be fine right now if I wasn't dealing with my disabilities as well as those of the person I care for. So I don't think it's right to ask people not to be honest about the reason why they or their children need exponentially more support than a nondisabled person in the same situation.
@@pendlera2959 I can kinda see both sides here tbh as someone else with autism. Different autistic individuals, both kids and adults, require different levels of support and I know high support needs people exist! And you're right, that's not going to be the same as caring for a dependent who doesn't have those needs. But I think it's also important to keep in mind that there's definitely a history of autism being made out as this 'disease' that absolutely destroys families thanks to organizations like Autism Speaks and the lens they choose to show the condition through. More often than not, when it's framed this way, it's also done with a derogatory tone towards the autistic individual (usually a child) in question.
I think everybody needs some sympathy here- parents should be allowed to talk about their struggles and feel like they can openly express that they need support, but I think it's also understandable for people to sometimes express discomfort when the venting is done in a public place (barring support forums for that specific subject) where the people reading it just simply don't *know* the parent, what they're like, or their intentions. I personally don't have any claims to make about whether comments like the original one are overall bad/poorly phrased/misplaced, but I do understand why it gives other autistic people pause.
@@ohno4930 Thank you for saying this it was beautifully written. For me as a therapist for kids with autism. I think there is also a middle ground. Most of the time I try not to give direction to families and people when I don't know the situation well (exceptions being advice for personal relationships and given with a grain of salt). The truth is that the spectrum is large some people show minor differences that don't change day to day actions and some people need an intense amount of care. Denying that it can be harder to raise a child with Autism does not do anyone any favors. It is a blessing to be able to work with families and teach them that it's okay if it feels harder sometimes and that feeling that way is normal. Most of my parents would move the world for their children but caregiver burnout happens to everyone.
@@goblinguy3103 ❤ this is not your mother, this person did not imply their autistic children caused heart failure nor did they blame them. Take the time to process. For me it can be up to 24 hours, then come back and respond.
I like how compassionately you framed the caregiver in this situation. It is not their fault and not their failing. 🖤 The dwindling support from friends and family is especially painful during all manner of tough times.
Man, this is me. I'm not a foster parent, but I'm a caregiver and I am so, so burnt out. I don't even want to try therapy because I can't imagine them telling me anything other than the standard "remember to take care of yourself!" WITH WHAT TIME AND ENERGY? I'm getting less than 4 hours of sleep per night as it is!
You may've already done this so I'm sorry if I'm mentioning something you've already tried, but do you have any local respite services available? If cost is a factor, ask them if they know of any local organizations that may be able to help you: sometimes local community groups have volunteers that will watch over your charge (depending upon the severity of their needs) for an hour or so to give you time to run to the store or grab a nap. You can contact your local department of health and see if they have any leads, too.
I have severe insomnia. I could go 48 hours with absolutely no sleep and be fine. I ALWAYS volunteer to parents to do overnight watches for kids who have trouble at nights. I have a 6 year old little girl, her mother died and her father was abusive, so you can imagine how hard that is. She has trouble sleeping without me, but she’ll usually end up wetting the bed. I’m trying to get her by herself, but she gets absolutely petrified. She is very well behaved, and its rare to see a tantrum, so I’m not worried about that, instead she will sob, and its not a sob for attention sob, its a scared sob. She always will say shes scared she’ll “wake up and never see me again” Which makes me scared if she ever gets placed somewhere else, even though I’ve had her since march, i’m nervous. I wish all the luck in the world to moms who don’t have insomnia like me, and need some sleep.
Thank you for the realistic portrayal shown. Support definitely dwindles. The village loses interest or moves on. We, the foster parents, are left holding the line when caseworkers leave and bio parents are a no show. Its us and we're alone.
I make it clear from the beginning: I can do this as long as caseworkers transport for and supervise all visits. It is their job to do so.
I think your last sentence really highlights a lack of education of foster parent roles/responsibilities. It is ultimately DHR/CPS's job to ensure the child is getting to their visits. You as the foster parent need to set some boundaries and limitations right off the bat. Sadly, many foster parents just don't know what they can and can't advocate for.
@@sandydog426 um, nope, not in my state.
@@calliecollins7702 That's unfortunate. Here, it is the responsibility of their child protective agency to ensure they get to their appts.
In your example, it really outlines the importance of having set boundaries regarding your time (and schedule for the foster child), and not allowing others to overstep those. If mom, dad and siblings were not able to visit at the same time, maybe each visit needed to be stretched out to fit into the schedule. And so important to have good and continuing support.
I think when it comes to a child with higher needs especially, respite care should be a mandatory part of their plan before they are placed in a single foster home. The child goes like a weekend a month to respite care to give the primary foster a break. So basically they would need two foster families. It would be harder to place but it may help the burn out.
I think most children with high needs should have some sort of respite care, even if they're still with their bio-family. Caregiver burnout is real, whether it's a parent or a foster parent doing the caring. Outside of a fostering situation, this needn't be a formal arrangement - it could be as simple as grandparents or auntie and uncle taking the child one weekend a month. However, if there are no family or friends that are willing and able to take care of the child, this absolutely should be something that local services offer.
The father, mother, and siblings all having different visitation schedules sounded super difficult to manage. I'm not sure what I'd do in that case (not a foster parent).
@@MsMaryPatricia Yes.
@@MsMaryPatricia That's a very good point. I somehow assumed that all visits would be good for the child because it's made such a priority. Thank you for opening my mind!
I'd reduce the frequency of visits. Once per month per person would mean that you have the ability to get into a real routine and it's less exhausting for everyone.
@@MsMaryPatriciaAgreed, I remember Laura mentioning before that visits can usually prompt some behavioral issues when they get back to the foster parent's home due to a lot of emotional factors, so if the week is basically full of visits I can't imagine the child has any time to regulate their emotions from the previous one...
Everyone warned me about this and I didn’t really think about it. Sadly, I plan on closing my home as soon as this placement reunites with family. I’m so overwhelmed… and honestly disappointed
Totally understandable. Thank you for your service!
Yep. I've been there. Most frustrating part is when I wasn't told the truth about her history and violence.
When they knowingly pass the problem cases on to unsuspecting foster parents and outright lie about so many things.
They really need to stop doing that. It puts the kids in a potentially unsafe situation which wasn't any better than where they came from. Foster parents need full histories to make the right decisions for their families.
@@nataliekubus1041it doesnt help anyone. Even if the agency was honest about the kid's problems , few people if any would take them in some cases.
@@jman5949Then it sounds like we need other options as a society. It's not right for a foster family to be endangered just so an unscrupulous caseworker has one less child to place.
Whenever you board an airplane, and the flight attendants are going through the safety briefing, they always say "put on your mask before helping others". If you pass out because you don't have your mask on, you can't help anyone else either.
The same is true in life: you need to take care of yourself and make sure your needs are met before you can take care of others. If you constantly prioritize everyone else and your needs are diminished, you will lose capacity to help others or yourself, and then it's often too late
Brilliantly illustrated how things can slowly slip away from you, applies to all areas of life!
Worst was having a social worker, when I was trying to fill in the gaps of care between a baby being in crisis care and going into long term foster, she just told me “You can’t save them all” and the kid was 18 months old and was sick and we had to wait to get him allowed to have medicine and bc it was a crisis care level care with a private agency, they just terminated the visit and took him back in their care. Mom was going to jail and we didn’t know this and I think the agency didn’t know. She asked us if we would take him for her and we weren’t legally allowed to via our contract with the agency we worked for. So 18 month baby boy was going to be transferred sick with what appeared to be bronchitis immediately back to the social worker care and on to state placement. It burned me hard on taking kids. We took several more but had to end bc the kids were getting us sick (license was for birth to age six) as they were mostly toddlers.
I felt bad stopping the care but knowing the social worker was so jaded made me so sad for the kids. You really have to be able to find solutions in caregiving that still fall within the rules. Example being we used steamy bathroom for that child while he was coughing a lot and unable to sleep. Sleep issues are a huge unspoken drain to the kids and foster parents' energy and capacity to provide the quality care that they came to foster care to offer.
I find it a super difficult situation in so many ways. Saddest thing is that ultimately the child and their primary caregiver slowly break down in their own ways and kiddo doesn't get their needs met or parent burns out and stops fostering or terminates a placement.
But if he wasn't getting medicine, he was being abused... I've heard enough stories like these to know I would never get involved in the foster care system except just to adopt, but if I had a sick child, I would give him medicine and to hell with the law. At the very least ibuprofen. Anyway, how would they find out?
Oh gosh. That was very real. I’m cutting back work starting this week. Seeing a therapist for burnout.
My agency wont offer me respite despite the fact they advertise respite for the foster carers. Since November I've not had any help from the LA.
I took on a lot as a single foster parent and only later realized the level of chronic stress I had been under. I am practicing saying "no" to proposed placements right now until I feel very confident (still have one child but am licensed for more). It's hard knowing that there are always kids out there needing placement/ home. But if I burn out, I won't be good to anyone. A lesson in self love and reality testing.
This is hard to watch.
Thank you so much for putting this out there and all the content you make to advocate for improvement to the care system. ❤
This is why I've promised myself that my future husband and I will get some amount of therapy while we're raising our children. Whether it's once a month, once every other month, just whatever we can afford. Taking care of little humans is hard, and they deserve the best, most emotionally available parents possible.
Question is: why is it necessary to bring more children into this world, especially when you already know it's going to severely impact your quality of life, mental health and ability to take care of yourself? I will never understand why having children always has to be a given.
There needs to be more consistent, genuinely helpful support for foster parents. "You're doing great, keep it up!!" is not enough.
Thank you for putting out the good the bad and the ugly. I am not a foster parent but I’ve worked with foster children and I have plenty of adult client now who were foster children and were often abused. I wish every foster child could have a foster parent as trauma informed and kind as you.
Thank you very much for your videos. I'm currently not ready to be a foster parent, but it's really nice to be able to already inform myself and think through things before possibly getting started.
At what point does the social worker step in and say this isn't a good fit when a situation like this arises? Or is this a precursor to a child who slips thru the cracks bc the social worker also has other kids who would be considered "high maintenance?"
I really want to foster, but the truth is that besides my father, who I have breakfast with once a week... I really have barely anybody in my social circle who would be willing to help me. It would be really hard for me to foster as a single man, even with my work-from-home job.
It's a combination of too much going on and everything being on you. Night time respite should have been sorted as a priority. There should have been support to facilitate visits and fewer of them. That sounds harsh, but three or four a week with several different people is too much. Reduce it to once or twice a month and you allow more consistency and time to breathe.
This. This looks more like my family’s experience with fostering. 😢
Just getting out of a placement like this. The only things I feel like are missing are one of the foster parents being covered in bruises and a licensor making up her own rules
Jeez man. I would love love love to foster/adopt kids one day. I have a biological child but that hurted so I wasn’t gonna be doing THAT again, but I love children and I have the patience of a SAINT. It’s my favorite thing about myself.
I feel like they make it so hard for regular people to get into fostering/adoption.
God was awesome to put you in the lives of so many kids - directly and through these videos that reach so many of us. I use your advice and apply it to my bio kid. You are a blessing. 😊
'that hurted'
reason 176 of X that i as a trans guy will 7/10 NOT be having biokids with my partner. shes adopted and we want to look into adoption/fostering once were old and stable enough to do so and 100% agree that this channel has so much info that isnt really Available through official 'so u wanna acquire a child' ways
@@madsfiedler3884please stop thinking of children as something one goes about "acquiring". Gross.
This rings hard and loud. We just had to back out of a long term placement simply due to lack of help from worker and services and escalation of behaviors and needs for the child. Just couldn't do it anymore. It was affecting my bio son, my job, my ability to manage my home and my marriage. Burnout is very real and resources and help are very minimal if best. At this time, I don't think we will be fostering anymore either :(
This was possibly your best video yet. Thank you for your incredibly insightful storytelling.
It's not hard to see why: This is abuse. Just because they're abusing the foster parents (who are adults) doesn't make it any less abuse. Why are foster parents expected to bend over backwards for the bio parents? If the bio parents want to see their child, it should be incumbent on them to pick up some of the slack. Foster parents are basically expected to do all the parenting work without any rights at all, and bio parents are treated like helpless victims at all times.
When I was a nurse in a medical foster home for disabled children, we had kids who had VERY high care needs, but we also had 24/7 staff. We also had parents who were genuinely going through a hard time but did their ABSOLUTE best for their kids under extreme circumstances (homelessness, needing to use survival sex, etc.) and so they had custody and we provided respite care only. Other parents could not have been bothered and would starve their child even when that child was tube fed and all they had to do was push a button. Those kids got removed but given back MANY times. All the tantrums about "Kids get taken away for nothing" is frankly untrue. The system is way too overloaded for that.
Make the bio parents PARENT. Require them to take over some of the care tasks for the foster parent such as facilitating visits (safety permitting).
All I see in the foster system is healthy, functional adults and innocent children being at the mercy of neglectful, abusive people and no one seems to have a problem with it. They just keep making excuses about "It's not the bio parents' fault, it's the system." The SYSTEM enables this behavior.
I was wondering where kids went who have high medical needs. Were their house “parents” at this home, or just nursing staff? It sounds like some kids at your workplace were in custody of their parents, and others were in the system?
I’m really sorry if this is a dumb question…. But what is survival sex? I’ve never heard that term before. My mind jumped to intercourse to save a marriage, but I doubt that is correct 😅
@@RedheadedWildflower I'm guessing they mean using sex work to pay the bills because they are out of other options.
@@RedheadedWildflowerit’s sex for food or shelter or the money to purchase those things
@@melaniedejonge5234 Oh, okay. Thank you! My biological mother did that but I didn’t know there was an actual term for it
as a foster child that aged out of the system this is heartbreaking. I actually had something similar happen where a group home decided they were done with foster care and just got rid of all 5 of us. his reasoning was it was gods calling for him to do something else. i will never forgive that man. nor does he deserve to be.
TBH, a lot of this, _"God is calling me..."_ is code for, "I don't wanna discuss it". Not always , but I have come across it plenty of times. 🤷😔 And I don't care for it at all. 🤐
Sobering.
So how would you resolve that once the kid is in the home?
The foster parent has the option to terminate the placement, which unfortunately many end up doing. 🫤
The sad part is, there arent enough people to rely ON, if there were, fostering wouldnt be like this.
😢
Ooof I can so relate
I am somewhat relieved that other too found this a tough one to watch, not just me.
Just going through the fostering set up process now and this channel has been so informative. Thanks.
it takes a village ❤️🩹.