What is foster care:
Foster care is a system made for children who have experienced things like neglect, abuse, or absence from their parents that causes them to need a new place to live. In this system, the children go to different foster care families often. Depending on if the family is a good fit, the child can change homes every week, month, or even year. This system is complicated and stressful for workers and families, and there are often around 8 -12 different social workers, CPS workers, and therapists working with the children and making decisions on where to place them.
CPS Workers Jobs
Cps workers’ jobs are to come to reported homes and investigate children’s home life to see if their parents are treating them well and they are eligible to home them. After this assessment of safety, they work to uplift and help the children in need. CPS workers have many jobs to support the children but the main aspects are examining reported homes, visiting foster children’s homes to assess if its a safe environment, creating and executing case plans, crisis interventions, taking part in court hearings, collaborating with other agencies, and connecting families with resources. CPS workers have many jobs and often have to balance working for 15-30 families at a time. This job is very difficult and many hard decisions are made during this profession.
Placement systems
Foster care placement systems are very lengthy processes to place children in the safest and best home. Options that are considered for placement are licensed foster families, closest relatives, or specialized foster care for children with special needs.
Court
Courts can be very complicated in foster care. In simple terms, the judge, lawyers, CPS workers, and many more have a court hearing on what is best for the child in foster care. Foster parents do not have control over placement decisions in court and have to follow many regulations to make sure they are giving the foster kids a happy and safe home. If foster parents do not meet these requirements
Becoming a foster parent
According to ncdhhs.gov ,To become a foster parent in North Carolina, prospective parents must complete a minimum of 30 hours of preservice training before licensing. This training, often called TIPS-MAPP, provides information about the child welfare system, the role of foster parents, and skills needed for successful foster parenting. The training also helps assess if fostering is a good fit for the family.In addition, prospective therapeutic foster parents need to complete 10 more hours of training.
Next page: ROOT CAUSES OF FOSTER CARE: why they go, the effect it has, why foster care can be damaging to the kids.
Why are kids put into foster care?
There are many reasons that a child could end up in care of the foster system. Many times an anonymous report is made to a CPS worker when a parent is not able or willing to give their kids a safe environment at their home. Reasons that parents could be unable to care for their kids full time could be poverty, neglect, addiction, mental illness, abuse, absence, or very many other reasons. Not all parents whose kids have been put into foster care are necessarily “unfit’’ parents, they just need extra support to be able to give their children a safe environment to grow up.