Session 1

Unit Five: Why Children Come Into Care

Why do children come into care?
Why do children think they come into care?

So far we have been focusing on the training to give you an idea of what to expect and how we will work together. The focus now turns to children in foster care, especially what brings them into care, and how they may react to leaving their own home and coming to yours.

 

Why do children come into foster care?

Children often have a different understanding of why they are in foster care or are adopted. They understand the world from their point of view, that of a child. Children, no matter how mature or articulate they may sound, still have limited life experiences and do not have the cognitive and emotional reasoning skills of an adult. Children remain self-focused and normally interpret their experiences as being “caused by them.”

Why do children think they come into care?

Children usually enter the foster care system suddenly and without preparation. The separation from their birth family is traumatic, no matter what the circumstances were that led up to it.

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Foster parents play an important role in helping a child to understand why they are in foster care. Supporting children through their many feelings of separations and loss is another ongoing role that foster/adoptive parents will play.

Throughout this training, you will be doing activities and reading assignments which will help you to see things from the perspective of a child.

While we can understand, intellectually, why children enter foster care, it is sometimes more difficult to understand emotionally what the families were experiencing.