Birth Families
The first goal of the foster care system is always to reunify families and return children to their birth parents. Supporting contact between children and their birth parents/siblings during a child’s time in foster care is as important for children and birth parents, as it is sometimes difficult for foster parents. In fact, contact with birth families is one area about which prospective foster parents often have the most concern and fear. There are many reasons for this fear, though in our experience, foster parents’ perceptions of the potential awkwardness or danger that can come from connections with birth parents are almost always more extreme in our minds than in reality. You can read an entire chapter devoted to navigating relationships with birth families in the AOK Guidebook.