Birth Parent Relationships: 5 Tips for Foster Carers

Being a foster carer puts you in a position to help shape the minds of children in care, and that means providing stability, creating vital opportunities and showing love. However, you need to have an awareness that all foster children will be moved on eventually—hopefully into their birth parents’ custody. With this in mind, it’s essential to maintain positive relationships with birth parents and allow opportunities for contact, where suitable. 

Turn to Your Caseworker

Being a foster carer, providing high levels of care for children will come naturally, but that won’t prepare you for navigating relationships with birth parents. Fortunately, each child will be assigned a caseworker from your agency, and they’ll be on hand to offer support. As well as this, you can visit fosteringpeople.co.uk, which is full of useful insights including available support, allowances, and training. 

Open and Kind Communication

Everyone has a different background, and it’s important to remember this when communicating with birth parents. Avoid coming off as too formal to avoid potentially alienating anyone, as this will put a strain on the relationship before getting started. Instead, every time you begin communication with birth parents, ask how their lives are and see if they have information to share. If all adult parties in a foster child’s life can work together in harmony, they will likely experience much less turmoil.  

Make Contact Part of a Routine

We’ve already spoken about the need for stability in a foster child’s life, and part of this comes from having a routine. Once you’re in a position to do so, part of this routine should involve contact with their birth parents. Keeping contact on schedule helps to set boundaries between yourself and the birth parents, which is also important. 

Attend All Meetings

Providing support and nurturing children in care is what foster care largely entails, but you’ll also need to attend meetings with your agency. In particular, you will meet with biological parents and case workers, and it’s essential to attend all of them because they present the perfect opportunity to begin building a positive rapport. 

Share Contact Details 

To facilitate communication, it’s a good idea to give contact details to the birth parents. However, to avoid this line of contact running into your personal life, consider having a mobile dedicated to working. 

We mentioned previously that boundaries will be set between yourself and the birth parents, and the same needs to happen with mobile communication. Instead of allowing the freedom to text and call whenever they like, you can provide them with appropriate time frames.

The primary goal of being a foster carer is to make a positive and lasting impact on children in care’s lives, while the necessary steps are made to build bridges with birth parents. You will play an enormous role in this, and you need to learn how to communicate properly with birth parents. Luckily, you will have the backing of an entire foster agency, and a dedicated support worker to help steer you in the right direction.