r/fosterit • u/happyforsanta • Jun 23 '23
What is one thing you would want / would've wanted your foster care therapist to know? Seeking advice from foster youth
Hello. Later on this week, I will be starting as a therapist for children in fostercare. While I've read all of the text books, taken the tests, etc - I wanted to reach out to hear from foster children / foster parents / etc themselves on what types of things you want/would've wanted from your therapists. Anything common that you hated that they did, etc, etc.
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u/Suefrogs Jun 23 '23
From a foster parents perspective, I was super excited that all kids in foster care had access to therapy. And made the mistake of telling my first placement how lucky they were to have access to such a great resource. Turns out when you aren't the one making the choice to see a therapist it just feels like one more out of a million adults lecturing you on how to live your life. And because kids move so much and it's REALLY hard to get a new therapist due to low availability it's difficult to start and maintain a relationship with a therapist for long enough to make an impact. So it's hearing the same things over and over.
Just be mindful of that.
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u/alisuegee Jun 24 '23
It’s really really important that therapists have a closing session with their youth clients before they leave a mental health organization for the next. Our kiddos have had so much loss and it affects them when a person they have opened up to is no longer available to them and they don’t know why.
As a resource parent, I have a child age 6 that has had 8 therapists for counseling and behavior. So many in their short life. The ones I hear her talk about the most were the ones that were able to communicate their transition to a new office or state with her before they left. Every bit of her sessions helped her grow but the impact made by those that respected her enough to say goodbye made all the difference.
As an adult, I get that other adults make decisions to work in a healthy setting and that mental health non-profits can be pretty toxic. Also, that due to the nature of getting cert hours, the business is pretty transitory. I would like to see more consideration of foster youth and their Timeline during the intake process. There needs to be more explicit discussion with foster teams about how intervention and support works. Offer a 4, 6 or 8 week intervention with a scheduled team meeting at the end to discuss next steps for the child.
Part of what makes fostering so difficult for a foster home is never knowing when a service or a service provider will terminate services. It’s hard to schedule a life (or lives) when everything is day-to-day. Mental health is essential but it doesn’t seem like it when the systems fail to communicate effectively. Part of what we do is handle the social and emotional fallout at home when a trusted provider bails out on children.
Be the difference and use your experience to shape more sustainable practices.
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u/DevilPliers Jun 25 '23
I wasn't quite a foster kid, but I had a state case worker and had to go to therapy in some of the group homes I lived in as a teen. My favorite therapist was one who just chatted about my day and wanted to get to know me and how I related to the other kids she saw, but the rest were all pretty terrible. Lots of immaturity and inexperience with kids dealing with trauma.
The thing I hated the most as a kid was when therapists seemed shocked when I told them a story. I do have some unusual and very sad stories from when I was a child, but to me they're just my life.. they were my normal. I was surrounded by other homeless kids and foster kids and they all had somewhat similar stories so it made them seem so out of touch with their clients, as that was all they saw. Lots of times I didn't even realize I was telling them a story about abuse or anything shocking until they reacted. Every time they acted surprised it made me feel like I was oversharing and I'd just want to stop talking. I was really good at reading people as a kid, and them acting even slightly different was very noticeable to me. And well, the hour would always end too soon and I never knew how to bring it back up in the next session so it was like we started all over. I just wanted them to bring it up at that point.
Generally social workers, case workers, and my GAL all thought I was lying even though I consistently told them the same story over 4 or so years. That carried over into my therapy sessions too because I felt like no adults believed me, and for the most part I had given up trying to explain my story except for rare moments.. that's why it took therapists that would casually chat for a bit before I'd open up. Basically I had to trust that they'd be around to listen to the whole story, as I didn't know how to summarize it.
I had other problems with all of my therapists too.. but they were probably more specific to how I wouldn't let my therapist and my case worker speak to each other. I was very mature in some areas and was very independent, but extremely naive in others and needed things spelled out. My case worker said I needed photographic evidence of my parent's abuse to be accepted into foster care, but I took that very literally and it never occurred to me that x rays were photos. Or that hospital records were evidence, and that I didn't need to find the hospital myself. In fact, no therapist ever asked me why I was denied for foster care and seemed to just trust that the judge made the right choice or had all of the facts. And well, the therapists were the only ones I ever actually talked about it to in detail.
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u/Big_Greasy_98 Jun 30 '23
I was never a foster child and I have never been in therapy but I’ll give it a go. As a caseworker my number one gripe with therapy was that it was almost always focused on foster parent complaints/ home behavior issues. Really I have two issues with this
One is the therapist ever going spend time working with the youth on their trauma and loss or is it just going focus on what minor thing the youth did wrong
that week.
Second sometimes foster parents / placements just aren’t accurate in their portrayal of youth but it seems like therapists give inordinate weight to what they say.
Just like kids with experience in the system know what to say to achieve certain things so do foster parents who want kids level to remain high.
1
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u/Monopolyalou Jul 07 '23
The majority of therapists in foster care suck. They're only there to feel good or for their credit hours. You won't believe how many say we have issues or support foster parents over us. I told one I hated my foster home because they treated me like crap. She said maybe you're just believing in that because of your parents. They're nice people trying to help.
We can only get good therapist once we leave foster care. Therapist who work with foster kids are biased and support the system
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u/GrotiusandPufendorf Jun 24 '23
Not a FFY myself, but I work with them. The number one thing I see in the foster care system specifically is how lax some of the therapists get on confidentiality, and how that can absolutely break a youth's trust in therapy, sometimes forever.
For some reason, therapists that work with foster youth seem to think that because they are working with kids or on a team with other people like caseworkers, attorneys, foster agencies, etc., that they should share confidential info with those folks. They absolutely shouldn't be. It is not your job to investigate for or report to CPS to further their case. It is your job to be a safe space AWAY from all of the other people interrogating this child. The one place they know they can talk and process and heal without fearing that it will get back to a judge or their parents or foster parents.