When you grow up in foster care and have a child, your greatest hope is that you’ll get to be your child’s Mommy. Your greatest fear is that you’ll fail, and your child will feel the same pain you felt. When you lose your mother, you feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself.
Too often, our fears come true. Few child welfare systems nationwide track removals of children from mothers who have been in foster … Read More
Since 2012, Rise has worked with or interviewed more than 40 mothers who grew up in foster care. Here, five New York City mothers share their perspectives on how child welfare can better partner with parents who grew up in care. Chitara Plasencia, 17, Jennie Alvarado, 18, and TyAsia Nicholson, 21, are members of a support group for young mothers at Lawyers For Children, which provides legal and social work advocacy for young people in … Read More
Kimberly: All of us are parent leaders in Washington State. We’re “veteran parents”—parents who are veterans of the child welfare system. I got involved 8 years ago. CPS had taken my daughter. When I got her back, they asked me to get involved in implementing the first Parent-to-Parent program. Now I’m a social worker at the Office of Public … Read More
Ambrosia Eberhardt, Danielle Goodwin and Heather Cantamessa are “Veteran Parents” with the Washington State Parent Advocate Network, a project of The Children’s Home Society. Here, they explain the importance of addressing shame in child welfare:
Q: Parent advocates and child welfare administrators in Washington state have begun a series of panel discussions on shame. Why shame?
Heather: All of us are parent advocates who had our own children placed in foster care. In the past year, we’ve … Read More
The Ackerman Institute’s Center for the Developing Child and Family in New York has partnered with New York City Children’s Services to train foster parents and staff at mother-child residences, and is beginning trainings in Washington D.C. Here, Martha Edwards, the Center’s director, explains how staff and foster parents can support the mother-child bond:
After a baby is born, staff and foster parents sometimes look at moms struggling and find it easier to just take over. … Read More
