19 October 2022
by DK
Mental and Emotional Health of Children When Leaving Foster Care
Children leaving foster care face mental and emotional challenges that could be reduced if you knew how to handle them. This article explores issues surrounding the mental and emotional health of children in foster care when leaving.
Do you have a foster child who is about to leave your care? You should be concerned about their mental and emotional health because experts have highlighted it as a big concern.
Various situations may lead to foster children leaving foster care. The child may leave foster care because of neglect, abuse, or a return to their birth parents. Regardless of the situation, foster children face tremendous hardship when leaving the care system because of the expectation to adapt to changing environments.
The goal of foster care against reality in the UK
The goal of foster care in the UK is simple – to provide a safe and nurturing environment temporarily while the children await reunification with their birth family or permanent placement.
However, the reality is quite different with many children unable to fulfil this goal because of various situations.
Concerns about the mental and emotional health of children leaving foster care
Childhood trauma
One of the top reasons why a child is placed under foster care is that they have been mistreated, neglected, or abused in their birth family. This causes direct physical and emotional trauma, which the child carries to the care system.
Even with the assumption that a child is taken under care because of other reasons like imprisonment, substance abuse, or the death of a parent, such a child will still experience mental health problems because these are traumatic events involving people close to them.
How does leaving foster care affect the child negatively?
Think about it – you have just provided a safe and nurturing environment to a child who had come from a problematic background. Such a child will always experience heightened levels of anxiety if you were to move them.
The greatest fear is that they might relive their past experiences if they go out of foster care. Whilst the legal framework tries to address this by ensuring that the next placement of a child leaving foster care is safe, the mental and emotional health of such a child is devoid of the legal implications of leaving foster care.
Remember that even while providing foster care for a child, there are constant mental and emotional health concerns that you are trained to deal with. This is because a child under foster care will often experience depression, anxiety disorder, social phobia, reactive attachment disorder, and separation anxiety disorder.
Therefore, when they are leaving your care after you have extensively reassured them of their safety, the feelings of separation anxiety reappear.
How to handle the mental and emotional health of a child leaving foster care?
We over-emphasize the importance of early inventions even before the child leaves your care. Firstly, you must be aware that foster care is not permanent and the child will have to leave your care at some point.
With this in mind, the following recommendations can be helpful:
- Help the children know that it is not their fault that they are separated from their parents
- Don’t speak ill of their birth family
- Encourage them to ask you questions
- Find ways of reassuring them that you are always there for them. You have to mean it; otherwise, it becomes more stressful if the child believes something that you cannot live up to
- Keep in touch.
Remember, we’re your first point of contact, thus, you should work closely with us to help the child reduce the dangers of mental and emotional health when they are leaving foster care.
How about you?
You will also be affected when a child leaves foster care. You can always use our expansive network to offer mental support after a child has left your care.
In addition, you should make memories with the child that you will cherish even after they have left. But while doing so, practice self-care so that you don’t end up being over-attached to a child.
The next steps…
You can help a foster child have positive mental and emotional health when leaving foster care. You should use our raft of measures recommended above to get you started.
Our lines are always open if you want assistance when dealing with children in foster care. Together we can make it swift and positive for children leaving foster care.