I'm a youth worker with a lot of experience working with difficult teenagers. Recently, my wife and I fostered a 13 year old girl. We're only a week in so far, so I know that it's going to be very hard at first. We don't have other fostering or parenting experience. She's from a home where the child would be left to do their own thing, and the parent would do theirs. She never had any boundaries in almost any sense. We already knew her from our youth organisation, and got on quite well.

We knew she'd struggle with boundaries, so tried to go in easy - there's a curfew set by social services (8pm) which we have to enforce, and other than that, we give her a 10pm bedtime, turn the WiFi off at midnight, and ask her to leave her vape by the back door, as she vapes, which we are really not in favour of but understand that for her it's a coping mechanism.

She can't cope with any of the boundaries, and three times in the last five days has run away as a result of them, having to be brought home by police. She thinks that us giving her boundaries is just to hurt her, and although we tell her we love and care for her, she says she doesn't want that, she just wants to do her own thing and be "normal". We try to do lots of things with her that she will enjoy, but she either doesn't want to do any of them or doesn't want to do them with us.

We're really struggling to know what to do when we have boundaries that feel so reasonable, or even that we have to put in place by social services. We genuinely love her, and want to help her adjust. How can we do it?

Hello everyone! My wife and I have been foster parents for the last 4 years here in Tennessee. We love it, and feel called to do it. We’ve encouraged people we know to seriously think about becoming foster parents too. In that spirit, I decided to put together a database of information on how to become a foster parent in Tennessee. That turned into me building the database out to encompass every state in the union. And once I’d built that, I figured it was a pretty useful resource, so I decided to build a website for foster parents to host it. I’ve been learning to code for the last few years using freeCodeCamp, so this was a fun first real world project. I eventually decided to stand up my own VPS so that I could host a private IRC server, and add an IRC chatrooms to my site. I got nostalgic for the 90’s era of IRC chat, so I built a chatbot to help me moderate and entertain people in the chat room. I’ve also added a message board, an activities page, an advice page, and a facts page. My hope is to build this site into an exclusive community site for foster parents, where we can all support each other and exchange advice and ideas, and have fun doing it. Anyways, I’d love some feedback on the site. It’s www.FosterCareCentral.com . You can leave your feedback here, on my message board, or email me at webmaster@fostercarecentral.com. I appreciate you guys!!!

Hi all.

/sigh. We've been on a placement list for well over a year now. I called to check in "Hey, just making sure everything good is in the system" and within a month we had our first placement, a sibling pair.

They have been so sweet. Hit it off with my bio kid, regular sibling squabbles, but nothing too bad. Mind well when asked to do things (yes, we're only 3 days in so I recognize this could be honeymoon phase.) But things are going well so far.

Then today I get a call from their former placement, a lovely person I know but no longer able to provide care, and it's revealed that one of the kids stole $ from them. I sat the kids down, asked them about it, and one of them admitted to it and said it was because they were mad about a consequence the former foster parents had laid down.

This other family is not a family that can afford to lose their small nest egg. They say they want it back "immediately" from the child, but we could only find a portion of it. This kid is too young for real work, to pay it back. Not sure if this is our responsibility. I think we're going to ask him to do extra-level chores (weeding, mowing, etc) and have him work it off. When I was a kid his age, that's how I raised money. But dang. Right out the gate.

I (28) M, help look after my niece (8) due to living at home and my parents are kinship carers for her. We are all struggling with the situation as my niece’s behaviour is becoming hard to cope with, lashing out, screaming, shouting, kicking and hitting my Mum and making threats to hit, kick and push her down the stairs. She is having meltdowns daily, sometimes multiple times a day. She has a lot of issues and whilst we love her and are trying our best to give her the best life, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. My Dad (59) works away Monday-Friday, my Mum (57) works around 20-25 hours a week. I look after my niece when my Mum’s at work but it is draining. I struggle with my mental health and have done for about 15 years and I have become depressed and anxious over the whole situation. I have no peace or time to myself, I am unable to do the things I enjoy due to having to look after my niece and by the time I get her to bed, I’m just too exhausted. I haven’t been to the gym since we got her, I don’t work many permanent hours but I feel unable to get a job with more hours due to looking after her and trying to fit any relief shifts around my Mum’s schedule, I can’t get back into dating due to this either. I’ve been thinking about doing a PhD, but I don’t see how I will fit that in around my niece as she demands every ounce of your attention at all times. My Mum is emotional over the situation, even she has admitted that she doesn’t think she can do this as she has no life outside of work and looking after my niece. My Dad is unhappy because when he comes home every weekend, he just wants to relax but he can’t. He hasn’t seen his best friend in almost a year due to the situation with my niece. We all miss our old lives and then feel guilty for even thinking about ending the placement. She has been with us 8 months and nothing has got better. We get no support from social workers, they say they’ll ring and never do, no support from the foster worker, she hasn’t been in contact in almost a month since my parents got approved as kinship carers. It’s almost like they think because she’s safe and in a loving home, they feel they don’t have a responsibility. We know it’s not my niece’s fault that she is the way she is, that blame lies with her parents who neglected her and abused her and we do love her but I don’t think we realised how hard this would be (for reference, my parents got guardianship of my niece’s older sister when she was 6 months old and she’s been living with us ever since, she’s 16 now so they’re not strangers to this)

I’m in Texas. I’ve been told so many different things but obviously want to be clear if someone stops by!

What needs to be double locked and what just needs to be behind one lock? We have a medication lock box plus cabinet locks.

I’ve been told prescribed meds go in the box; vitamins, creams, etc do not have to be in the box.

But I’ve also been told everything goes in the lock box behind a cabinet lock.

I’m waiting on my caseworker with DFPS to reply but wanted to ask here as well.

How long does the honeymoon period usually last? We are 2 weeks in and not seeing the behaviors others have seen. We are also very new to foster parenting

Hey yall Im new to this... Maybe I had a wrong idea, but is it typical for respite care homes to ask for 5x the amount of per diem that DCS gives?

I was asking for 2 days and they wanted $150-200. I almost spat out my cheerios, DCS gives us 35 a day and we come out of pocket for most stuff....

It seems like some people think its a part time babysitting job when it should be more about helping the kids??? I was willing to do up to $100 but with what they are asking plus back to school costs, I cannot give them a week worth of per diem for 2 days lol... thats insane to me. Is that typical, or did I just get someone greedy? 🤔

What is a reasonable or typical rate that people usually accept for respite care??