Chances are, if you’ve made it to this post, you are a friend or family member to a foster parent/family and you want to help but aren’t sure how. Not everyone is called to become a foster parent, but anyone can wrap around a family to support, help, and encourage them. While each family and situation is unique I hope to provide some tangible ideas for how you can provide a helping hand. Foster Parents have taken on a huge responsibility in choosing to do this and can often struggle to ask for help. As a general rule of thumb, offer to help with specific things or ask how you can help, but don’t expect these requests out of the blue.
One Time:
Assemble/Provide Welcome Baskets:
Children often come with very little to
nothing and a basket with comfort items and necessities can help get them settled.
Deliver a Meal:
The first few weeks of a placement are incredibly chaotic with scheduling and going to appointments, purchasing necessities,
and allowing time to adjust. Meals during this time or later when you know a family has been under a lot of stress are a welcome blessing.
School Supplies/Backpack:
Reach out to your foster parent friends and see what school supplies they may need and put together a backpack for their child. School supplies can add up and be another stress to get together during the early days of a placement.
Gift a membership or day passes:
Gifting memberships or day passes to local attractions can be a great way to encourage and support foster parents in developing connections and building relationships with their kids. Children’s Museums, Zoo’s, Aquariums, etc. are great places to start!
Donate clothes/toys:
Many children that come into a foster home have little to nothing. Donating your age-appropriate, gently used clothes and toys, especially early on in a placement can meet an immediate need.
Occasional:
Pick Up Groceries/Necessities:
Life gets hectic and trying to fit in the time between regular appointments and then unexpected appointments to get to the grocery store. Also, when a placement does come offering to pick up frozen meals/underwear/PJs/and hygiene products can help in the first day or two.
Be the “hands and feet” for a family:
Sometimes, when you get to the end of the day, or even a week, foster parents look around their homes and realize all the chores that have been left undone. Having a friend offer to take laundry home to wash and dry, come clean bathrooms, etc can be a welcome relief.
Provide Transportation:
The appointments for foster families are endless and contribute to a significant amount of driving. Picking even one appointment a week/bi-weekly/month can lighten the load and help your foster family have some breathing room. If you want to make this a regular occurrence, take to the family about getting background checked!
Babysit:
Foster Parents are like any other parent who also need a break! Whatever you have the capacity for we welcome the offer. In many states, as long is it is not a regular occurrence, people foster parents personally trust can babysit their kids.
Regular:
Mentor a Child
Children need safe, loving, caring adults in their lives in addition to their parents and guardians. Becoming a mentor to a child allows them to be exposed to new experiences, broadens what they think is possible, and can flame their interests.
Tutor
School can be a challenging place for foster kids. There is much adjusting that takes place and children can come in behind or struggling to understand material. A little additional help, especially with subject parents are not strong in can be a welcome help.
Get background-checked/Backup Caregiver
There is much you can do without having to have a background check done. If you have a desire to be more regularly involved in the life of a foster child/family, submitting to a background check and fingerprinting is a huge asset. Should the foster family have an emergency, need a break, require regular transportation from you, or you provide a set time away you will be approved to do so.
Additional Ways To Support:
Get Informed about Foster Care/Trauma/Etc
Your foster family friends have gone through hours of training and preparation to get to the place they are. Often, they, the purpose of the system, or the kids they serve can be severely misunderstood. One way you can love the foster care community is by learning more about it. (Check out the Recommended Reading if you’d like a great place to start.)
Check-In and Listen non-judgmentally
The world of foster care is unique and often isolating and lonely. Having friends who are willing to text or call to just see how they are doing can make the difference between feeling like you’re not going to make it and feeling like you have the resources to do what you need to. One of the most important aspects of this point though, is that when you listen, do so compassionately and without judgement. You may not understand what your friend my share, and that’s ok! I have found more often than not, I don’t need the answers to my problems, frustrations, or heartaches, but rather just someone to sit in them with me. Acknowledge and validate the griefs that are shared with you. Be careful not to assume that you know what these families are feeling. They experience many intense, complex emotions often simultaneously that are not easy to categorize.
Pray
Foster parents tend to be keenly aware of their own inability, limitations, frailty, and failures. They are confronted with it daily. To be covered, as by cover fire in battle, to be able to move forward is vital.
For children, you can pray:
1) That God would heal their hurts.
2) That they would experience a sense of belonging.
3) That they would know they are loved by God.
For foster parents, you can pray:
1) For endurance and strength
2) For peace and understanding in every relationship: children, biological families, and agency workers.
3) That more families/individuals would step up to meet the tremendous need for foster parents.
4) That foster parents would trust to God the unknown futures of all of the children in their care.