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Therapeutic Foster Care: A Case Study

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The one thing to remember with therapeutic foster care (sometimes called "Intensive Foster Care", IFC for short), is that you must always expect the unexpected. We were unprepared for all the trials and all the joy that we would experience while taking care of children with special needs. In 2004 our youngest son Ethan was born with Autism. This was not something we were expecting so when we finally discovered this it hit our family pretty hard. I was in denial for a long time thinking that he was just delayed or that the arm flapping was just some idiosyncrasy of his. Ethan did not do many of the things that typical children do such as cooing, babbling, ect. The diagnosis of autism impacted my wife much more than myself. The reason for this …show more content…

It was my wife who had the brilliant idea. She said that maybe we should look into helping other children with special needs, after all God, we felt, had been preparing us for this kind of work. After a time of prayer and discussion we took the plunge and the adventure began. One of the fist things to understand when preparing to do therapeutic foster care is the difference between short-term placements and those that are long-term. The reason this is important is because there are different challenges to be faced with each type of placement. Short-term placements are typically anywhere from a day to a few weeks in length. These children can often be well behaved showing little or no signs of behavioral issues. Your home, family, and environment are all new and exciting for some children. You may be pouring out gifts and making them feel special. You have not yet had to discipline bad behaviors and so the child might see your home more as a vacation of sorts. You may not run into many behavioral issues if you chose to do short-term and/or respite …show more content…

Children that are placed in your home on a long-term basis are more likely to become attached emotionally to your family. It is also very likely that your family will become emotionally attached as well. As with many short-term placements, long-term placements may, at first, feel like your home is a vacation. The same feelings of newness are often there. This period is sometimes referred to as the "honeymoon period". There can be a temptation for new foster parents to overdo things. Going out to eat more often than normal and always giving the child the choice of where you will eat. Buying lots of presents, toys, clothing and over doing praise (not that helping your foster child with self esteem is a bad thing). In short, spoiling the child. This only contributes to the feeling that your home is a holiday. This kind of thing happens to many first time parents as well. You want to give your child more than you had but in the end this kind of parenting often backfires and the child can become spoiled. Once the "honeymoon period" is over and you have to start disciplining bad behavior your foster child might swing in the opposite direction. At first they were the picture of sweetness, very much like Annie (the foster child from the movie Annie) but now that there are rules and consequences for breaking those rules the child can become almost uncontrollable.

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