Resources for Holding Icebreaker Meetings Between Birth and Foster Parents

Build­ing work­ing rela­tion­ships between birth par­ents, fos­ter par­ents, and case­work­ers can be extreme­ly impor­tant for fos­ter chil­dren, and using Ice­break­er Meet­ings can be an effec­tive mech­a­nism for doing that. How­ev­er, to be suc­cess­ful, an agency seek­ing to intro­duce Ice­break­ers must under­stand how the prac­tice works. This pub­li­ca­tion is designed to:

• Give agen­cies an overview of Ice­break­er meetings;
• Describe a work group process for plan­ning and imple­ment­ing Ice­break­er meetings;
• Iden­ti­fy com­mon bar­ri­ers and road­blocks to suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of Ice­break­er meetings;
• Iden­ti­fy imple­men­ta­tion steps that are often over­looked or missed;
• Share suc­cess­es and exam­ples of agen­cies using Ice­break­er meetings;
• Share sam­ples of Ice­break­er doc­u­ments and mate­ri­als devel­oped by agen­cies from across the coun­try; and
• Pro­vide a self-assess­ment tool to guide your plan­ning and implementation.

The Toolk­it

• Ice­break­er Meet­ings Guide
   
• Appen­dix 1: Ice­break­ers: Things to Con­sid­er Before or Dur­ing Imple­men­ta­tion (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 2: Sam­ple Grid of Roles and Respon­si­bil­i­ties (PDF)
   
• Appen­dix 3: (3 files): Infor­ma­tion forms for youth and parents: 
  • All About Me: Child (DOC)
  • All About Me: Teen (DOC)
  • All About My Child: Par­ent (DOC)
     
• Appen­dix 4: Sam­ple Meet­ing Sum­ma­ry Form (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 5: Sam­ple Meet­ing Eval­u­a­tion (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 6: Use of Birth Par­ents in Pre-Ser­vice Train­ing (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 7: Use of Youth in Pre-Ser­vice Train­ing (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 8: Sam­ple ​“Bridg­ing the Gap” hand­outs (DOC)
  • Hand­out for Fos­ter Par­ent and Social Work­er (DOC)
  • Hand­out for Birth Par­ent (DOC)
     
• Appen­dix 9: Sam­ple par­ent train­ing out­line (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 10: Ice­break­er Web Resources and Train­ing Mate­ri­als (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 11: Tips for Youth Par­tic­i­pat­ing in Ice­break­ers (DOC)
   
• Appen­dix 12: 10 Tips for Sup­port­ing Youth Dur­ing Ice­break­er Meetings 
  • For Social Work­ers (DOC)
  • For Resource Par­ents (DOC)
  • For Birth Par­ents (DOC)
     
• Appen­dix 13: Sam­ple Ice­break­er Meet­ing Brochure (PDF)

The Ice­break­er Train­ing Video

The Casey Foun­da­tion has pro­duced an 18 minute video to sup­port the use of ice­break­er meet­ings by child wel­fare agencies.

To order a DVD copy of the Ice­break­er Meet­ings video, con­tact Dion­isa San­ti­a­go.