Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care

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Have you considered fostering? What might be holding you back? Join us for a conversation with Laura, the Foster Parent Partner, to explore what it takes to be ready to foster, what the licensing and placement process looks like, and how to navigate relationships with the child's birth parents while providing a safe place for the child to land. Laura is the author of First Time Fostering and brings awareness and advocacy for foster families to social media spaces.
In this episode, we talk about:
How can someone tell if fostering might be the right step for them?
What are some common misconceptions about foster parenting that you often hear from people who are just starting to explore it?
What mindset shifts do people often need to make before stepping into foster parenting, especially around trauma and reunification?
Once someone decides to move forward, what does the licensing process look like?
What tends to surprise people about that process?
How should families prepare the people already in their lives—a partner, kids in the home, or extended family—for fostering?
What kind of support system do new foster parents need?
How can they start building that before they get their first placement?
When you're waiting for your first placement, what are some basics you should have ready in their home?
What is it actually like to get that first placement call and welcome a child into your home?
In those first hours and days, what are some practical ways foster parents can help a child feel safe and supported?
It’s important to remember that reunification is the goal of foster care. What does co-parenting mean for foster parents? Why is it a crucial element of fostering?
In foster care, children often still have relationships with their families, especially when reunification is still the goal. How can foster parents begin building a respectful relationship with a child’s parent?
How can foster parents help facilitate connection or healing with the child’s parents?
How do foster parents navigate the reality and emotions of a child leaving their home, for another placement, or for reunification?
How should they support their resident children for that loss?
What are some of the other hard realities of foster parenting that people should be prepared for?
What would you want a newly licensed foster parent to know before they say yes to their first placement?
What keeps you anchored in this work and committed to supporting others?
Resources:
Becoming a Foster Parent
What Foster Care Alumni Want You to Know
23 Crucial Questions to
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Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

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Question: How do I delicately share information about my child’s birth parent with my child, when we know their biological parent has a long history of arrest? They are not a safe adult for my child to maintain a relationship with. Our family is struggling with how to balance the message that the adoption plan was made out of love for the child and not wanting to cast a negative message about the child’s birth parent, even though we know there is a history of some very violent acts. We want this child to know and understand why the birth parent is not part of their life.
Resources: 
Talking with Young Children about Adoption and Birth Parents
Using Lifebooks to Explain Complex Issues in Adoption to Kids
Building the Framework for Adopted & Foster Children to Process the Hard Parts of Their Stories
Support the show
Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Join us for this interview with former NFL Running Back and Super Bowl Champion Ricky Watters. He is an adoptee, an adoptive dad, and author of a new children’s book on adoption, A Gift Called Shane.
In this episode, we discuss:
How old were you when you learned you were adopted and how did you find out?
When you discovered you were adopted, you mentioned in your NFL movie that it put a big chip on your shoulder. How has that chip served you well as an adoptive dad? 
How has it been a detriment?
Why did you decide to adopt?
Why did you decide to adopt internationally?
Did your experience with finding out late that you were adopted affect the way you discussed adoption with your son?
Do you see any signs of a similar “chip” in your son that you had when you found out you were adopted? How do you help him navigate it for his own success?
How did you prepare your biological son for the adoption of his brother? 
How do you support your adopted son in his questions about identity, birth family, etc.?
Are you in reunion with your biological family?
How has your adoptive family handled your reunion with your birth family?
How excited were you for fellow hometown boy Shady McCoy to get into the Eagles Hall of Fame?
What was your experience with playing at Notre Dame? 
Support the show
Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Question: I’m an intern therapist working with kids involved in DHS and the foster system. Could you guys talk about what a kid in the system needs from therapy? Or like what helped them, what didn’t, what they needed in that space that their therapist didn’t provide?
Resources:
Trauma-Informed Therapy: Finding the Right Fit for Your Family
Therapists: Parents Should Be With Their Kids for Adoptive or Foster Therapy Sessions
Finding an Adoption Competent Therapist
Support the show
Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Could you use a few new strategies to help your child improve misbehavior? Listen to this conversation with Dr. Casey Call, the Associate Director of Education at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at TCU and Associate Professor of Professional Practice in the TCU Department of Psychology. She will help us understand how to maintain connection while correcting challenging behaviors.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why and how should parents and caregivers work toward secure attachment with kids impacted by trauma? 
What does it mean when we say we are rewiring the child’s brain for connection?
What is the purpose of discipline? 
How can parents and caregivers set a firm foundation of secure attachment if they also need to correct misbehavior or inappropriate behavior?
Why do traditional or punishment-based disciplinary approaches not work for children impacted by trauma? 
Why do kids impacted by trauma tend to respond better (meaning an improvement in behavior) to discipline that guides them to think about their choices and consequences?
How can parents and caregivers maintain a safe, loving connection with firmness and kindness while still holding the goal of retraining a behavior?
In this process, what does it mean to share our power?
What is the “IDEAL” approach?
What is a re-do? Why is it so powerful for re-training?
What are a few practical ways that parents and caregivers can maintain attachment during these disciplinary or re-teaching processes?
What are some of the common behaviors that drive parents crazy? 
How can parents and caregivers maintain the intensity and pace of disciplining a child who has been impacted by trauma, without burning out?
Support the show
Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building