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‘Sound of Hope’ tells amazing true story of how a town adopted 77 kids

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“Sound of Hope” — a movie about Possum Trot, Texas — hopes to inspire people to rethink how we address our foster care crisis.

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A Foster Care System Where Every Child Has a Loving Home | Sixto Cancel | TED

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A state is not a parent: Why the child welfare system fails | Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts | TEDxSydney

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How to break the cycle of foster care | Melissa Villagomez | TEDxSanDiegoWomen

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How Does Child Protective Services Work? - Child Welfare Network

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Adoptive Parents | Full-Service Adoption Agency

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As prospective adoptive parents, your journey begins here. Our full-service adoption agency at Hope 4 Kids will guide you through the process with compassion.

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Child Adoption Agency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania | COBYS

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COBYS is an agency that facilitates adoption through the Statewide Adoption & Permanency Network (SWAN) and helps you prepare, adopt, and thrive afterward.

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Pennsylvania Foster Care FAQs - Family Care for Children & Youth

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Looking for more information about foster care and adoption? Read detailed answers to some of our most frequently asked questions and contact FCCY today!

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Foster Parenting | Lancaster County, PA - Official Website

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The goal of foster care is to provide, temporarily, for the physical, emotional, and social needs of children and youth in a “substitute” family setting until the biological family can be reunited.

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Our treatment foster care program exists to make sure children are safe and provided with a nurturing environment until they can return home or become adopted. Children range in age from babies …

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Support | Pennsylvania State Resource Family Association

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Support Services is a service of the Pennsylvania State Resource Family Association, designed to provide support to foster parents and local foster parent associations.

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7 Resources Every Foster Parent Should Have - Plummer Youth Promise

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More children need available foster parents to help them through a traumatic period than ever before. Foster parents take in children who suffer from emotional scars, physical disabilities, and past trauma. They help children heal.

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Foster Care and Adoption Resources | A learning site for NC foster and adoptive parents and kinship caregivers

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Being a foster parent is a rewarding-and challenging-job. Learn about your role and the resources available to help you succeed

When a child or sibling group is placed in your home, a journey begins that can last anywhere from overnight to several months. After the immediate safety of the child has been addressed, the next priority is reunifying the child with the family from which he was removed. Slightly more than half of all children who go into foster care return to their families.

On this page:

Providing for the needs of the child

While a child is placed in your home, you will need to ensure that his emotional, medical, dental, and educational needs are being met. "Questions to Ask When Accepting a Foster Placement," an article on our blog, offers advice from workers and families about ensuring you can meet a child's needs.

Children in foster care are removed from their families due to an abusive or neglectful situation and may require treatment to help them through past trauma and losses. It's up to you to work with the child's caseworker to connect children with therapy and the other services and supports the child is entitled to receive.

Requirements differ slightly among states, but foster parents are usually responsible for:

Medical needs, including mental health. Most children who receive foster care payments from their states are automatically eligible for Medicaid.

Educational needs. When a child or youth has to change schools it can create stress and set them back in their academic achievement. Some children have IEPs [individual education plans] and need special education services in their school setting. As the foster parent. you are often the one who is interacting with the school staff and need to keep the child's caseworker up to date with their progress.

Day-to-day needs, such as food, clothing, and school supplies. The state provides reimbursement to foster care parents using standard rates that reflect the child's age and special needs. Each state sets its own rates for reimbursement. If you have questions about reimbursement rates in your state, contact your local foster care agency.

Sleeping arrangements. Most children may share bedrooms. They must have a separate bed and children of the opposite sex can only share a room if they are under an age specified by the state (usually around 6 years old). Some children cannot share bedrooms because of behavior concerns.

Other needs and special circumstances, such as going on vacation. Always check with the child's caseworker first.

Actively working with the child's caseworker and supporting the child for continued contact with his family, including parents, siblings, and other members, whenever it is deemed safe and beneficial to the child.

Where to find help

Lifebook pages provide an opportunity to get to know a child and prepare them for adoption. The IFAPA has created a library of 70 free lifebook pages for parents and caregivers to use.

Family connections booklet (3.5 MB PDF), in which birth parents can share information about a child's medical history, bedtime routines, favorite foods, and other important details.

Pre-placement questionnaire (93 KB PDF), a tool for determining whether a child will be a good fit for your family.

Supporting reunification

As primary caregivers, foster parents play a significant role in working with birth parents and in carrying out the tasks in a child's permanency plan.

Most children placed in your home will have regular, court-ordered visits with their biological parents, other adults whose care they were removed from, and their siblings if they weren't placed together. It's important for you to work with their caseworker to decide the location and time of the visits. The court decides whether the visits will be supervised.

Except in cases of extreme abuse, nearly all children who enter foster care have a primary case plan of returning home. The foster parent plays an important role in helping achieve reunification.

Find tips for preparing for reunification on our blog.

Where to find help

Child Welfare Information Gateway has compiled a list of resources on reunifying families, including a tip sheet offering advice from foster families (243 KB PDF).

When reunification is not an option

If, after a period of time, reunification is not possible, the state will file for legal termination of parental rights or the parents may elect to surrender legal rights to their child in lieu of going through a lengthy termination trial. Either way, a child is not legally freed for adoption until the rights of all legal and biological parents have been legally severed.

Most children who are freed for adoption are adopted either by relatives or non-relative foster parents. The best interest of the child is always taken into account, including attachment and continuity of care. When a child's relatives or foster parents are unable to adopt a child, the agency with custody of the child searches for other adoptive parents, often through local, state, regional, and national adoption exchanges, including AdoptUSKids.

If you want to adopt a child you're fostering whose parental rights have been terminated or are in the process of being terminated, find out how to adopt.

Making time for yourself to prevent burnout

Whether you're a parent or foster parent, it can be hard to juggle the needs of your children with those of your own. Make sure to take time for yourself. Preventing burnout before it happens makes you a better parent all around. "Maintaining a Strong Relationship When Fostering" on our blog offers tips from experienced foster parents about supporting your partner when fostering.

As a rule, children in foster care can be left with a babysitter who is at least 18 years old, although your state may have specific rules and limitations about what requirements the babysitter must meet. Respite care might also be available to you. Respite care is short-term care of a child in order to give the regular caregiver a break. Each state or county has its own procedures for foster parents to get respite care.

Where to find help

For more information about respite care available to you, check with your child's caseworker. You can find respite care resources at Families Rising or search for respite providers on the ARCH National Respite Network and Resource Center website.

Professionals and parent-support organizations can find information about developing respite services in our publication, Creating and Sustaining Effective Respite Services: Lessons from the Field(1 MB PDF)/ en español (1 MB PDF).

Accessing training and understanding your rights

Even though you have taken the required training to become a foster parent, there is always the opportunity to learn more.

Where to find help

Things to do next:

Talk with one of our foster care and adoption resource specialists. Call 888-200-4005.

Read stories of families who adopted from foster care on our blog.

Subscribe to receive our monthly newsletter providing information and resources to foster and adoptive families.

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Being a foster parent is a rewarding-and challenging-job. Learn about your role and the resources available to help you succeed

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Upcoming webinars from Fostering Families Today.

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Recorded Training Sessions | Families Rising

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Access recorded training sessions for adoptive, kinship, foster parents and professionals in child welfare.

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Someone to... Experiences of children in foster care

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How Can Community Involvement Help with Child Protection? | Child Welfare Network

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SNAP Food Stamps | Central Pennsylvania Food Bank

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Our SNAP Food Stamps helpline provides assistance in applying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to help individuals purchase food. Learn more.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

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Understanding and overcoming influences of poverty on children and families

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To transform child welfare, take race out of the equation

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In this eye-opening talk about the impact of race and neighborhood on foster-care decisions, social worker Jessica Pryce shares a promising solution to help child welfare agencies make bias-free assessments about when to remove children from their families. “Let’s work together to build a system that wants to make families stronger instead of pulling them apart,” Pryce says.

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How does income affect childhood brain development?

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Neuroscientist and pediatrician Kimberly Noble is leading the Baby’s First Years study: the first-ever randomized study of how family income changes children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development. She and a team of economists and policy experts are working together to find out: Can we help kids in poverty simply by giving families more money? “The brain is not destiny,” Noble says. “And if a child’s brain can be changed, then anything is possible.”

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Healing Adult Survivors of Child Abuse | Fire-Brown | TEDxGreenville

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What kids wish their teachers knew | Kyle Schwartz | TEDxKyoto

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Emotional Abuse Is Far Worse Than You Think

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Child abuse needs to stop and education is the key.
The following free resources are essential to driving change and
are made possible through your contributions. Thank you.

WHAT IS EMOTIONAL ABUSE?

Just as physical injuries can scar and incapacitate a child, emotional maltreatment can cripple and handicap a child emotionally, behaviorally, and intellectually. Self-esteem can be damaged. Severe psychological disorders have been traced to excessively distorted parental attitudes and actions. One of the hallmarks of emotional abuse is the absence of positive interaction (e.g. praising) from parent to their child. Following chronic and severe emotional abuse of a child, emotional and behavioral problems may be present in varying degrees, especially when there is little or no nurturing.

This is especially true for neonates, infants, and toddlers. After emotional abuse, these children may become chronically withdrawn and anxious and lose basic social and language skills necessary for intimate relationships. They may become developmentally delayed, socially limited, and, in some cases, antisocial or chronically unable to protect themselves from others.

Emotional abuse and neglect are also components of other abuse and neglect. Sexual abuse and physical abuse may be the official category for a report, but emotional damage also exists. Emotional abuse and neglect may damage children of all ages, but can be critical with infants and toddlers, leaving them with permanent developmental deficits. It is crucial to recognize the indicators of emotional abuse in order to prevent further harm.

What is Verbal Abuse?

Verbal assault (belittling, screaming, threats, blaming, sarcasm), unpredictable responses, continual negative moods, constant family discord, and chronically communicating conflicting messages are examples of ways parents may subject their children to verbal abuse. There are several signs in parents and in children that may indicate verbal abuse is occurring.

Behavioral Indicators OF ABUSE

Indicators in Parents

These signs indicate that a parent may be engaging in verbal or emotional abuse of a child:

Parents or caretakers place demands on the child that are based on unreasonable or impossible expectations or without consideration of the child's developmental capacity.

The child is used as a "battle ground" for marital conflicts.

The child is used to satisfy the parent's/caretaker's own ego needs and the child is neither old enough nor mature enough to understand.

The child victim is "objectified" by the perpetrator, the child is referred to as "it" ("it" cried, "it" died).

The child is a witness to domestic violence.

Emotional abuse can be seen as proving a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a child is degraded enough, the child will begin to live up to the image communicated by the abusing parent or caretaker.

Emotional abuse cases can be extremely difficult to prove, and cumulative documentation by witnesses is imperative. Such cases should be referred to treatment as soon as possible.

Suspected cases of emotional abuse that constitute willful cruelty or unjustifiable punishment of a child are required to be reported by mandated reporters. This means a report must be made of any situation where any person willfully causes or permits any child to suffer, or inflicts on any child, unjustifiable mental suffering. (Pen. Code, § 11165.3.) However, mandated reporters may also report any degree of mental suffering. While these cases may not always be prosecuted, reporting provides the opportunity for intervention and/or therapy with the family.

Indicators in Children

These signs indicate that a child may be experiencing emotional or verbal abuse:

Is withdrawn, depressed, and apathetic.

Is clingy and forms indiscriminate attachments.

"Acts out" and is considered a behavior problem (e.g. bullies others, chronically uses profanity).

Exhibits exaggerated fearfulness.

Is overly rigid in conforming to instructions of teachers, doctors, and other adults.

Suffers from sleep, speech, or eating disorders.

Displays other signs of emotional turmoil (repetitive, rhythmic movements; rocking, whining, picking at scabs).

Suffers from enuresis (bed wetting) and fecal soiling.

Pays inordinate attention to details or exhibits little or no verbal or physical communication with others.

Unwittingly makes comments such as, "Mommy/Daddy always tells me I'm bad."

The behavior patterns mentioned may, of course, be due to other causes, but the suspicion of abuse should not be dismissed.

WHAT IS EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION?

Emotional deprivation has been defined as ". . . the deprivation suffered by children when their parents do not provide the normal experiences producing feelings of being loved, wanted, secure, and worthy."

Signs of emotional deprivation such as withholding affection with touch, smiles and sound may be more damaging than verbal and even physical assault. Children may provoke assault if necessary to gain negative interaction rather than suffer the pain of being ignored. This may damage children of all ages but is critical for infants and young toddlers.

Caretakers might also provide cause for evaluation and possible reporting of a neonate at risk. Intervention may include consideration of caretaker depression, substance abuse, parenting deficits, and lack of social or financial support for the caretaker. Consideration should be made for evaluation of the caretaker for these issues, as well as possible domestic violence.

SIGNS OF EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION

The signs of emotional deprivation in children can be quite varied. Indicators may include:

Refuses to eat adequate amounts of food and is therefore very frail.

Is unable to perform normal learned functions for a given age (walking, talking); exhibits developmental delays, particularly with verbal and nonverbal social skills.

Displays antisocial behavior (aggression, behavioral disruption, bullying others) or obvious "delinquent" behavior (drug abuse, vandalism); conversely, is abnormally unresponsive, sad, or withdrawn.

Constantly "seeks out" and "pesters" other adults, such as teachers or neighbors, for attention and affection.

Displays exaggerated fears.

Apathy, withdrawal, and lack of response to human interaction.

When parents ignore their children, whether because of drug or alcohol use, psychiatric disturbances, personal problems, outside activities, or other preoccupying situations, serious consequences can occur. However, reporting these situations is not mandated unless they constitute a form of legally defined abuse or neglect. Emotional deprivation and neglect may be seen as a lesser form of child abuse/neglect. It may not be reportable or may be assessed out with no intervention. It is, however, a central issue for much of what damages children.

These children may experience more severe damage and are therefore worthy of voluntary intervention and follow-up.

The abuse may be brief, but the trauma lasts a lifetime.
Kids' lives and futures are on the line!
Be the voice against neglect and contribute to end child maltreatment today.

Our Lessons are available for Offline learning!

Parenting Resource Center

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Indicators of Emotional & Verbal Abuse | American SPCC - Signs in Parents & Children

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What are the indicators of emotional and verbal abuse? Visit our Learning Center to learn the signs of emotional abuse and deprivation in parents and children.

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Different types of child abuse have equivalent psychological effects, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. It has previously been assumed that emotional and verbal abuse could have different or less harmful impact on a child's psychology than physical or sexual abuse, but research now suggests that these forms of abuse can be just as damaging.

It is estimated that nearly forty percent of children worldwide suffer some kind of emotional abuse or neglect, referred to as child maltreatment (CM). Research has connected these non-sexual forms of maltreatment with a broad range of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, and suicidal behavior. However, legal punishments for many forms of maltreatment largely vary, with some carrying felony sentences while others may be frowned upon but legal. The standard "nonequivalence" assumption is that child maltreatment has less severe long-term psychological effects than physical and sexual abuse.

To test this hypothesis, a team of researchers led by David Vachon at McGill University studied 2,292 children enrolled at a summer camp between 1986 and 2015. The camp allowed for the children, who had previously suffered forms of maltreatment, to be psychologically assessed from multiple perspectives, including by their peers and counselors, over several years.

"Our results suggest that physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect are equivalent insults that affect broad psychiatric vulnerabilities," they wrote.

The study is limited by the fact that there is no way to separate out the effects of childhood sexual abuse because it co-occurs with other forms of maltreatment and it is often underreported.

They conclude:

"Finally, population-level prevention and intervention strategies should not ignore the considerable psychological harms imposed by emotional abuse, which rival those of physical violence and neglect. Taken together with high worldwide prevalence and evidence that emotional and physical pain share a common somatosensory representation in the brain, it is clear that emotional abuse is widespread, painful, and destructive."

*

Vachon, D. D., Krueger, R. F., Rogosch, F. A., & Cicchetti, D. (2015). Assessment of the harmful psychiatric and behavioral effects of different forms of child maltreatment. JAMA psychiatry, 1135-1142. (Abstract)

MIA Research News Editor: Justin M. Karter is the lead research news editor for Mad in America. He completed his doctorate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He also holds graduate degrees in both Journalism and Community Psychology from Point Park University. He brings a particular interest in examining and decoding cultural narratives of mental health and reimagining the institutions built on these assumptions.

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Emotional Child Abuse Just as Harmful as Physical Abuse

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Different types of child abuse have equivalent psychological effects, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry.

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(un)wanted | Foster Care Documentary [4k] (2017)

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Full Episode: “Children of the System” (Ep. 405) | Our America with Lisa Ling | OWN

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Nora Flanagan: What COVID-19 revealed about US schools -- and 4 ways to rethink education | TED

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How teachers can help students navigate trauma | Lisa Godwin

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See results for your search. Use the filters to refine your results by topic, audience, language, and more.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

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Child abuse and neglect are serious problems that can have lasting harmful effects on victims. CDC's goal is to stop child abuse and neglect from happening in the first place.

Child abuse and neglect are complex problems rooted in unhealthy relationships and environments. Preventing child abuse and neglect requires addressing risk and protective factors at the individual, relational, community, and societal levels.

CDC developed a resource, Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Resource for Action [4 MB, 50 Pages] to help states and communities use the best available evidence to prevent and reduce child abuse and neglect. This resource is available in English and Spanish [21 MB, 52 Pages, 508] and can impact individual behaviors and the relationship, family, school, community, and societal factors that influence risk and protective factors for violence. Effective prevention strategies focus on modifying policies, practices, and societal norms to create safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments. The strategies and their corresponding approaches are presented in the table below.

Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect
Intervene to lessen harms and prevent future risk

Enhanced primary care

Behavioral parent training programs

Treatment to lessen harms of abuse and neglect exposure

Treatment to prevent problem behavior and later involvement in violence

See Child Abuse and Neglect Resources for more publications, data sources, and other resources about preventing child abuse and neglect.

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Effective prevention strategies are necessary to promote awareness about child maltreatment and to foster commitment to social change.