Foster Parenting

Caitlin MacInnes is a Resource Worker specializing in foster care recruitment & inquiries with the Children’s Aid Society of London & Middlesex. Caitlin also has experience as a foster and adoptive parent of 5 years.

Caitlin will be visiting Childreach on Tuesday, November 1 for Foster Parenting Present & Play. Register and join us for more information, to ask questions, and play.

What is foster parenting?

A foster parent is a licensed Care Provider for the Children’s Aid Society of London & Middlesex. Foster parents are urgently needed to provide temporary care of children and youth once they are removed from their homes due to concerns of neglect and/or abuse. We ask foster parents to commit to caring for the child or youth while we work to safely reunify them with their parents or place with kin (relatives, friends, or within cultural community). In select circumstances, adoption of the child/youth placed with you may become an option if reunification or a kinship placement is not possible. The child or youth may be placed in your care for a few months up to a few years as we work to determine a permanent plan. We are also always in need of emergency and relief foster homes who can provide much shorter-term care to children and youth!

Can I become a foster parent?

Often when speaking about foster care, folks hold misconceptions that they would never qualify to foster. Let’s dispel some of these myths.

Foster parents can look like anyone in our community! In fact, it is diverse groups of folks that we most need to care for our children and youth with diverse identities. In the child welfare system, there is an over-representation of Black, Indigenous and 2SLGBTQIA+ children and youth in foster care. We know from the experiences of former youth in care and adult adoptees that when they cannot be with their original families, that they best thrive in families who share their unique identities. We are particularly looking for folks open to caring for older school-age children and youth, as this age group encompasses many children within the care of London & Middlesex.

We appreciate that many caregivers who attend Childreach programming stay at home with their children or have flexible work schedules. Such schedules are invaluable for becoming a foster parent – as children in care require a great deal of flexibility, time, and attention. We welcome folks who are single, renters, or retired to apply – just give us a call and ask to see if this process may be a fit for you! We don’t ask that your life has been perfect to foster, we just ask that you be in stable place now to meet children and youth’s many needs.

How do I apply?

To begin, you can attend the Foster Parenting Present & Play session at Childreach on November 1 or contact me at info@caslondon.on.ca or 519-455-9000 x2777 to schedule an information meeting about the process. If our fostering program sounds like a fit, you would be provided with an application package. Once you have returned the package, you will be enrolled in our PRIDE foster parent training program. Training runs for 9 weeks and is currently offered on-line. Once you have completed training, you begin the Home Study process which entails background, medical and reference checks, a housing check, and 4 to 6 interviews in your home. The entire process takes approximately 4 to 6 months. Our end goal is to ensure that you are in a stable place in your life with a flexible schedule allowing you to embrace both the unpredictability and joys that foster parenting will bring!

A teddy bear sits on child’s bed. (Stock Photo).

My experiences in loving & letting go

I first applied to foster as a single, queer, young professional in 2015. Working in child welfare, my eyes were opened to the many children and youth in need of trauma-informed foster placements locally. To foster in the way that children and youth need to be cared for, you must remain centered on the child’s needs rather than your own. You must be willing to accept that foster care is not a family-building tool, as reunification is always the desired goal. Children in care come from unique genetic and experiential histories that help to shape their strengths, temperaments, and needs. Fostering as well as adoption is not to raise someone in the likeness of yourself. We are called to parent a child for exactly who they are – exactly where they are at! I found this viewpoint so helpful when I’ve helped to reunify my former foster children. Children do best and belong with their first families whenever it is safe, no matter how bonded you have become.

How do I let go? Fostering demands no sense of entitlement towards children and youth that we parent. We have the honour of being their soft place to land for as long as needed. These children and youth have families who desperately loved them before us. Their parents face incomprehensible barriers often stemming from poverty and trauma. I cannot let myself forget this.

It is not always easy – even infants come with the trauma of separation from their birthing parent and often prenatal substance exposure. It takes a great deal of love and patience while children and youth in care might act out behaviourally as a symptom of their grief and adjustment to a change of their school, home, familiar smells, and routine.

We ask you to celebrate their reunification and connections to their families of origin, even when the goodbyes feel impossible. If you are open to the needs of children in our care, I promise your heart will grow 10 sizes and you will gain so much parenting experience– even if the placement isn’t forever. I know I have! When you honour first families and foster the children’s familial connections beyond the walls of the Society building, you make lifelong connections as well. I have had the privilege of babysitting for kinship caregivers of children I previously fostered. It is a powerful thing to channel your grief into building a village of support for a child or youth you love, regardless of where they live.

I am now parenting an 8-year-old child I adopted in 2019. It is important for me to remember that adoption was not a conclusion to our journey. For adoptees, grieving the loss of original family and identity can be a lifelong struggle. So, invite your foster youth’s uncle to their soccer game. Print extra school photographs for your foster child’s first mother.  Accept the invitation to their siblings’ birthday party. Children in care deserve it.

Could this be you? Contact me anytime at info@caslondon.on.ca or 519-455-9000 x2777 and we can meet over coffee to discuss if this journey might be a fit for you!

Written by Caitlin MacInnes, Resource Worker, Children’s Aid Society