Training the Trained

This weekend I did something I haven't done before. I co-trained a group of foster parents who have been fostering for a while already. Most of the were kinship providers, meaning that the foster children in their homes are related to them in some fashion. This is much different than the usually training I do because of the experience these people already had when they walked through the door. It's also different, because the people who foster their own relatives view their role in foster care much different than those of us who foster children who have no relatives to go to.

Before it started, I wasn't sure I'd be up to the challenge. I remember when I took this training. It's a shortened version of what we usually train. People just getting in to foster care now have to take this 27 hour course called Pride before they can be licensed. But Pride wasn't always required, so after I'd had my license for about 2 years, it came along, and I had to take a 10 version of it. Basically, Pride is part of the movement to make foster care a team effort, get the foster parents working with birth parents, and making all of it a lot more open in the best interest of the children. This isn't the way it always was, and to be honest, when Pride came along, I wasn't real open to working with birth parents. I was afraid of them, afraid they'd find out where I live and harass or harm me. I still thought most of them were monsters and didn't always deserve a second or third chance to get their kids back. So Pride scared me. The Pride curriculum also bothered me because it includes videos with actors and scripts that did NOT give an accurate picture of what situations with foster children and social workers looked like. I scoffed at it.

Knowing how I felt when I took the class, I knew how these people would feel when they came into it and how they would feel when they left. But I also know, even though I was laughing at it when I left, it had planted seeds in my mind, and it wasn't long before I was blossoming as a Pride Foster Parent. I found that it wasn't scary to work with birth families and it was good to be part of a team rather than an island on my own. This is why I jumped on it when they approached me about becoming a trainer. I still laugh at the videos, but feel as though I have a voice in the class to be able to bring some reality to it when they watch the videos. So when I was training experienced foster parents last weekend, I hope I was able to break the ice by relating my own feelings about the videos, especially how I felt the first time I watched them. And in doing this, I saw these foster parents start to open up and warm to the ideals of Pride.

Now, the other challenge, that they were kinship providers, was a whole different thing. People who foster relatives tend to feel like they don't have to follow all the rules and policies of foster care because, hey, this is my niece or grandson. But the truth to that is, they are in the state's custody whether they live with grandma or me, and the state is liable either way, therefore, their rules abound. I didn't know how to poke through this wall at first. But finally, about 3 hours into it, I was trying to get a certain point across, and these words came out of my mouth, "I realize you are kinship, but these are the same kids I foster because if they don't go to you, they go to me. You have to see them the same way I do, they have the same issues and struggles my kids have." And people nodded, and their faces relaxed. I may have audibly sighed. Sometimes these types of epiphany statements come forth from my mouth when I least expect them, and always welcome them most!

In the end, it all turned out well. I made some new connections, and I may have even talked a few kinship providers in to changing their license to do general foster care as well. I hope so!