This post is part of a series:
- How Grief and Loss Affects Foster Care Retention Rates
- Why Current Solutions Are Ineffective At Solving Foster Care Retention Rates
- What Foster Care Agencies Can Do To Improve Foster Parent Retention Rates (Current)
Every year, a small number of individuals and families in the community open up their home to foster children. Foster carers with wide-eyed hope embark on the journey of fostering to do good, give back, and provide a safe and loving home to a child.
The individuals in the foster home — parents, biological children, and foster children — can grow attached. However, foster care is meant as an emergency, short-term solution when a child is in danger. Therefore, courts often decide it is in the best interest of the foster child to return to their birth parents or be placed with a relative.
Foster carers experience a wide range of emotion before, during and after the transition of a foster child. On a small level, most likely from societal pressure — foster carers express happiness. However, many foster carers, especially newer foster carers, experience significant levels of grief and loss.
In some cases, the transition of a child from a foster home leaves foster carers in aftershock and disoriented. Many of these inexperienced, new foster carers decide the emotional cost of doing good is too high. The grief and the loss are too much to handle.
So, foster carers close their license to avoid experiencing more grief and loss. Efforts have been made by foster care agencies to reduce the grief and loss foster carers experience, however, all of the solutions fall short because the solutions are short-term or they focus on symptoms rather than the underlying cause.
There is a better way to reduce grief and loss in order to improve foster care retention rates. Although grief and loss is a problem within foster care retention rates, based on research, foster care agencies should reduce or prevent ambiguous loss foster carers experience by helping foster carers make sense of the transition, build relationships between foster carer and birth family prior to transition, and provide therapy to help foster carers reach acceptance.
Although grief and loss is a problem within foster care retention rates, based on research, foster care agencies should provide more effective training and support on grief and loss by offering grief and loss training during and after transition rather than during pre-placement training, create cohort foster carer support groups, and provide access to individual therapy or counseling.
Although grief and loss is a problem within foster care retention rates, based on research, foster care agencies should reduce or avoid creating disenfranchised grief by using alternative language in every interaction that does not reinforce foster carer identity as a parent to the foster child, eliminate any recruiting efforts selling the fantasy of “foster-to-adopt” or “foster parents”, and increase training which focuses on the role of foster carer, case worker, and the child welfare system.
Why Foster Parent Retention Rates Matter
Foster carers provide a critical function in the child welfare system when at-home interventions and services are not possible due to safety concerns of the child. People have varying opinions about foster care and the child welfare system. However, currently there are too many kids in foster care and not enough foster care homes.
The biggest reason for a shortage of foster care homes is retention. Foster care agencies are struggling to keep licensed foster carers. Grief and loss experienced by foster carers is often the number one reason given for poor foster care retention rates(Bays).
Grief and loss place a significant role in foster care retention rates because the type of loss is ambiguous rather than definite, foster care agencies have a poor training model and strategy, and a fantasy is being sold to potential foster carers that is inconsistent with the goal of the foster care system.
Foster care retention rates are correlated with better outcomes — reunification, mental health, cognitive standards, developmental standards, learning, and more — for foster children, as well as a reduction in costs to foster care agencies (Willis and Day).
Unfortunately, foster care retention rates continue to suffer because of the effects grief and loss have on foster carers and the ineffective intervention strategies implemented by foster care agencies. Poor foster care retention rates are leading to worse outcomes for foster children and society. Stable homes, like experienced foster carers or adoptive homes, provide “better outcomes with regard to education, employment, criminal and disciplinary records, and social skills, among other categories,” according to Pesavanto. (142).
By achieving better outcomes for foster children, they are more likely to add value and contribute to society (142). The biggest reason foster carers decide not to continue their license is because of the grief and loss they experience after the removal of a child from their home (Bays).
Grief and loss is a problem in foster care because the type of loss is an ambiguous loss, a lack of effective training for foster parents, and foster care agencies creating a feeling of disenfranchised grief.
The effects of the foster carer retention problem reaches further than foster children. New or inexperienced foster carers often require significantly more resources from already overworked and burned out caseworkers. Low retention rates means foster care agencies need to spend more money recruiting and training foster carers. All of this creates a larger financial burden on the government, and by proxy, citizens. Without a functioning system to provide kids a safe home, Child Protective Services (CPS) may decide to keep children in their home, potentially risking their safety.
Unfortunately, CPS may have little alternatives if there are no foster homes available. Grief and loss causes low retention rates and subsequently leading to poorer outcomes for foster children, caseworker burnout or mental health issues, and higher costs to the child welfare system. The problem affects every single citizen. Data shows there are roughly 10,000 kids in Michigan foster care and only 5,434 licensed foster care homes.
There is a placement of at least two kids per licensed foster care home (Administration for Child & Families). Grief and loss became a problem in foster care retention rates over the last decade or two.
When Grief And Loss Became A Problem In Retention Rates
The last ten to twenty years brought a significant cultural shift in how children are viewed. American culture continues to place greater and greater significance on the value of a child with each passing year.
The cultural shift is likely caused by the decrease in birth rates. As each family has fewer children, each child becomes more precious, fear is born and parents respond by becoming the proverbial “helicopter parent”.
The potential loss of a child to a family which has only two kids creates more fear than the 1930’s grandmother who birthed 13 children. Parents today feel personally responsible to make their kids happy and feel guilty if they are not on the floor playing with their child.
Contrast the current ideology to a boomer’s parent, where the mindset was “children are seen and not heard”. The mindset shift in American culture is protected onto foster children by foster carers.
As a result, foster carers are likely to experience deeper grief and loss than the foster carers a decade or two ago. In the past, foster carer grief and loss had less of an impact on foster care retention rates.
Foster care agencies and the child welfare system must make efforts to intervene upstream. For example, instead of removing kids, foster care agencies can do a better job helping families get the support needed to provide a safe home for children. By keeping children in their home, as long as it is safe, foster care agencies would need fewer foster carers.
However, many of the interventions to keep children in their home would need approval from congress. Each foster care agency can focus on helping foster carers deal with their grief and loss, and thus, improve their retention rates. When it comes to the grief and loss problem, uncertainties arise since every foster carer experiences grief differently.
Past Solutions
There is likely no one-size fits all solution. Through effective implementation and research though, foster care agencies can identify correlation between certain interventions and more favorable outcomes. The solution would require foster care agencies to centralize their data rather than keeping it in separate silos.
Foster care agencies have tried to solve the problem of grief and loss on retention rates by helping foster carers reach closure, provide more grief and loss training during the pre-licensure phase, and acknowledging foster carers grief and identity as a foster parent.
For example, Melanie Randle and researchers argue training played a critical role in the overall success of carer satisfaction, and thus retention rates (Randle et al. 219). In their research, “What can agencies do to increase foster carer satisfaction,” they argue pre-placement training, financial support, and perceived agency support play important roles in foster carer satisfaction. By providing proper pre-placement training, agencies have an opportunity for setting appropriate expectations and avoid a case ending in grief.
“Preplacement training plays a role not only in teaching future foster carers how to successfully perform in their role; it also allows agencies to shape the expectations of foster carers and potentially avoid disappointment, thus directly impacting levels of satisfaction,” according to Randle and authors (Randle et al. 219). However, there is a problem with each of the past solutions.
First, past solutions for reaching closure are short-term. Caseworker communication during transition leaves foster carers to deal with their long-term grief. Training provided to foster carers is ineffective since it is done at the wrong time.
Lastly, acknowledging foster carers as foster parents makes matters worse. Often, inconsistent messages are sent by the child welfare system, which creates a feeling of disenfranchised grief. Solutions to the problem need to consider how grief and loss is uniquely experienced and look upstream at how foster care agencies create grief and loss.
Ambiguous Loss In Foster Care
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster carer retention rates, ambiguous loss loss is a contributing factor to the problem and foster care agencies tried to solve ambiguous loss by offering closure; however, the past solution does not work because closure is a myth and the solution is often short-term. In the past, foster care caseworkers have tried to help foster carers reach closure by communicating during the transition of a foster child.
Following a traditional grieving process — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — it is assumed caseworkers can help foster carers reach closure by providing information about where the child will go, services put in place to keep the child safe, and how the child is doing.
Edelstein and other researchers, in their research titled, “Helping Foster Parents Cope with Separation, Loss, and Grief”, write, “They need to be encouraged to communicate clearly with foster parents about planning for the child and the decision-making process, to be receptive to the foster parents’ input, and to be honest about unpredictable factors in particular cases” (20). The researchers go on to recommend “to plan for gradual transitions of children” (Edelstein et al 20).
Unfortunately, the solution as proposed focuses on the needs of the foster carers and places those needs above the foster child and the birth family. The current solution is unfair and unjust to a foster child and the birth family to implement a slow transition for the sake of foster carers. In addition, the proposed solution assumes closure can be reached. However, the kind of loss foster carers experience is an ambiguous loss and obtaining closure often is not possible.
Boss and Carnes argue closure is a myth (Boss and Carnes 456). Accepting the premise, foster carers cannot deal with their grief and loss by finding closure. Instead, they need to find ways to make meaning out of the meaningless and hope in the hopeless (Boss and Carnes 456-457). Boss and Carnes write, “When working with ambiguous loss, we shift from the goal of closure to the search for meaning because there is no other choice” (Boss and Carnes 464).
Plus, the solution to communicate with foster carers during transition is temporary and fails to address the need for a long-term solution since foster carers are often grieving long past when a child is reunited with their birth family. Providing communication during transition is insufficient in helping foster carers deal with their grief and loss.
Lack of the Right Training
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster carer retention rates, inadequate resources and training is a contributing factor to the problem and foster care agencies tried to solve grief and loss training by offering pre-placement training; however, the past solution does not work because the training occurs at the wrong time and is therefore ineffective.
To overcome grief and loss and provide support to foster carers, foster care agencies have tried integrating more grief and loss training during the pre-placement phase. Prior to placement and licensure, foster carers often go through some grief and loss training.
The length or amount of training around grief and loss varies by foster care agency, but generally, it is around one to three hours total. Foster care agencies know grief and loss affects retention rates, plus foster children are likely to experience their own grief and loss. As a result, foster care agencies recognized the need for grief and loss training.
Foster care agencies place grief and loss training in the pre-licensure phase. Melanie Randle and colleagues, in their research title, “What Can Agencies Do to Increase Foster Carer Satisfaction?”, wrote, “Preplacement training plays a role not only in teaching future foster carers how to successfully perform in their role; it also allows agencies to shape the expectations of foster carers and potentially avoid disappointment, thus directly impacting levels of satisfaction,” (Randle et al. 219).
By shaping expectations and training prior to fostering a child, foster care agencies believe they can influence retention rates, avoid grief and loss, or at the very least, equip foster carers with the tools needed to overcome grief and loss. The benefit of receiving training prior to placement is foster carers have at least some training for handling their grief and loss, as well as the grief and loss a foster child may have after the removal from their home.
Unfortunately, the training is placed at the wrong part of the cycle to be effective in helping foster carers. The major issue with the current solution is the gap between when foster carers learn about grief and loss and when they need to apply the content. As a result, foster carers retain less and are less likely to have the tools needed to overcome their grief and loss. Laura Skistrom and others established the educational gap in their research, “Being There: A Scoping Review of Grief Support Training in Medical Education”, which explored grief as it relates to medical professionals. The thesis of their research is that there are large gaps in grief and loss training for medical professionals.
After analyzing 37 different studies, the researchers conclude current grief and loss training is doing very little to help medical professionals. Skistrom and researchers write, “In addition, most workshops were voluntary, short and occurred in pre-clinical stages when participants had limited experience dealing with death and dying, which limited their ability to absorb new knowledge and then apply it in clinical practice” (Skistrom et al. 10).
Since research on grief and loss training is limited in the foster carer industry, it is critical to explore other industries for more strategies. The research done by Skistrom and others points to the importance of providing training closer to an incident of loss.
As Skistrom stated many medical professionals have limited experience, so their ability to absorb the information is limited. Foster care agencies providing grief and loss training during pre-placement training is ineffective for the same reason pre-training is ineffective for medical professionals.
Foster carers, at the point they receive — if at all — grief and loss training, are too inexperienced to be able to absorb the knowledge in their grief and loss training. On top of the gap, there is uncertainty over the qualification and expertise of the person teaching grief and loss training to foster carers. A licensing worker is unlikely to be qualified or have the expertise to teach grief and loss training.
Caseworkers Create Disenfranchised Grief
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster carer retention rates, disenfranchised grief is a contributing factor to the problem and foster care agencies tried to solve disenfranchised grief by validating and acknowledging foster carer’s grief and identity; however, the past solution does not work because it is more likely to lead to prolonged grief among current foster carers.
Foster care agencies created an environment of disenfranchised grief; to solve the problem foster care workers have tried to acknowledge and validate a foster carer’s grief and identity as a “foster parent”. Disenfranchised grief occurs when a person experiences grief, but the grief cannot be expressed or validated.
In foster care, disenfranchised grief happens when foster carers experience grief, but society and the child welfare system refuses to acknowledge the grief. Often caseworkers make statements like, “He was always meant to go home” or “There is no reason to feel sad. He only lived with you for three months.” During transition, researchers recommend caseworkers acknowledge a foster carer’s grief and validate their feelings.
Foster carers who do not feel like their grief and loss is acknowledged or respected end up closing their license. Edelstein and colleagues explore disenfranchised grief in their research titled, “Helping Foster Parents Cope with Separation, Loss, and Grief”. Edelstein and colleagues argue, “The whole range of the foster parent’s feelings needs to be explored, listened to, and validated, even — and perhaps especially — in those circumstances when the child is replaced against the foster parent’s wishes” (Edelstein et al. 21). Validating foster carer grief is rather simple to do if caseworkers receive the proper sensitivity training.
However, every caseworker has to be careful in validating a foster carer’s feelings. Many foster carers wish to have their identity as a “foster parent” validated. If caseworkers are not careful, they could end up making the foster carer’s grief and loss worse.
Celia Harris and others, in their research, “It’s Not Who You Lose, It’s Who You Are: Identity and Symptom Trajectory in Prolonged Grief”, explore the relationship between identity and the possibility of experiencing prolonged grief. The thesis of their work is that identity to the one lost is a better predictor of prolonged grief than the relationship to the person who was lost. A person is more likely to experience grief when they tie their identity to the person they lost.
In the research they conclude, “It was an overlapping post-bereavement identity, rather than pre-bereavement identity, that predicted the maintenance of grief symptoms over and above initial symptoms in our regression analysis” (Harris et al. 7). By validating foster carer’s identity as “foster parents”, it is likely caseworkers will create more prolonged grief.
How To Fix Ambiguous Loss
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster care, foster care agencies should reduce or prevent ambiguous loss foster carers experience by helping foster carers make sense of the transition, build relationships between foster carer and birth family prior to transition, and provide therapy to help foster carers reach acceptance.
Ambiguous loss is more difficult to overcome than a definite loss. In dealing with ambiguous loss, closure is a myth (Boss and Carnes 456). In the past, foster care agencies have tried to provide closure during the transition of a foster child by communicating with foster carers.
This short-term solution has largely been ineffective. Instead, foster care agencies must shift their focus to helping foster carers make meaning of their loss while eliminating the loss.
Boss and Carnes write, in their research article “The Myth of Closure”, “When working with ambiguous loss, we shift from the goal of closure to the search for meaning because there is no other choice” (Boss and Carnes 464). The primary strategy should be developing relationships between foster carers and birth family while the child is in foster care.
If possible, caseworkers should look for areas for foster carers to connect with a child’s birth family. For example, during required parenting visitations, caseworkers can facilitate dialogue between foster carers and birth parents. While corny, caseworkers can develop icebreakers to get to know each other on a personal level.
When foster carers get to know the birth family on a personal level, having compassion for the birth family is easier. Too often foster carers look at only the failings of a birth parent. All of the feelings surrounding foster care make it difficult to develop a relationship between foster carers and birth family.
Second, time spent between foster carer and birth family could become mandated by law. Just as parenting time between foster child and birth family, it could be required for a foster carer and birth family to spend a certain number of time together each month. Third, sharing a notebook is often a great way to communicate with people when there is a lot of emotion involved. When in-person contact is too difficult for birth family or foster carers, they could write notes to each other which focus on positive aspects of the others.
For example, foster carers would write thank you notes to the birth family for positive qualities in a foster child. Birth family would write notes thanking foster carers for the current care being provided to their child. By having a relationship during the process, the odds are foster carers can maintain the relationship with the birth family and foster child after transition.
The proposed strategy eliminates ambiguous loss as the foster child is still in the foster carer’s life, albeit on a different level.
Negative relationships between foster carers and the birth family typically results in a foster child transitioning and no further communication. The current solution leaves foster carers with ambiguous loss still. Foster carers are left wondering what happened to the foster child and if the child is doing okay.
In addition to removing ambiguous loss, a relationship between foster carer and birth family leads to better outcomes for the child. Since the foster carer and birth family are co-parenting, having a good relationship improves outcomes for the foster child. The proposed solution helps foster carers, birth family, caseworkers, and foster children. As proposed, the solution costs very little for foster care agencies. The cost of a notebook and a few minutes of time. Plus, the cost is less than the cost to recruit and train a new foster carer.
By developing relationships between foster carers and birth family, foster care agencies can eliminate ambiguous loss, and thereby, reduce prolonged grief among foster carers and improve retention rates.
How To Train Foster Parents In Grief And Loss
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster care, foster care agencies should provide more effective training and support on grief and loss by offering grief and loss training during and after transition rather than during pre-placement training, create cohort foster carer support groups, and provide access to individual therapy or counseling. Foster care agencies must provide regular, ongoing grief and loss training, especially during and after the transition of a child.
First, foster care agencies need to provide online, convenient grief and loss training to foster carers during the transition of a child. Second, foster care agencies should provide support and training in a group setting through a qualified counselor or therapist.
Third, the groups should run as cohorts where after a designated time foster carers provide support and training to each other. The proposed solution is ideal because there is a closer connection between when the content is learned and when the knowledge needs to be applied. Foster carers are learning skills to cope with grief and loss at the time they are experiencing grief and loss.
The research done by Skistrom and colleagues, titled “Being There: A Scoping Review of Grief Support Training in Medical Education”, points to the importance of providing training closer to an incident of loss (10). As Skistrom states, many medical professionals have limited experience with grief and loss when training is provided in medical school or during clinicals, so their ability to absorb the information is limited. Foster care agencies providing grief and loss training during pre-placement training is ineffective for the same reason it is for medical professionals.
Foster carers, at the point they receive — if at all — grief and loss training, are too inexperienced to be able to absorb the knowledge in their grief and loss training. Evidence points to foster carers being ill-equipped, even if initially trained during pre-placement, at dealing with the grief and loss they experience from the removal of a foster child. Second, by creating an online course, foster care agencies are able to deliver the training at scale and with reduced costs.
Once foster carers complete their initial training, they should join a cohort group which is first run by a qualified counselor or therapist and later run by those in the group. At first, a qualified therapist or counselor provides support and facilitates the discussion in the group.
Over time, many cohort groups are able to self-manage and provide support to their peers without the assistance of a therapist or counselor. The proposed solution reduces the overall cost to providing support and training to foster carers while maximizing the results.
Foster care agencies are already spending money to provide some training to foster carers. By moving where the training occurs in the process, foster care agencies can get better results for the same amount of funds.
How to Stop Creating Disenfranchised Grief
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster care, foster care agencies should reduce or avoid creating disenfranchised grief by using alternative language in every interaction that does not reinforce foster carer identity as a parent to the foster child, eliminate any recruiting efforts selling the fantasy of “foster-to-adopt” or “foster parents”, and increase training which focuses on the role of foster carer, case worker, and the child welfare system.
Foster care agencies must refocus their foster care recruiting efforts and eliminate any marketing which appeals to and recruits foster carers with goals that are antithetical to the child welfare system and foster care. First, agencies need to eliminate marketing which sells the fantasy of “foster-to-adopt”.
Second, they need to refrain from the use of terms such as “foster parents”. Lastly, they need a stricter selection process to weed out individuals who are looking to adopt children from foster care — a goal that is antithetical to foster care.
Current marketing efforts and language do not accurately reflect the reality of being a foster carer. For example, DHHS’ goal is to return the child to their biological parent or place them in a relative’s home.
On the other hand, current marketing for foster carers often focus on those who are looking to adopt or expand their family. The marketing messages pushed out by foster care agencies creates a disillusioned fantasy for individuals who decide to become foster carers.
Alexis Collins, in her research titled, “The “Perfect Parent” Campaign’s Failure: Applying a Job Market Model for Successful Foster Family Recruitment and Retention”, writes, “In other words, these ads promise personal fulfillment in adoption, and uses this desire as the primary motivating force behind recruitment—in spite of the fact they will exhaust all other efforts to return the children home or with family” (13).
All of these marketing efforts might lead to better recruiting rates, but have a catastrophic effect on retention rates and the creation of disenfranchised grief. By creating more accurate marketing messages, foster care agencies would recruit foster carers whose goals are aligned with foster care agencies rather than opposed. By recruiting foster carers with a goal of reuniting a child to their birth family, the agency is able to work with foster carers whose goals are aligned with the agency’s. The proposed solution eliminates misunderstanding and selling a fantasy, which is what foster care agencies currently do.
Why This Won’t Create Retention Issues
Due to grief and loss being a problem within foster care retention rates, foster care agencies argue that they should continue to use current marketing messages, reinforce a foster carer’s identity as a parent, and validate a foster carer’s grief.
Some would argue, by switching the marketing messages and language used, it would lead to horrible recruiting rates. Instead, foster care agencies need to continue to use current marketing efforts to recruit and acknowledge foster carers as “foster parents”.
Edelstein and colleagues argue the issue is in the way foster care agencies respond to foster carer grief. In their research, they argue, “In disenfranchised grief, feelings of powerlessness, anger, and guilt are often tremendously intensified. In fact, the belief is often held by the placement agency, by birth parents and relatives, and by adoptive parents that deep sorrow and grief on the part of foster parents is not consistent with their understanding and acceptance of their temporary caregiving roles” (Edelstein et al. 17).
Some would argue, caseworkers instead need to slow down and be present to foster carers, validate their identity as foster parents, and complete more sensitivity training to understand the feelings foster carers may have.
Caseworkers must be able to empathize with foster carers and they need to take time to be present. Often caseworkers are just trying to check boxes, finish paperwork, and close cases. The proposed solution allows caseworkers to intervene in the grief and loss process early.
Caseworkers have an opportunity to refer foster carers to training, resources, and counseling before the grief and loss becomes too significant for foster carers to handle alone. However, caseworkers cannot be a long-term solution for helping foster carers deal with their grief. Foster carers who have substantial grief must deal with their grief through a long-term avenue, such as counseling or therapy.
The best solution, however, is to go upstream by focusing on recruiting foster carers whose goals are aligned with the expectations in the foster care system. Switching marketing messages could lead to lower foster care recruiting rates, but the hope is retention would improve. Rather than having a cyclical door of inexperienced foster carers who become frustrated with the foster care system, there would be foster carers with years of experience who continue to open their home up to foster children.
Even if the number of foster homes remains the same, by changing the quality and experience of the foster carers, better outcomes for children can be achieved. Perhaps more experienced foster carers are able to take in more foster children, thus keeping sibling groups together and requiring fewer foster care homes.
Sometimes the answer is not more. The answer is better.
To implement the proposed solution, the entire system must change. After the removal or transition of a child, foster case workers will refuse to call foster parents as foster parents. When marketing to new foster carers, terms like “foster parent” and “parent” must be avoided.
While foster carers play similar roles to parents, it is not the same role and therefore should not be given the name “parent”. Prior to becoming licensed, foster care agencies should educate foster carers on the terms foster carer, their role and why they are not considered “parents”.
The proposed solution avoids role confusion and recruits the right people from the beginning. By avoiding the terms foster parents, there are less negative feelings around the transition or removal of a child. The proposed solution takes away the responsibility of caseworkers to manage foster carers emotion and grief.
Given current turnover rates of foster care workers, the proposed solution is more ideal. Too many caseworkers do not have the experience or training to be able to successfully navigate the emotions of foster carers.
A Reason to Act NOW
If trends continue, there are serious safety consequences for foster children in America. News watchers will likely stories about a three year old child discovered dead in a basement freezer become more frequent or the baby born addicted to crack goes home with his mother.
Unless foster care agencies can solve the issues with foster care retention rates, there are going to be fewer foster homes available to provide a temporary, safe home for a child until the child’s birth parents can get the support services they need in order to properly care for their child.
The end result is children staying in unsafe conditions because there is nowhere else for them to go or they are removed and placed in group homes, which have poor outcomes for foster children.
Foster children placed in group homes are more likely to drop out of high school, become poor and spend time in prison. Foster care agencies must focus on retention, too, because their recruiting pool is getting smaller and smaller.
First, there is a declining population over the last one to two decades.
Second, there is a cultural shift in the number of kids a family is having. Many couples are choosing to be childless and will never open up their home to foster children.
Third, there is a cultural shift away from religion, which has often been a huge recruiting base for foster care agencies. Research indicates Americans are becoming less and less charitable. Current cultural trends are leading to a shrinking base foster care agencies can recruit from.
As a result, the best solution is to turn inward and focus on solving the number one problem in foster care retention rates: grief and loss.
Works Cited
Administration for Child & Families. “Michigan Child Welfare Outcomes”. ACF, https://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/cwodatasite/pdf/michigan.html. Accessed 14 September 2022.
Bays, Jason. “5 Keys to Retaining Foster Parents”. Fostercare.team, https://fostercare.team/article-5-keys-to-retaining-foster-parents. Accessed 29 October 2022.
Boss, Pauline, and Donna Carnes. “The Myth of Closure.” Family Process, vol. 51, no. 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 456–69. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12005.
Collins, Alexis N., “The “Perfect Parent” Campaign’s Failure: Applying a Job Market Model for Successful Foster Family Recruitment and Retention.” Honors Projects SPU. Vol. 78. 2018. pp. 1-45. https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/honorsprojects/78/ Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.
Edelstein, Susan B., et al. “Helping Foster Parents Cope with Separation, Loss, and Grief.” Child Welfare, vol. 80, no. 1, Jan. 2001, pp. 5–25. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.monroeccc.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=3988110&site=ehost-live
Harris, Celia B, et al. “It’s Not Who You Lose, It’s Who You Are: Identity and Symptom Trajectory in Prolonged Grief.” Current Psychology, vol. 1-11, 2021, pp. 1–11. SpringerLink, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02343-w.
Pesavento, Isabella M. “How Misaligned Incentives Hinder Foster Care Adoption.” Cato Journal. vol. 41, no. 1, 2021, pp. 139-158. ProQuest, doi:https://doi.org/10.36009/CJ.41.1.7.
Randle, Melanie, et al. “What Can Agencies Do to Increase Foster Carer Satisfaction?” Child & Family Social Work, vol. 23, no. 2, May 2018, pp. 212–221. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.monroeccc.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/cfs.12402.
Sikstrom, Laura, et al. “Being There: A Scoping Review of Grief Support Training in Medical Education.” PLoS One, vol. 14, no. 11, Nov. 2019, pp. 1–16, ProQuest, doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224325.
Willis, Tamarie, MSW and Angelique Day, PhD MSW. “Key Factors and Characteristics of Successful Resource Parents Who Care for Older Youth: A Systematic Review of Research” NACAC, https://nacac.org/resource/key-factors-and-characteristics-of-successful-resource-parents-who-care-for-older-youth-a-systematic-review-of-research/. Accessed 29 October 2022.
