Share your life with a foster child.
Members discovered the import and the process of doing just that during their regular meeting November 27th. Tracey Klobuchar, a social worker with PATH, a non-profit foster care agency founded in Minneapolis by foster parents, spoke of the PATH organization and its various programs. PATH in North Dakota (the Minnesota organization is called "Family Connect") contracts with counties primarily to provide Treatment Foster Care (TFC). The treatment part is what distinguishes it from county based foster care; the client children need to have a mental health diagnosis. Considering what the children have been through "depression" or "Post traumatic stress disorder" would not be unlikely.
Ms. Kolbuchar started with clearing up who could be a foster parent. Things such as married or single; apartment or home (apartments must have two bedrooms); children of your own or not are of no consequence. A number of options are available for foster parents; full time, family support or respite and there is the possibility of moving between options. Training is about twice as long as training for county based foster parents due to the treatment issues; for full time it is 30 hours at PATH (12 at county); 20 hours for family support and 12 for respite.
Tracy Klobuchar
Full time care is just what one would expect; 24/7 responsibility for the child just as if the child was one's own. That does not mean that either or both parents can not work and there is the option of having a respite foster parent take over briefly to give the parents a break. There is financial reimbursement; an assigned case worker who is not overburdened and 24 hour on call support.
The Family Support program comes out of the need to try, as much as is possible, to keep the child with his/her birth parent(s) or adoptive parent(s) and to try an keep the child from going to a higher level of care such as residential care or foster care. In Family Support, the child is typically in the custody of their parent(s). The Family Support parent is thus exactly what is implied by the name; some one trained that the child and/or parent(s) can lean on much as we all lean on our personal support of family and friends. Along with supporting and mentoring the youth's parents, the family support parent also provides relief care for the youth 4-6x/month.
In foster care, the child remains in the custody of the county until the court deems that they can be reunited with the birth parent(s) {typically this person(s) had a program and goals have been set for them to reach} or parental rights are terminated and the child is often adopted. Unlike old days children do not languish is these programs for years. It would be unlikely for a child to be in one of these programs for more than two years.