When you are thinking about fostering it's common to have questions or concerns about contact and family time with birth parents. At Foster with North East, we are here to help.
Supporting contact with birth parents and family for children in foster care contact with birth parents foster care is an important part of being a foster carer for which you'll receive training and support.
Contact with birth families isn't part of life for every fostered child, but when it is, your role as a foster carer is to support the child with the help of your social work team.
But what do we mean when we talk about 'contact', how does family contact time work, and how can you prepare as a foster parent? Let's take a look.
What is family contact in fostering?
'Contact' is a term used to describe different types of communication between children and families or other people who have played an important role in their lives. For example, a child might have arranged contact with family members like birth parents, siblings or grandparents.
A child or young person may also have regular contact with friends or previous guardians or carers. The form and frequency of communication that contact takes can vary widely. Usually details of contact will be outlined in a plan from the local authority or a court order.
Some examples of contact are:
video calls
phone calls
letterbox contact - letters and/or photograph or gifts
digital contact
in-person supervised contact, which can also be known as family time, at a contact centre, in the community, or at home
in-person unsupervised contact, which can also be known as family time at a contact centre, in the community, or at home
Do foster children see their parents?
In many but not all instances, as a foster carer, when you care for a child or children, they will have some kind of contact with their birth parents. When children come into foster care, it's usually on a short-term basis, at least in the first instance. The hope is that a child may return home in the future if circumstances allow, so maintaining existing relationships is vital.
Children in short-term foster care often see their birth parents more frequently, especially if they are babies or very young children. But children in long-term fostering may still have some level of contact with birth parents or family too.
Why do foster children maintain contact with their birth family?
Imagine you are a child. Your life at home may have been difficult for any number of reasons. You move into foster care and suddenly can't see or hear about the family and friends that have been your whole world up until this point. How would you feel?
Stopping contact with a child's birth family can feel confusing and hurtful for them. Under the Children Act 1989, a child's relationship with their parents should be maintained unless it is considered not to be in the child's best interests for contact to continue.
Maintaining communication with the birth family helps to protect the child's relationship with them, which could help with reunification in the future and help them with their own sense of identity and place in the world.
Why is contact with birth families important?
From a birth families' perspective, maintaining contact with their child in foster care can provide reassurance that their child is safe, looked after and thinking of them.
Why is contact important for a foster child?
Contact for children with family and friends allows them to continue relationships that are important to them. Contact with birth parents or family helps give children a sense of their identity, it can provide stability in those relationships and also helps children to feel connected to their past and culture.
Can a child in foster care request contact arrangements?
You might be asked by a child in your carer whether you can arrange or even stop contact with other relatives and friends. In either instance, you should speak to the child's social worker for guidance.
Why is it important for foster carers to support contact?
It's understandable to have reservations about a child's birth family if they've let them down in the past, but you'll need to set any negative feelings aside.
It's important to speak positively about contact. Sometimes children can feel conflicted or worry about how the grownups in the situation feel rather than putting their own needs first. Showing an interest in a child's birth family can also help them to feel confident in sharing important events and feelings.
Understandably, family contact can bring up difficult emotions and questions for children who are likely to need your emotional support. You will also need to monitor how contact impacts them and keep the child's social work team up to date. In extreme circumstances, you may need to urgently report to social workers any risk of significant harm.
"The significance of contact for looked after children, and of maintaining relationships with birth parents and the wider family, including siblings, half siblings and grandparents, is recognised, as is the foster carer's role in this."
Do foster carers have to write letterbox contact letters?
Sometimes letterbox contact in the form of letters, cards or photographs is agreed as part of a child's care plan or a court order. The contact might be between a parent and child, siblings in care, or between a foster child and a sibling who has moved into adoption. A child's social worker will advise you when there are agreements or court orders with letterbox contact.
It may be that you will write updating letters on behalf of children in your care or support them to write. In either case, your social work team can provide advice on dos and don'ts. Being able to keep in touch and know what's happening in the lives of relatives, friends or past carers keeps children connected with their life story.
Family contact insights from our fostering families
"When we have a child in placement, if they go on family time, if they're having contact, we say to our little one. It's just us three for now - is there anything you want to do, just us three? Have you got anything that you would like to do for your special time? Making sure that he knows he's still getting that one-to-one with us."
"I write to my youngest brothers, because I miss them and stuff, and I just want to see how they're doing and stuff." Harry
Have you got questions about fostering?
If you've got questions about managing birth contact as a foster carer or would like to explore how fostering can work for you, we would love to hear from you. To make an enquiry or request a fostering buddy to chat to on your journey to becoming a local authority foster carer journey, call us 0800 917 7771.
