By Delores “Dee” Hunt
After more than thirty years in child welfare, I know this: most families don’t come to our attention because they stopped loving their children, but because life hit them hard—poverty, addiction, violence, mental illness, isolation—and the support they needed wasn’t there. By the time a child enters care, much has already happened across generations and within systems that responded too late.
Foster care cannot only be paperwork, placements, and timelines. It must start with truth and tenderness. Children and families have often endured trauma that disrupts sleep, learning, trust, and leaves parents carrying grief, shame, and fear. Safety is essential, but not enough—foster care must also be about healing.
Healing is not a service or checklist; healing is a relationship. It begins the moment a child enters care. Children do not arrive as blank slates—they bring losses, fears, and survival strategies that once kept them safe. Our job is to meet those stories with steadiness, compassion, and a plan for healing from day one, not “once things calm down.”
This is my invitation to all of us—resource parents, birth families, workers, and community partners—to see foster care as a shared calling and to say, together: “You are not alone. We will walk this road with you.”
Trauma is real—and we can answer with safety
Trauma may be a single crisis or a long chain of hurts—violence, neglect, substance use, mental illness, instability, hunger, racism, repeated loss—and many children enter care already carrying more than any child should. It touches everyone in the circle: children, parents, caregivers, relatives, and workers. A trauma-informed approach doesn’t lower accountability, but shifts our question from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you—and what do you need to heal?” Starting with emotional safety, a calm tone, clear expectations, and steady responses that say, “You are safe with me.”
What we can do:
- Listen more than we talk.
- Use words and body language that calm, not inflame.
- See behavior as communication: “I’m scared. I’m overwhelmed. Can I trust you?”
Well-being is more than appointments
Children in foster care need timely medical, dental, developmental, and behavioral health care. But well-being is more than a full calendar.
Well-being means:
- Safety – I’m protected physically and emotionally.
- Stability – My routines and relationships are predictable.
- Connection – I belong to people, community, and culture.
- Voice – I am heard and included.
- Hope – My future is not defined by my worst days.
A child can attend every appointment and still feel unsafe inside. Healing-centered care recognizes how trauma lives in the body and mind—and how safe, steady relationships help calm the nervous system. When a child melts down or shuts down, the goal is not to “win.” The goal is to guide them back to safety and dignity.
What we can do:
- Build simple routines—morning, after school, bedtime—that children can count on.
- Offer age-appropriate choices so they feel heard and respected.
For a child whose world has felt out of control, routine and voice are powerful medicine.
Resource parents: healers in plain sight
Resource parents do something remarkable. You open your home to a child who is often frightened and grieving. You rearrange your routines, your space, and your heart. You provide shelter, but you also provide something just as important: someone who stays.
You are not “just” caregivers. You are partners in healing.
Healing does not always look like gratitude. Sometimes it looks like testing every limit, pushing you away, lying, hoarding food, refusing to sleep, or trying to control anything they can. These behaviors are not proof that you’ve failed; they are the language of survival—a child’s way of asking, “Are you really safe? Will you really stay?”
What you can do:
- Keep your home anchored in calm, consistent routines.
- Hold firm, loving boundaries without shaming.
- After hard moments, practice repair: “I was upset, but I’m still here. We’re okay. Let’s try again.”
It’s not perfection that heals; it’s repair. Repair teaches a child that relationships can bend without breaking.
One healing team: families, workers, community
Children come from families—and most children love those families, even when harm has occurred. They can miss their parents and still need protection. They can feel both anger and loyalty. Foster care should never be a competition between caregivers and parents. Children do best when adults refuse “sides” and commit to a shared purpose: the child’s healing and the family’s path to stability.
What we can do:
- Speak respectfully about parents and relatives in front of children.
- Prepare children for visits and give them space to process afterward.
- When it’s safe, share milestones—photos, report cards, small victories—to keep parents connected.
- Encourage birth parents to say, “I love you. I’m working my plan. You don’t have to choose between me and your caregiver.”
We must also care for social workers and frontline staff, who carry heavy stories and make hard decisions every day.
What leaders and communities can do:
- Advocate for manageable caseloads and strong, supportive supervision.
- Address secondary traumatic stress openly and offer mental health support.
- Recognize and celebrate good practice, not just point out problems.
When we care for the adults—parents, caregivers, workers—we make it more possible for children to heal.
Dignity and leadership: choosing healing on purpose
Systems can unintentionally re-traumatize. A cold lobby, a rushed meeting, a harsh tone in court—these moments can deepen shame instead of building hope. We must own that truth and choose differently.
As systems and leaders, we can explain the “why” in plain, respectful language, coordinate services to reduce pressure, treat kinship caregivers as essential partners, and create spaces where resource parents, parents, and staff can ask questions without fear.
As a director, I remind myself: Culture is not what we write in a mission statement. Culture is what people feel on their hardest day. My job is to set a healing tone from the top—insisting that healing begins when a child enters care, backing resource parents with real support, caring for my workforce, centering dignity in every policy, and staying close enough to the work that people know they are not alone.
To the youth: Nothing about your story is weird. If you have learned not to trust, it makes sense. If you have big feelings, it makes sense. To birth families: you are more than your worst moment, and change is possible. To resource parents: Thank you for saying yes when you did not have to.To our social workers and staff: I see the weight you carry, and you deserve support equal to that weight.
Health and well-being in foster care are built day by day—through safe relationships, steady routines, shared responsibility, and a community that chooses compassion and accountability at the same time. When we center healing from the moment a child enters care, we do more than improve outcomes. We build resilience. We restore hope. We strengthen families. And, in a thousand quiet ways, we remind children that they matter, they are seen, and they were never meant to walk this road alone. Let the healing begin and let it begin with me.
Delores “Dee” Hunt is the DSS Director in Rutherford County
