A publication dedicated to making foster care and adoption in North Carolina the best they can be
by Rick Zechman • Whether it’s removing a child from their home or moving a child from one foster care placement to another, ideally children, parents, social workers, and resource parents would have the ability to plan for the move. Though the move will likely still be traumatic, planning lessens children’s fear and provides them some control, increasing their resiliency.
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Foster care placements are temporary—they are meant to end. This is made abundantly clear in recruiting materials and in foster parent pre-service training. In court and in ongoing meetings there are frequent reminders of this fact. Nevertheless, the ending of a placement can be particularly hard for the children and resource family. Fortunately, there are things child welfare professionals can
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by Donna Foster • News flash! After 17 years as a foster parent and 37 years as a trainer in foster care and adoption, I finally realized what the focus should be for foster parents: transitions! So Many Opportunities for Loss Think for a moment about the transitions a child in foster care goes through. The child is taken from
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I heard something about a new program called KinGAP. What is it? KinGAP is the name of North Carolina’s Kinship Care and Guardianship Assistance Program. KinGAP is considered when a child or youth’s best interests are to stay connected to their birth parents and extended family and permanency is unable to be achieved another way. KinGAP is a payment program
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Hello foster, adoptive, and kindship families. How can we help you? In October, Foster Family Alliance of North Carolina (FFA-NC) established 1-800-578-7770, a toll-free number for families or anybody with questions regarding becoming a resource family. So far we have had families call our 800 number regarding: the challenges of getting licensed because of water on or near their property,
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What a great question—the early years are critical! Experiences during early childhood shape the structure of the brain in important ways. This means that while children are in your care, you have many golden opportunities to maximize their learning and development. Resources But your success will depend at least in part on how well you make use of the outside
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by John McMahon • Trauma is a common experience for American children. According to one study, by age 16, two-thirds of children in the U.S. have experienced a traumatic event (Copeland, et al., 2007). This is a challenge for schools, because trauma and traumatic stress reactions can disrupt learning not only for the child who experiences the event, but also
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by Bob DeMarco • There are several organizations out there that have published materials my family have found useful in working with schools. I’d like to share some of them with you. If you need assistance navigating the waters of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), the Exceptional Children’s Assistance Center (ECAC) is an excellent resource. They offer many training oppportunities,
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by Claudia Kearney • We all remember the moment that special extracurricular activity caught our attention. The moment we knew we wanted to do it forever. That we would do it for free. Even if we did not start out loving this extracurricular, it became our first love. Maybe it was that piano lesson the adult in your life made
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I was tired. This would be my fourth high school in four years. I’d already moved twice the previous year, which meant having to go to two different schools during my junior year. The principal didn’t make it easy. She looked over my transcripts, and decided that I should be placed in the 11th grade again. My heart sank as
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