By Tonia Deese
As resource parents, the work you do to support children and youth in care is incredibly important: You stand in the gap when parents are unable to provide care for their children, you provide a safe and nurturing environment, and you ensure their medical, mental health, and educational needs are met. One of the most important things you do is support children and youth as they recover from trauma. As you all know, the rates of trauma for children and youth in care are incredibly high:
- 90% have experienced at least one type of trauma,
- 70.4% have experienced two types, and
- Nearly half have experienced four or more traumatic events.
(Fratto, 2016; Storey and Roschanda, 2022)
Unfortunately, the impact of these traumas are often “accumulative and chronic” over the lifespan, impacting children and youth cognition, learning, memory, and behavior (Papovich, 2019).
The nurturing, structure, and consistency you provide in your home provides psychological safety, helps to rebuild a secure attachment, and helps children regulate their emotions—all are key to recovering from trauma.
At the same time, the work you do can take a toll on your own mental health and well-being. As resource parents, you have a higher risk of experiencing primary trauma, secondary trauma, and burnout. As a result, the yearly turnover rate of foster parents is 30 to 50%. The purpose of this article is to provide practical strategies for maintaining your well-being and longevity as a resource parent.
The first step to self-care is taking inventory of how you are doing. The box below outlines warning signs that we aren’t as “okay” as we think we are.
| Cognitive | Physical | Emotional | Behavioral |
| Difficulty with concentration, focus, or completing tasks | Chest tightness | Feeling nervous or on edge; anxiety | Significant change in eating patterns |
| Forgetfulness | Shortness of breath | Depressed mood or crying easily | Substance use |
| Racing, intrusive thoughts or excessive worry | Nausea, constipation, or diarrhea | Irritability; impatience | Biting nails or grinding teeth |
| Difficulty with judgement, critical thinking, or decision-making skills | Significant change in sleep patterns | Difficulty coping with typical life stressors | Pacing back and forth |
| Negative outlook on life | Muscle tension/aches, headaches, or more frequent illnesses | Feeling numb; avoidance of emotions | Procrastination, tardiness |
(Segal, Smith, Robinson, 2025)
If you are experiencing several of these indicators, it is your body’s way of telling you to slow down and practice self-care to protect your mental health and well-being. There are several categories of self-care activities recommended below: primary strategies, secondary strategies, and trauma-informed practices.
Primary Strategies are those that we all need to utilize on a regular basis. These are foundational to our mental health.
- Pay attention to basic physical needs such as: Getting adequate sleep (at least 6 hours per day), drinking water, and eating healthy meals (comfort meals high in sugar, carbohydrates and caffeine can have a negative effect on your mood)
- Get active by exercising, taking the stairs, or parking farther away from your office. Gentle movement reduces inflammation in the body, helps us release stress, and provides “feel good” neurochemicals (dopamine, serotonin, etc.) which improve our mood.
- Create and protect “down time.” Busyness is detrimental to our mental health. Our mind and our bodies need time to recover from the stressors of each day. If your schedule is packed and you don’t have time for an hour a day to relax, try microbreaks (small breaks of 90 seconds to 5 minutes) instead. Several microbreaks throughout the day greatly increases our ability to bounce back from stress.
Mental Health Strategies are those that create and maintain our resilience, or ability to navigate life’s challenges well.
- Utilize your support network, which can include formal and informal resources that can provide concrete help or emotional support in times of need.
- Utilize services that are available to you as resource parents, such as agency support groups, counseling, and respite. These tools provide a powerful buffer from the effects of trauma, help you cope with stress, and increase your effectiveness and longevity as a resource parent.
- Protect time for the things that are important to you, to ensure balance in your life.
- Engage in your interests and hobbies. When we do things we enjoy when we are stressed, we turn hobbies and interests into highly effective coping mechanisms.
- Practice self-compassion. If you are your worst critic, or if you constantly wonder if you have done enough to help a child, it is important to give yourself grace. Being a resource parent is tough, and you are doing the best that you can.
- Set boundaries. Boundaries honor and protect your bandwidth, or physical and emotional capacity to do things. Be honest with yourself about your limits. Listen to your body and your heart when they tell you they need a break. As you set these boundaries, know that you may experience false guilt as you do so (i.e. you may feel guilty but haven’t done anything wrong).
Be intentional about considering whether you have the capacity to take on another placement if you are grieving a loss or have experienced a major traumatic event in the last few months.
Trauma Informed Strategies are those strategies that are needed after a major event occurs (placement disruption, death of a child, physical assault, etc.).
- Debrief, or verbally process the details of what occurred with someone you trust (another resource parent, placement agency, etc.).
- Traumatic stress, or the physical and emotions reactions to a traumatic event, can cause a host of symptoms in your life (release of adrenaline and cortisol, hypervigilance, nightmares, flashbacks, hypoarousal, etc.). Engage in somatic, or body-based practices, to help the mind and body recover. Here are a few to consider:
- Deep breathing: inhale deeply through your nose, exhale slowly through your mouth. Your exhale should be slightly longer than your inhale. Aim for at least 90 seconds of deep breathing as a powerful relaxation tool.
- Grounding: this strategy shifts the mind from something overwhelming or overstimulating by hyper focusing on something in the present. One of the most popular grounding strategies utilizes the five senses by paying attention to subtle things you can see, hear, taste, touch and smell around you.
- Gentle movement and stretching are key to releasing muscle tension in the body (walking, elliptical, swimming, stretching, Pilates, etc.). Do these a few times a week.
- Walk and Talk: take a 15-to-20-minute walk with a friend, talk about what is troubling you, and drink water during or after your walk. This strategy helps to move stress from the body while processing difficult emotions.
- Body Scan or Muscle Relaxation: our bodies tense up when under stress—especially when we have traumatic stress. Get alone, in a quiet area, and scan your body from head to toe. If you notice tightness in any area of your body, gently squeeze these muscles, hold them tightly for 5 to 10 seconds, then relax them, one muscle group at a time. Common “hot spots” that we hold stress in are our face, jaw, neck, shoulders, upper and lower back.
Remember, self-care is necessary to ensuring we have the capacity to do hard things well. We challenge you to take a few moments, on a regular basis, to care for you. Your mental health and well-being are important too!
Tonia Deese is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the owner of Full Circle Wellness, PLLC, a mental health practice in Charlotte, NC.
