Last night marked the end of our second PS-MAPP class. I was glad to see all 22 of us still there and accounted for. I looked around the room and wonder who will be the first to drop out, but then I wonder if maybe we will all make it to the end.
Last night, we were all assigned a folder. On the front of the folder, we had to put our names at the top. It had a sheet stapled to the front with a list of all the assignments and paperwork we will need to turn in each week. Basically, we will come in to class each week, pick up our folders, place the appropriate paperwork in the folders, and turn the folder in before we leave each week. We will then check off whatever we turn in. The instructors will then empty the folders out, so the folder will be empty when we come in the following week. You have no idea the sense of accomplishment I felt unloading a huge stack of paperwork out of my bag and into that folder. We had worked SO hard getting everything filled out, signed, copied, etc. Now it’s turned in and ready to go.
We also found out which of the two instructors is assigned to us for our homestudy process. I won’t give names, and since both of our instructors names start with a C, I will just say ours is “Little C.”
Last night, I learned a lot. I thought I had read so much about foster care and adoption, that I had seen and heard it all. How naive I was! We did a little activity where we use a couple class volunteers. We showed the alliance between the alliance between birth parents, foster parents, DHS, and of course, the child. Depending on how DHS and the foster parents form an alliance with the birth parents, reunification of the family may or may not go smoothly.
Here’s the wrong way to form an alliance:
As you can see, the foster parents (fp) and DHS worker (dhs) are allies with each other, and also working with the child. However, they are not allies with the birthparents. In this scenario, the birthparents can feel overwhelmed, attacked, and like the foster parents are trying to be better parents than they are. They might feel like the cards are stacked against them, and their child won’t want to come back.
Now if the foster parents and DHS form an alliance with the birth parents:
Everyone is working together, and the child is in the middle of a very supportive team. The chances of the birth parents being able to pick themselves up and be reunified with their children are much greater.
We then discussed how to build alliances with birth parents:
* Recognize and support parents strengths
* Use those strengths to engage parents
* Maintain confidentiality
* Manage personal emotions
* Share power and control
* Model effective parenting skills, mentor and/or teach parents
We discussed Erikson’s stages of Development and how different types of abuse or neglect may cause a child to be at a lower level than they should be:
Finally we broke up into groups and were given about 10 case studies of different aged children where we had to determine based on their symptoms and characteristics how developmentally different they were from other children their age. Then we had to decide what specific needs they had related to their well-being and what we could do as a foster or adoptive parent to help them.
One major take-away I had from this class other than just the class material I learned from was this: One of our instructors told us that the people in our class will probably become the best source of support we will ever have during this journey. They will become our sounding boards, our respite providers, our babysitters, our friends, our sounding boards, our shoulder to cry on, our ears to vent to.
We immediately exchanged phone numbers with the people that sit next to us. We like them.
I’m hoping they pass a phone list around soon. 
And whoever made the meatball sandwiches we had for dinner last night… I want to be friends with her, too.
