May is National Foster Care Month. And it’s a great idea for Foster Parents to plan a party with Birth (Biological) Parents of the foster child. This can work wonders for foster kids where reunification is a possibility. Reunification is a core goal of the 2022 National Foster Care Month.
Category Archives: Motivation
Why Foster Parent Training ?
The foster parent recruitment process involves compulsory foster parent training. It is after training that a foster parent becomes a licensed foster parent in a US state. This is an important professional credential for us at StartFosterCare.org. As social work/foster care professionals always explain at StartFosterCare meetings, there are different levels of needs of foster kids. These levels of need included, levels of therapeutic or treatment care. Different levels of Foster Parenting can require different kinds of training.
According to academic research and our experience here is why Foster Parent training is so important:
Foster to Adopt: Start with Love
If you are thinking of becoming a foster parent with the intention of adopting the foster child. We have three words for you this holiday season: Start with Love.
What Motivates Foster Parents?
Foster parents are kind and caring people. It takes a good heart to step up and care for a child unrelated to you (foster care) or even related to you (kinship foster care). We found a great piece of research on what motivates foster parents by Tracy E. MacGregor, Susan Rodger, Anne L. Cummings, and Alan W. Leschied. titled “The needs of foster parents: A qualitative study of motivation, support, and retention.” in the journal Qualitative social work Vol. 5, no. 3 (2006): pages 351-368.
Here is a summary of intrinsic and extrinsic and motivators based on research in the US and elsewhere the authors identified: