On the First National Foster Parent Appreciation Day, Let’s Celebrate and Support Foster Parents

We know that every kid needs a fam­i­ly and that chil­dren in fam­i­lies have the best chance to thrive.

We also know that many hun­dreds of thou­sands of kids, over the course of grow­ing up, find them­selves in search of new per­ma­nent homes — a fact that has been high­light­ed each May for three decades through Nation­al Fos­ter Care Month.

A pri­ma­ry focus dur­ing this month of events is the chil­dren them­selves: their invalu­able lives and their bound­less human poten­tial. There were more than 420,000 chil­dren in fos­ter care in 2016, a num­ber that has risen every year since 2012. But this recog­ni­tion has large­ly missed a group of peo­ple crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of those chil­dren: the fos­ter par­ents who step in tem­porar­i­ly when kids can­not live with their own parents.

This year, for the first time, the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion declar­ing May as Nation­al Fos­ter Care Month also des­ig­nates the last day of the month (May 31) as Nation­al Fos­ter Par­ent Appre­ci­a­tion Day. Many Amer­i­cans, espe­cial­ly in places where the opi­oid cri­sis has had a major impact on the local com­mu­ni­ty, have been read­ing about increas­es in the num­bers of chil­dren who need fos­ter care. Even in com­mu­ni­ties not as affect­ed by sub­stance dis­or­ders, the demand for high-qual­i­ty fos­ter par­ents is always high.

Here are three things you might not know about fos­ter par­ents and the essen­tial role they play, and three things pol­i­cy­mak­ers should know about how social ser­vice agen­cies can encour­age vol­un­teers to become fos­ter par­ents and sup­port them when they do.

About fos­ter parents

• Fos­ter par­ents are ordi­nary peo­ple who find a way to do extra­or­di­nary things for kids in cri­sis. Fos­ter par­ents care for these kids, doing their best to cre­ate the sta­ble envi­ron­ment and nor­mal expe­ri­ences that young peo­ple need as they grow up.
• Some fos­ter par­ents are relat­ed to the chil­dren in their care: they might be grand­par­ents or oth­er kin who step up to fill a fam­i­ly need. (About 140,000 kids in fos­ter care were liv­ing with a fam­i­ly mem­ber in 2016, and that num­ber has been increas­ing since 2009.) Oth­er fos­ter par­ents are not rel­a­tives: near­ly 200,000 chil­dren were in the tem­po­rary care of non-rel­a­tive fos­ter par­ents. Whether they tem­porar­i­ly live with oth­er rel­a­tives or fos­ter par­ents, more than half of kids in fos­ter care are even­tu­al­ly reunit­ed with their parents.
• Grow­ing and sus­tain­ing a net­work of lov­ing fos­ter par­ents is a per­pet­u­al con­cern. Fos­ter par­ent­ing can be chal­leng­ing, and fos­ter par­ents deserve sup­port so they can care for kids in some of the most dif­fi­cult times.

Doing right by fos­ter parents

• It is impor­tant for state and local agen­cies to pro­vide both robust train­ing before some­one becomes a fos­ter par­ent as well as ongo­ing tar­get­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties beyond the ini­tial expe­ri­ence. Fos­ter par­ents are bet­ter posi­tioned to suc­ceed when there are staff spe­cial­iz­ing in parental sup­port and when fos­ter par­ents can access a net­work of peers for prac­ti­cal advice and emo­tion­al encouragement.
• Pol­i­cy­mak­ers should ensure that agen­cies have a man­date to nur­ture strong rela­tion­ships with fos­ter par­ents. That can hap­pen by includ­ing fos­ter par­ents in key process­es, pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient resources, respect­ing their deci­sion mak­ing about the chil­dren in their care and demon­strat­ing that they are val­ued and appreciated.
• We depend on agen­cies to be inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative in their efforts to iden­ti­fy new fos­ter par­ents and to make the process of becom­ing a fos­ter par­ent more effi­cient. For exam­ple, they can estab­lish part­ner­ships with faith com­mu­ni­ties and use new tech­nolo­gies to match chil­dren and fos­ter par­ents. Law­mak­ers and agency heads can make licens­ing stan­dards and process­es flex­i­ble where pos­si­ble, from using mobile fin­ger­print­ing sys­tems to mak­ing train­ing pro­grams con­ve­nient for poten­tial fos­ter par­ents who work.

These are a few ways that our sys­tems can sup­port fos­ter par­ents and, in turn, pro­mote high-qual­i­ty care. There are also things we can all do. From city coun­cils and school boards that rec­og­nize these fam­i­lies to busi­ness own­ers who offer fos­ter par­ents dis­counts to neigh­bors who lend a help­ing hand — com­mu­ni­ties can cel­e­brate fos­ter fam­i­lies through­out the year.

With­out ques­tion, though, Amer­i­ca needs some­thing extra­or­di­nary from more ordi­nary peo­ple. If you have con­sid­ered becom­ing a fos­ter par­ent, I urge you to look into it fur­ther. There’s no bet­ter time to do so than this moment, as we rec­og­nize the tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly fos­ter par­ents for every­thing they do. The dif­fer­ence you can make in the life of a child will be beyond measure.