Youth in out-of-home care need positive relationships and connections with the people in their lives; they especially need to stay connected with their birth parents and other family members to maintain a sense of belonging and connection with relatives. Foster parents play a critical role in cultivating relationships with birth parents. These relationships can support family time and informal contacts between parents and their children and increase the likelihood of reunification. These relationships focus on the child at the center and doing what is in their best interest to reduce trauma from separation and offer least restrictive settings for families.
Resources in this section will demonstrate how collaborative relationships between birth parents and foster parents can promote family engagement, sibling connections, and long-term relationship development and preservation for youth who have been separated from their families. Resources include State and local examples.
Birth and Foster Parent Partnership
Children's Trust Fund Alliance
Works to create partnerships between parents who advocate for policy and practices that benefit children and families.
Birth and Foster Parent Partnership: A Relationship Building Guide (PDF - 4,968 KB)
Children’s Trust Fund Alliance (2020)
Guides agencies and families to help build respectful and supportive relationships with one another to best meet the needs of the children or youth in care, strengthen their families and support reunification and other alternative placements.
Birth and Foster Parent Partnership: A State and Local Leader’s Guide to Building a Strong Policy and Practice Foundation (PDF – 10,404 KB)
Children’s Trust Fund Alliance (2020)
Describes practices learned about culture, practice, and policy transformation from Quality Parenting Initiative jurisdictions that have been working to implement system changes to prioritize strong birth and foster parent partnerships.
Episode 41: Birth-Foster Parent Mentoring Teams [Podcast]
Child Welfare Information Gateway (2019)
Features a conversation with birth and foster parent mentors and leaders, along with the 2018 California Social Worker of the year, as they describe their work toward changing the culture of foster care to support reunification by creating relationships and partnerships between birth and foster parents.
Equipping Foster Parents to Actively Support Reunification (PDF - 158 KB)
AdoptUSKids (2019)
Acts as a guide for organizations and child welfare professionals to help them assess their approach to preparing and supporting foster parents in their role in working toward reunification.
How Can Birth and Foster Parents Partner to Achieve Reunification?
Casey Family Programs
Features discussions between birth parents and foster parents who describe the importance of a strong relationship between them and strategies to help both sets of parents work toward reunification.
How Judges Can Support Family Reunification Through Parent-Resource Parent Partnerships (PDF - 194 KB)
American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law & National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (2021)
Outlines the benefits of parent relationships with resource parents and how judges can support these relationships and work toward reunification.
Ice Breakers: Tapping Into the Power of Families Supporting Families (PDF - 349 KB)
American Bar Association Center, Children and the Law (2019)
Recognizes the important role foster parents play in supporting birth parents and their reunification efforts, which has led to new communication and partnership practices.
Partnering With Birth Parents To Promote Reunification
Policy #1 Support Relationships Between Birth and Foster Families
CHAMPS Policy Playbook (2019)
Demonstrates that frequent contact between children in out-of-home care and their birth families has the potential to minimize the trauma that children experience when they are removed. Additionally, it explores the benefits of shared parenting and how implementing a shared parenting framework into agency policy can help reduce conflicts between birth and foster parents and can help facilitate reunification.
Tips on Foster Parent-Birth Parent Coparenting to Promote Reunifications
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau (2020)
Children’s Bureau Express, 21(5)
Summarizes key elements of co-parenting programs designed to help foster parents and birth parents expedite family reunification and help children and families heal.
Webinar: Building Partnerships Between Parents and Caregivers [Webinar]
American Bar Association, Center on Children and the Law (2020)
Shares new tools for birth parent and foster parent partnerships and describes the importance of working together to achieve permanency outcomes for children, including reunification with family.
State and local examples
2021 Safe Babies Report
Doerge, Faulkner, & Marra
Texas Institute for Child and Family Wellbeing (2021)
Provides yearly data that shows how Texas professionals improved permanency and reunification outcomes for infants and toddlers using key metrics.
Co-Parenting in Foster Care: A First in New York City!
Rising Ground (2019)
Details a coparenting program being used in New York City that focuses on creating a cooperative, coparenting relationship between birth parents and foster parents with the goal of expediting family reunification.
Episode 35: Foster Care: A Path to Reunification Podcast (Part 1) [Podcast]
Child Welfare Information Gateway (2019)
Shares the work of the neighborhood-based organization, Center for Family Life, which aims to stabilize families and ensure that children and youth in care can remain in their community, continue to attend their current school, and maintain family and social connections.
Episode 36: Foster Care: A Path to Reunification Podcast (Part 2) [Podcast]
Child Welfare Information Gateway (2019)
Explores trainings and collaborations within San Diego County’s Children’s Services that engage birth families and resource families to work together to support a greater chance at reunification.
Family Connections Program
Amara
Describes a program that brings together birth parents and resource parents together to have collaborative conversations designed to build relationships.