Co-Parenting with Birth Parents in Foster Care

Foster kids come into the child welfare system from across the United States. Ages range from young to young adults, with diverse backgrounds. But all kids in foster care have one thing in common: trauma.

Most foster kids deeply feel their world turning upside-down. Kids enter the foster care system after the loss of a parent to death, jail, addiction, or mental illness. Other foster kids experience some form of abuse, poverty, or neglect at home. Beyond these traumas, displacement often adds a new layer of loss, fear, and uncertainty.

Research has shown that 20% of abused foster kids have symptoms of PTSD. Foster kids begin to heal once they experience a dependable foster home and a supportive parent or parents. Therapy or counseling can help with intense feelings of anxiety or depression. In every case, there are steps foster parents and social services can take to help kids cope.

Even when time in foster care is brief, stable and supportive care makes a lasting impact on the child. After years of adversity, a few months in a loving home tips the scale. One way to reduce the stress on foster children and families is to co-parent foster kids with their birth parents. Co-parenting may make it easier for the child in foster care while they go through this period of transition.

What is Co-Parenting? 

Co-parenting happens among foster parents, biological parents, and the child's caseworker when caring for children together. Every situation is different, and co-parenting takes many forms. The critical considerations are understanding child and family member needs and then sharing support responsibilities. Setting healthy boundaries for family units and parents includes creating open lines of communication and maintaining personal space.

At times, co-parenting causes a range of emotions. The key to adults working together is when they agree to put the well-being of their child first.

How Foster and Birth Parents Work Together

Foster parents may feel mixed emotions about working with birth parents. It can be hard to come to terms with what birth parents may have done. As foster parents come to know and love the child in their care, this only gets harder.

It helps to keep in mind that humans make bad choices for many reasons. Bad choices do not equal bad people.

Sometimes, birth parents are highly motivated to become better parents and bring their kids back home. They often feel guilty and are working to improve their parenting skills while their children are in foster care. They want to maintain or rebuild a parent-child bond and also show the courts they are ready to be good parents.

When foster and birth parents communicate and work together, both the foster child and their parent can heal. The hope is that foster parents will also serve as parenting role models for birth parents. Some did not have this in their own lives and may be repeating the long-term cycle they themselves began as children.

Neglect is a leading form of abuse. Parental issues, such as depression, addiction, emotional immaturity, and bad relationship choices, are among the causes of neglect. Understanding why and how birth parents neglected their kids doesn't make foster parents feel better. It's natural and expected for foster parents to feel upset, angry, and protective over their foster kids.

When foster parents deal with their own feelings, it can prevent more traumatic harm to their foster children. It helps many foster parents to try to walk in the shoes of the birth parent. Understanding and feeling forgiveness are two different things. Thinking about how birth parents feel may not lead to forgiveness, but it can help foster parents and caseworkers show compassion. 

Bad choices do not usually reflect any lack of love birth parents feel for their kids. Many who fail to care for their kids are distressed and in the midst of their own life emergencies. They are dealing with the results of their mistakes, feeling emotions ranging from frustration and anger to panic and self-blame. Many feel grateful their kids are in foster home care, rather than a less personal group home.

Most foster kids want to return safely to their home with their birth or extended family. It helps them to know their foster parents and state foster advocates are helping them and their families to rejoin.

How to Co-Parent: Tips and Techniques

Foster families play an essential role in helping foster kids return to their families, schools, and communities. Among their foster parenting responsibilities are communicating with birth parents and other family members. Showing respect for family is important for building a professional relationship with them for their foster child. This effort will help parents feel empowered to become better parents and reunite their family.  

These techniques are helpful to foster parents in developing a co-parenting strategy: 

• Encourage regular communication between foster kids and birth family members (phone calls, video chats, etc.).
• Reassure birth parents that you aren't a replacement for them.
• Emphasize how much you want your foster child to feel safe, loved, and supported.
• Seek additional information about your foster child's family history, including traditions or beliefs you can support.
• Schedule visits with birth parents.
• Prepare your foster child for birth family visits.
• Speak positively to your foster child about their biological parents.
• Keep a positive and optimistic attitude.
• Inform birth parents about school events, doctor's appointments, and important activities they miss.
• Involve your caseworker to help set appropriate types of boundaries as co-parenting evolves.

Parents are pivotal in a child's ability to be happy, confident, and successful. Help your foster child handle change by promoting communication, organizing activities, and collaborating with their birth parents.  

Co-Parenting Ice-Breakers

How might foster parents discuss important topics that will help support foster kids and their biological families? Try brainstorming with birth parents about: 

• Things you should know to help care for and support your foster child
• How to be present and active in their child's life, even during this time in foster care
• Important milestones for their child, both past and future
• The importance of consistent routines for kids
• Parenting techniques that have worked for you or resonated with your foster child
• Ideas for biological family visits, including those to help strengthen family bonds

Collaborative Co-Parenting

Foster kids benefit when foster and birth parents co-parent. Collaborative co-parenting gives a sense of calm, harmony, and teamwork with the foster child at the center. In the absence of co-parenting, foster kids may feel stress and pressure to pick sides. Instead of feeling united with all parents, they may feel pressured to be loyal to one family over the other.  

Co-parenting eases some of the inevitable stress, anxiety, and uncertainty of being in foster care limbo. 

Act with Compassion

Imagine being at the worst point in your life. You may feel overwhelmed, helpless, or desperate, stuck in a bad situation made worse by poor choices. Add another layer of overwhelm to lose your child or family to state custody. Many parents feel self-hatred when they fail their children, face public shame, and worry about each child's well-being.

This may understate the problems faced by foster care kids, but the goal is to show that stress and suffering occur on all fronts. You may or may not forgive birth parents for how they have hurt your foster child. Either way, learning to act with compassion and kindness goes a long way to helping both children and adults heal.

Many kids blame themselves for the behavior of their birth parents. As a foster parent, you can help them realize that parents are imperfect people who sometimes make mistakes. Many birth parents have feelings of overwhelm, shame, and regret. Most do try to improve their parenting skills and make better life choices.

It helps children if they understand their parents are responsible for their own harmful choices and actions. It helps even more when their birth parents are successful in their efforts to become better parents.

Communicate

Foster caseworkers or state courts set the visitation schedule between foster kids and their birth families. However, foster parents can ensure that they prepare foster kids and make visitation easier for all. 

Birth parents may feel less anxious to hear that you, as a foster parent, genuinely care and want the best for your foster child. Reassure them you are not a replacement for them, but plan to take good care of your foster child. Helping your foster child reunite with their biological family will motivate their birth parents to meet court rules.  

Good conversation starters include showing your foster child's artwork and telling stories about holiday and school activities. Bring pictures and report cards to help birth parents stay involved and up-to-date. Building good communication will improve your relationship and make the process smoother for all involved.

It can be tough to decide what and how much to communicate with birth parents. The more they share, the better you will get to know and be able to support your foster child.

Set Boundaries

While it's good for your fostering team to keep lines of communication open, it's also important to set boundaries. Your life and responsibilities are separate and do not include expanding your personal life or family obligations. Work with your caseworker to set and communicate boundaries with the birth family upfront. Your caseworker is there to support you and your foster child.

Caseworkers typically have experience in guiding communications and visitations while respecting personal space for the foster family. Caseworkers play a significant advocacy role on the fostering team. Tap their support as needed to establish and maintain a parenting plan that works for everyone.

Co-parenting for a Brighter Future

The journey of a foster child through the child welfare system is full of challenges and opportunities. A loving, stable home can be the catalyst for healing, even if that home is temporary.

Research and real-world experience underscore the positive impact that committed foster parents can have on a child's life. From providing emotional support to co-parenting with birth parents, foster parents can turn the tide for foster children.

Supporting the birth family toward a happy outcome is well worth the effort during this time of transition. As you learn more about fostering, remember every small action can tip the scales to a brighter future for a child in need.

Contact a child-placing agency in your state to learn more about becoming a foster parent.