When the foster child returns home to their family

Brenda - posted on 09/20/2012

I have had a couple children come in to my home return to the parent. I supported it each time. I could see the parent was trying and did every thing told to them. I still am contected to one of them. ( half sibling) to another child I still have. We do sibling visits so I see him all the time. His dad is wonderful and deserves him. I have had other cases where. I could see the PARENT was not doing as good as they could. Visits would go great bad great bad. after 3 years of this the courts could not decide return or term.Mom is doing so so. NOT perfect but not doing what she was. The kids are still in my care...With most of my children I talk or see the bio parents weekly some times more. So I can totally see if the parent is changing or not. If I see they are I support it. Its not as hard letting them go. It will be hard with this one case becuz I see very little change and I dont feel they should return.

Jolayne - posted on 07/05/2010

Hi Autumn

I understand the difficulty your going through.
My husband and I have been in the system now for 7 years and on our way out very shortly here.
We fostered a little boy 2 yrs old back in 2007 had him for nearly 2 years then within a week of us getting the notice he was returned to bio mom.
Up until that time the caseworkers were planning our adoption of him.
What really bugged me was the fact that bio mom admitted that she could not be a positive parent to him but because she gave birth to another chld and for 4 months was able to "keep her safe" the courts decided "what the hell give her another chance ".
This little guy was bounced back and forth for 2 1/2 years getting visits (85% were missed ) only to go back to a very violent home .
During the time that he was away we were unable to keep in touch with him (although we heard through the grapevine that there was no food in the house and he was missing school).
In April 2009 (5 months later) we got the call that he was back in the system again along with his 9 month old sister.
They were both malnurished infact the baby at 9 months old was the size of a 3-6 month old due to mom not feeding her on a regular basis and giving her nothing but watered down formula.

It's been a very tough road but we are in the process of adopting the 2 little ones and shutting our doors to foster care .