Foster Care - Responsibilities:

Foster Parents:

• protect and nurture children
• meet the children’s developmental needs and address developmental delays
• support relationships between children and their families
• promote permanency planning leading to reunification with the child’s family.. or other safe nurturing relationships intended to last a lifetime
• participate as essential and effective members of a professional team

Foster Families care...

• about children who have abused, neglected, or abandoned…and who have gone through the pain of separation from their families. Foster parents give children the support they need to grow physically, emotionally, educationally, and socially.
• about the families of children in care whose parents are overburdened and may have problems with addictions, parenting skills, relationships, or legal difficulties. Foster families respect the bonds between children and their parents and siblings. Often foster parents become role models and supports for birth parents while they struggle to make changes in their lives so they can be reunited with their children.
• about the right of every child to belong to a family which loves them and keeps them safe. Foster parents participate as team members with social workers and counselors to plan for the child’s return to his/her own family...or when that is not possible...to plan for the child to move onto adoption or another permanent living arrangement.