A CBC Q&A: Why there's a foster parent shortage in Windsor-Essex
Aadel Haleem | CBC News | Posted: July 27, 2016 6:31 PM | Last Updated: July 29, 2016
'Our need is greater right now than it has been in the past,' says Dawn Marie Rocheleau
The Windsor-Essex Children's Aid Society wants more foster parents to come forward.
With 1,502 active files, there are 552 children in care in our region.
However, the Windsor-Essex CAS only has 196 foster homes right now, nearly 50 homes below average.
Dawn Marie Rocheleau is the Foster Parent Recruiter with the Windsor-Essex CAS. She spoke with CBC Windsor's Aadel Haleem to discuss the challenges CAS faces.
Here are edited excerpts from the interview:
Why do you believe you are seeing fewer foster families?
Because of retirements, foster parents deciding to close their homes or they've moved on to adopt the children that are in their homes. We are finding that more homes have closed recently, so our need is greater right now than it has been in the past.
I understand you're numbers are lower than you've seen before. Does that concern you?
It makes it a little bit more difficult to make the best match that we want to see take place. We are working with less beds than we've had before.
What are the misconceptions about being a foster parent?
Sometimes people feel that it has to be a two-parent family to foster, that same-sex couples wouldn't be approved, people from different cultures feel less comfortable coming forward. So letting people know that we look individually at what each family is able to offer to us and how that's going to meet the needs of the children we have coming into our care.
Are there some communities that you are trying to reach out to or make better inroads with?
We do targeted recruitment with the Muslim community, First Nations, the African-Canadian community as well as the LGBT community because we are finding we don't have as many homes from those specific communities.
Why do you think that's the case?
Because of a lot of the myths that are out there or sometimes there's some fear associated with being involved with the Children's Aid Society.
How are you building bridges with those communities?
It's building relationships with them, having me be the standard person going out to meet with them, offering sessions within their own agencies and just really breaking down those barriers that we've seen with them.
Is that a difficult hurdle to overcome?
It can be at times. When I explain to people that the process to become a foster parent is very different from becoming involved as a protection family, it does help families feel more comfortable and confident with the role that they would be taking on.
Does language ever play a role?
That can — or there can be some very culturally-specific instances. Foster care doesn't translate over into a lot of different cultures and communities. So explaining to them what their role is — that they're temporarily taking care of a child, offering a safe place for them during the time the child is with them — really helps them understand that maybe in their home country they just stepped in without an agency being involved.
What's the process to become a foster parent?
There is a nine-week training program that is called PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education). It allows foster parents to learn about the agency, about the children that come into our care and helps them to make an informed decision about being approved as a foster home. They are also required to get police clearances completed for anyone over the age of 18, medical references for adult caregivers, we do child welfare checks and we get personal and family references in order to ensure we have good, quality people that have come forward. There's also the interview process that families have to go through which can be individual interviews, couple interviews as well as family interviews to ensure that the whole family unit is on board with the plan to foster and to ensure it's going to be a good decision for the family to proceed.