In June of 2021, DFCS and its Road2home private agency partners joined together to celebrate national reunification month for our region 2 partnership parents and for region 2 birth parents that have successfully completed reunification case plans. Both DFCS and private CPA foster homes were celebrated through gift baskets for families that successfully partnered to reunify children in between July 2020 and June 2021.
Despite common public perception, the primary focus of foster care in policy and practice is reunification. Partnership parents, the official term for a foster parent in Georgia, speaks to the role that DFCS desires foster parents to take as mentors and teachers for parents involved in the system. In pre-service training, foster parent applicants learn ways in which they can engage parents and invite them to engage in healthier parenting practices. Partnership parents often provide a supportive, non-judgmental presence for parents that can often struggle trusting the broader government systems that are impacting their lives. Furthermore, when foster parents partner well with birth parents this usually leads to increased contact with their child in care, and therefore better mental health outcomes for children that feel the effects of family separation.
Taking on this supportive role can be difficult for foster parents, as they may struggle with their own inward emotions about the abuse/neglect that children in their care were allowed to suffer. In addition, partnership parents often make even more sacrifices regarding their time and resources through carving out more time in their day to take children to and from visitation, accommodating birth parents at all appointments related to the child, and facilitating appropriate virtual contacts. Likewise, birth parents make tremendous sacrifices in their lives to make reunification with their children possible. Court ordered case plans often require parents to change their lives on multiple levels and complete a large number of services. They are often required to find adequate housing, transportation, and work as well as completing inpatient or outpatient substance abuse rehabilitation services, therapy, domestic violence assessments, etc. These parents demonstrate tremendous tenacity when they reunify with their children as often the biggest barrier is overcoming addiction, which for some has been a battle they have been fighting for many years.
Just as the organizations in our Road2home partnership know that we cannot meet the needs of foster children alone, partnership parents understand that DFCS cannot reunify parents with children alone with out the assistance of community partners. National reunification month celebrates these parents and foster parents that have worked together to safely return children home. To celebrate, Road2home partners put together small baskets filled with games, books, gift cards, puzzles, and stuffed animals and delivered them to both foster parents and birth parents that have successfully worked together to achieve reunification.
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