Managing Family Visits in Adoption
The law requires that children in foster care visit with their parents (and siblings not in the same foster home) at least twice a month unless it wouldn’t be safe to do so. However, many children visit their parents more often because it can make foster care less traumatic and help maintain a relationship with their parents so that things will be easier when they return home. Visits are not always easy for children, their parents or their foster parents but they are essential to build relationships and heal past traumas.
See resources below for more on family visits.
- Visitation: An Indispensable Tool for Reunification – New video
- Making the Most of Visits – Rise Magazine, September 2011 issue (pdf)
- Family Visiting for Children in Out-of-Home Care: A NYS OCFS Practice Paper (pdf)
- Parents’ Rights to Frequent, Meaningful Contact with their Children (pdf)
- Visit Coaching: Supporting Families to Meet Their Children’s Needs
- Advocating for Creative Visiting Plans
- Parent-Child Visits: Managing the Challenges, Reaping the Rewards (pdf)
- Planned Purposeful and Progressive Visitation – Part 1 Video
- Planned Purposeful and Progressive Visitation – Part 2 Video
More Information and Resources:
Parent-Child Visits: Managing the Challenges, Reaping the Rewards
If you are a foster and kinship care provider, you know visits can also be extremely difficult for everyone involved. When a visit occurs, it is sometimes accompanied by visit-related upheaval in the child’s emotions and behavior, complex scheduling and logistics, and other challenges.
Facilitating Contact by Assessing Family Strengths
The goal of a foster parent is to care for the child while their biological parents cannot. Birth parents have a legal right to visits while their children are in care. Visits are also beneficial for the children and necessary for their emotional health even if they seem upset or out of sorts after a visit.
Visiting Practice Points and Creative Visiting Plans
A parent whose child is in foster care shall be granted reasonable and regularly scheduled visitation unless the court finds that the child’s life or health would be endangered thereby
Helping Children with Family Connections
If children lose the feeling of connectedness with their families, then they may have lost a big piece of their identity and have difficulty answering the question, “Who am I?” Whether children have a lot, a little contact or no contact with birth families, they have dreams and feelings about their families.
Visit Coaching: Meeting Children’s Needs
Visit coaching is fundamentally different from supervised visits. Instead of watching the family, the coach is actively involved in supporting them to demonstrate their best parenting skills and make each visit fun for the children.
New York State Statute & Regulation on Sibling Placement
Foster children who are siblings or half-siblings must not be unnecessarily separated unless placement together is determined to be detrimental to the best interests of the siblings
Parenting Tips on Temporary Disruptions
Be clear with the child that he is still a member of the family even though he has to be in foster care, or a residential treatment setting, for a while.
Law Provides Children in Foster Care the Right to Visit their Siblings
Sibling relationships are tremendously important particularly when children face difficult circumstances like foster care. I thank Governor Cuomo for signing this legislation and bringing fairness to our foster care system. This action will lead to stronger relationships and families in communities across the state.