Keeping Good Records

By Deborah Southard

December 2004, “The Fostering Connection,”
A Publication of the Onondaga County Foster/Adoptive Parent Support Group.

As parents it is always hard to find the time to keep good  records.  I know at one point I considered giving up and  telling my youngest birth child that his baby book was  destroyed in a fire.  A fire that mysteriously only consumed  his baby book and nothing else.  All joking aside, foster  parents need to keep good records.   

A lifebook is one of the records you should be keeping for  your foster child.  A lifebook is the child’s story.  It should  contain such vital information as date, time and place of  birth.  A copy of the Birth certificate and Social Security  number should be included.  Also, Birth parent information  as well as any information on siblings should be put in the  book.  Pictures, school information, and immunization  records are also good things to include.  I would encourage  you to take pictures of your foster child as early in the  placement as possible and to send a disposable camera on  any parental or sibling visits to capture those memories for  your child.  I recently had a foster parent tell me that she  regretted not doing this because the birth mother disappeared  after a few visits and her daughter now has no pictures to  remember her birth mother by.  A lifebook should travel  from home to home with a child but I would encourage you  to make a photocopy for your records, in case the original is  lost.  The caseworker may also like a copy for the records.   This may sound like a lot of work but this information  sometimes get lost when a child has multiple placements or  is adopted by a different family than their foster parents.    

 The second record I would encourage you to keep is a  journal.  A separate one for each child would be a good idea.   In this journal you would record, and date, concerns and  problems, behaviors, child’s reactions to visits, milestones,  changes in visits, etc.  I personally have never been really  great at this but recently learned my lesson when I had to  count on my foster children’s caseworker to recall  information I had provided to him over a year before.     

For those of us that are journalizing challenged I have a  recommendation.  Keep a good calendar.  If a visit is  cancelled, record it.  If your child has a visitor, write it down.   If you foster child is sick, record it.  Save your calendar.   Pretty basic right?  You already probably do this.     

Now for the concerns and problems part.  E-mail.  If you  have a concern email your caseworker.  It takes less time  then playing phone tag and you can send email at two in the  morning, you don’t have to wait for office hours.  The  written word is far more likely to be taken seriously.  You  have time to review what you have written.  You don’t get  that option when you make “hysterical foster parent” calls.   You also can send a copy to the caseworker’s supervisor if  you desire.  Save a copy of the email on your hard drive and  print a copy for your files.  Anyone who has ever fried a hard  drive knows you have to have a backup.  Also save and print  any responses from the caseworker.  I would encourage you  to also ask your caseworker to put any changes in visits,   instructions etc. in email form, not just verbal instructions, so  that you can print and file that.  If the caseworker doesn’t  feel they have time for this I suggest that you summarize  your phone conversations in email and ask them to merely  acknowledge what you have written.  If you keep a file of  you correspondence you will have a pretty good record of  your interactions with the department and will be able to  pinpoint exactly when the visit schedule changed or when a  visit went bad.   

Photographs are the third records I am going to ask you to  keep. I always get double prints to give to the birth family,  an older foster child, or save for a younger child who has no  family contact.  I know of one adoptive mother who was  thrilled to have a complete photo record of her daughter’s life  before she joined their family.  

I know that record keeping takes time, something we have  very little of, but these records will mean a lot to your foster  child as they wonder about their past and may protect you  later down the road if there are ever any questions

 

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09/12/2008