Umm, I have a few questions 🤓

We asked our team the most common questions they get asked by people enquiring about fostering. Laura and Nikki, two of our Customer Success Managers, are both professionals AND have been or are foster carers and they are amazing. They talked with me about what people ask most and some of the misconceptions about fostering.

Laura shared how people are asking her about the basic every day things, like can kids in foster care go to daycare? Do I take them to the doctors? Do I get any reimbursement for expenses like school shoes, medication, socks and undies? What support can I expect? Nikki shared how almost everyone she talks to asks about family contact - will I have contact with the birth parents? How often will family contact take place? Why do children return to their families and when? She also gets asked what does ‘long and short term’ care actually mean?

These are all fantastic questions and the questions we are here to answer. Some of the answers are straight forward, like ‘Do I take foster children to the doctors?’ yes, if they’re sick.

If they need their check-ups, yes. If they need immunisations, yes (but you will need permission from the guardian, who could be the parent or the Department or agency, whomever holds that legal responsibility for your specific child). But others aren’t as straight forward.

‘Do children in foster care go to daycare?’ Yes, however, you have to consider whether putting a child, with a disrupted attachment (likely when they’ve not had a stable, secure, reliable and safe adult supporting them and meeting their needs) is what is best for them when they first enter your care. Most advocate for children to only be in day care for social development purposes, or to maintain connections if they are already in day care, rather than as a full time care alternative, at least in the early days. Every child is different, every carer is different, so there is not blanket right or wrong here. But for the most part, if you can spend the first few months of a placement allowing that child to settle in with you, learn about the rituals, routines and rules in your home, while you learn about them and what they need, that will help them to stabilise and start to develop a sense of safety - something that is absent for every child entering the care system when removed from all the know. Child care centres can be great and offer lovely experiences of growth, learning and fun; however their every changing staff/shifts means different adults with different rules, different tones of voice, different ways of doing things, different ways of responding to behaviours, means a child will likely become more stressed, not less. So if you can, in the early days of placement limit the number or length of day care days, in most cases that would be the preference.

‘Do I get any reimbursement for expenses?’ Yes. The state (and every state/territory is different in how they calculate amounts) pays a reimbursement to carers for every day living costs. So this includes school items, shoes and clothes, toiletries, sporting goods, toys, games, medications, bed linen, etc. There is usually a ‘set up’ fee paid for new placements, which allows some of those bigger costs like bedding and furniture to be funded. It can cover some costs relating to increased electricity & water bills, food etc, but remember, its not going to cover everything! If you want to deck your foster child out in Nike and Adidas gear, go for it. But you wont be reimbursed for all of it, it’s a set amount that is paid on a regularly fortnightly basis. We’re going to be honest – it wont cover it all. It just doesn’t.

Raising a child, any child, is expensive. They grow fast, they eat lots (or very little and are super picky), they change their minds relating to their hobbies, they break things. They’re kids! And kids with trauma can come with added costs - more fuel to drive to and from family contact sessions. More activities and resources to support their therapeutic needs. More specialty appointments like Occupational Therapists and Speech Therapists…and while some of these are paid for by the guardian/department, sometimes carers do not want to wait on the long waiting lists and find local services more appropriate, so choose to fund these themselves - just as they would their own child.

‘What support can I expect?’ this is a GREAT question and its something everyone should ask of their fostering agency before signing on with them. Some agencies offer youth work support, some offer respite foster carers, some offer training (in person and online), some offer carer support groups and social days. All agencies offer in-home visiting by a social worker or similar, who regularly comes to meet with the carer, find out how things are going, talk through worries or challenges, and celebrate those ‘wins’ when they come - like child learning to write their own name for the first time. Or learn to use the potty. Or make a new friend. Or even just tidy their room without being asked. While these professional supports are amazing and definitely needed, the best carers we know are the ones that have a great informal support network already. They have friends, sisters, parents, who are all willing and eager to be part of a foster child’s life. When the carer needs a night out with friends, it’s the carer’s sister who babysits - just like an aunt would do for a niece or nephew. When the carer needs to pop to the grocery store and doesn’t want to take tired/sick/hungry kids, their adult child stays and watches the kids so the carer can get it done just that little faster.

When the carer has an emergency – a loved one interstate is sick for example – their best friend and known safe person to the foster child stays with them overnight so the carer can go without worrying about permissions for taking a child interstate with limited notice. Your informal support network will be your absolute saving grace, so its best to ensure they’re on board now and excited to support you to become a carer too.

‘Will I have contact with the birth parents?’ In most cases, yes. After all, if your child was staying with someone else, you’d want to touch base and make sure they were ok too. For the most part, birth parents will work in partnership with carers really well. You are after all looking after their most precious things – their children. So foster carers work hard to build connection, texting Mum to confirm she’s on for a play at the park, texting Dad photos of how well his little one did at soccer today. Keeping parents informed and feeling involved helps both the relationship between the carer and parent, but critically helps the parent know what’s going on with their child, so that when they have their child back with them, they can continue to meet their needs in a similar way. There are of course occasions where there is none or limited family contact; but you can talk with your agency about the family contact situation of a child before they are placed with you. Contact isn’t just for the parents; its for the children too. No matter what has happened, no matter the abuse, no matter the harm, children will almost always want to know and see their parents. So supporting safe contact is a critical part of the role of a carer, and it’s the professionals’ jobs to help carers learn how to do that.

‘Why, how and when do children return home?’ The aim of foster care is not to keep children from their families; its to allow families the time needed to address the concerns or worries that led to their child being removed, and support the child to safely return home. That’s almost always the aim in each case. So contact plays a big role in supporting children to return home. Contact is usually very regular and frequent if the child is very young and on a reunification/restoration plan. It could be daily for a newborn, or three times a week for a baby, maybe weekly or twice-weekly for an older child (to fit in with school, and normally for a longer period). If the plan is to see the child return home then you’ll see a steady increase in family contact as it progresses and goes well.

For example, if a newborn has been removed shortly after birth due to worries about their wellbeing, family contact may be three times a week, 1 hour each day, supervised by a worker. Then this might increase to two hours per session, then might involve a half day a week, moving to unsupervised if deemed safe to do so. Then it may involve a few full days before it increases to an overnight visit. When these overnights are going well, it will extend to the point of the child being more with their birth parents than with the carer, until the reunification/restoration process is completed.

Naturally as you can see in this example, the carer would have to work very closely with the parents, helping them know when it's bottle time, what formula bub is on, any care needs they might have, how they like to be wrapped, what toys are soothing etc. Sharing this information is critical for the success of the process - for the birth parents but also for the baby! If you are thinking about becoming a carer and worried about family contact and issues of reunification, its important to remember - children are best off with family whenever that is safe and possible. Children who enter the care system and stay in it are statistically worse off than children who aren’t (for lots of reasons) so we try wherever we can to help families stay together. Sometimes it may be with kin (an aunt, uncle, grandparent etc), but family all the same. Reunification is almost always the aim – and its truly incredible when it happens!

‘What does ‘long and short term’ care actually mean’? Basically this is about what type of child protection order the child is on. So if a child is on a ‘long-term’ order, this usually means they will be in the care of the state until they are 18. Some ‘long-term’ orders can be guardianship orders, which means they will be in the care of one person (a foster carer or relative) until 18, offering greater permanency for the child. Short-term orders are usually for 12-24 months, depending on the state/territory, and this is usually the case when reunification or restoration is the plan. That short-term order allows time for a parent to make the necessary changes to allow their child to return home. So if you are providing ‘short term’ foster care, it come be for up to 24 months, but also it could be for as short as a few months.

Fostering and caring for children in Out-Of-Home-Care isn’t linear. It isn’t a black and white, one-size-fits all model. It's hard to say in advance exactly how much contact will occur with birth family, exactly how much it will cost to care for a child, exactly how much day care will be best for them. It comes down to the individual child and their needs, and your needs too as a carer. What’s best is to know a rough estimate of what you can and can’t do (ie “I work full time, so I know I’ll need a child to be of school age and be able to attend after school care 2-3 days a week”) then when working with a fostering agency, be clear on what you can deliver (ie “I can’t drive 15kms each way to drop a child at school because it’s the opposite direction of my work”) so the workers can match you as closely as possible to the ‘right’ placement for you. Its not a magic wand; we can’t always accommodate every request, but if you know what you can and can’t do, that will help!

And don’t forget, the Tribe Project is here to help! If you have any other questions, reach out and ask. We’re only too happy to share our knowledge and experience to help make this journey a little bit easier for you all.