As you continue on your journey as a compassionate caregiver, there will be moments of doubt or questions that come up as you continue to engage with a child’s family. Here’s a list of family engagement resources that can help you through those moments.
Partnering With Birth Parents to Promote Reunification
This fact sheet from the Children’s Bureau provides information for foster caregivers on how to partner with parents to promote reunification. Learn how to build connections from the start, keep an open mind and open heart, and maintain contact after reunification with this resource.
How Adoptive Parents and Birth Parents Can Bond
In this blog post from the Texas Adoption Center, foster caregivers can learn tips for how to create a relationship with parents and children and tackle challenges that arise.
Reunification: How Foster Parents and Birth Parents Can Work Together
This blog post features stories from two foster caregivers on how they built successful parenting partnerships with parents, as well as tips for foster caregivers on how to develop these relationships and promote family reunification.
Birth and Foster Parent Partnership: A Relationship Building Guide
This guide from the Children’s Trust Alliance provides practical tips for creating and sustaining relationships between families, foster caregivers, and kinship caregivers. The guide covers four relationship-building topics: building the relationship, supporting the relationship, keeping the relationship strong while working with the system and planning for reunification, and keeping the relationship strong after the family leaves the child welfare system. The guide also provides recommended readings and other resources.
Co-Parenting or Shared Parenting
In this blog post, a foster and adoptive caregiver and founder of an adoptive caregiver support network in Pennsylvania shares the benefits of shared parenting and ways to avoid common challenges that arise during co-parenting between parents and foster caregivers.
4 Amazing Ways Foster Parents Encourage Reunification
This blog post from the North American Council on Adoptable Children offers four concrete steps foster caregivers can take to develop relationships with parents while prioritizing reunification.
Tip Sheet for Supporting Family Reunification
In this resource from the American Bar Association, find family reunification tips shared by foster caregivers who supported reunification.
Working With Birth Parents in Foster Care
This resource compilation for foster caregivers offers several articles and podcasts with experts on taking steps to reunification and practicing shared parenting.
Ten Tips for Supporting Relationships with Birth Parents in Foster Care
In this resource, find 10 practical tips for creating relationships with parents—from attending meetings and sharing resources to sending regular updates and encouraging communication.
Interacting with Birth Families (Foster Care)
This blog post from Ohio’s Foster, Adoption and Kinship Care website provides methods of relating to parents and practicing empathy while working toward reunification.
5 Ways You Can Partner with a Birth Parent Whose Children are in Foster Care
This blog post offers tips for partnering with parents.
3 Simple Ways to Build a Positive Relationship with Your Foster Child’s Birth Parents
This blog post offers tips for building a relationship with parents.
Tips for Working With Biological Parents
This tip sheet helps foster caregivers understand the stages of grief and loss that children and parents experience during the removal process, and tips for working with parents during each stage.
How Can I Create a Positive Relationship with My Foster Child’s Family?
This blog post from a foster caregiver provides first-hand tips on having a positive and encouraging relationship with parents.
7 Tips for Nurturing Family Relationships in Foster Care
This blog post from a counselor and foster and adoptive caregiver provides an introduction to facilitating healthy relationships with children and parents.
5 Ways to Build a Strong Relationship with Your Foster Child’s Parents
This blog post from an adoptive caregiver offers ideas for building a strong relationship with parents.
Working With Biological Parents And Families
In this blog post, a trained family counselor and a foster caregiver engage in a dialogue about how to work with parents.
Minnesota Works For Quality Parenting in Foster Families
This article from Imprint News explores the Quality Parenting Initiative, a program working to create a culture change and build communication between parents and foster caregivers to support excellent parenting for children in foster care.
