Great points. I absolutely think there is a need for ongoing support after adoption in particular. I lost count of how many children left residential treatment to go to a pre-adoptive family only to return weeks or months later. Families are given a 6 month "trial" in Michigan and often after the children are placed in the family home, the ongoing monitoring is not even enough during those 6 months and is essentially null after the 6 months.
No matter how much I prepared families during the early stages for expected behavior, their trauma history, history of behavior, and so on, they were never prepared for actually handling it. Families have the best intentions but make a mistake that love and a safe home is all that is needed to help children in the foster care or orphanage systems and when that falls short, they don't have the support needed to get through it. Each failed placement sets the child further and further behind.
I agree the same support could benefit birth families. The problem with all of this, though, is how will those programs be funded? Lack of resources is the root problem. Residential care and hospitalization is expensive so naturally, families are pursued and often even rushed into fostering or adopting these children with minimal training and information. Monitoring and services are also costly so the goal for children to move out of the system and into permanent homes (return to bio, relative placement, adoption) is the priority with almost no support ongoing.
I agree that respite is the largest need. We have children in our program that have been approved respite in foster and bio homes through Medicaid but finding a respite provider is like a needle in a haystack. The families we have that are currently using the benefit have friends or family as the provider. The ones who need it most are those without a support network.
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