Respite Care

Recently, I was asked to be on a panel made up of foster parents at a Save Our Children Coalition (SOCC) meeting.  You can visit SOCC website at http://saveourchildrencoalition.org/ for more information about this wonderful group.  In a nut shell, the SOCC brings professionals together with interested people to gather ideas and forge ties to help them work together.   The members of the panel each described their situation and the audience asked questions.  One of the topics that the group lingered on for some time was respite care.  Respite care is a licensed foster home that essentially babysits for another.  Honestly, for a foster family, respite care is very hard to find.  When I was a foster parent, I used my mother-in-law when I had an emergency.  She was not licensed but I made sure that my social worker had given her approval for short time periods.  However, there are situations where a foster family needs babysitter for overnight care or just a several day break from the difficulties involved in caring for high needs children.  I think respite care is a very bad label for a great thing.  The word respite seems to imply that the children are so awful that the caregiver needs to escape from them!  The reality is that foster families have lives outside of their work in foster care and everyone needs a break from work once in awhile.  Some of the reasons for using respite care that came from our panel included a family wedding in another state, court appearances (for other foster children), time spent with a spouse, and of course, just taking a break.  Foster families work hard.  We open our homes, our families and our hearts to strangers.  If a foster family requests respite care, you can be sure that it is probably highly necessary.   Another area that often goes hand in hand with respite care is emergency placements.  Sometimes a social worker needs to place a child for a short time until other arrangements can be made.  For instance, this week at Hands Across the Water a newborn needed a temporary home of a few days to a week.  Sometimes a sibling group needs to be placed separately for a night or a weekend until family arrangements can be made.  The bottom line is there is significant need for licensed homes to be available for these short term situations.  Respite care or emergency placement is a great way for a family to try out foster care.  A family can experiment on a very short term basis with having a strange child in the home.  Older children can see what it is like for Mom and Dad to have another child in the house.  The benefits are many in this situation.  If you are exploring the idea of fostering, please consider respite care or emergency placement.