Let's Celebrate! ...it's the series finale of "Confidentiality and Foster Care!"

/
Let's Celebrate! ...it's the series finale of "Confidentiality and Foster Care!"

Foster parents, let’s celebrate the children in our care!

Let’s celebrate BIG! Let’s celebrate often!

 

And since we know celebration can and does exist outside of social media,

let’s celebrate privately.

 

Y’all remember that time I was a Christmas villain?

Please know this: I needed to celebrate my brand new foster son that Christmas morning, and he needed to be celebrated. He was worth celebrating, and we were overjoyed for such an opportunity. It wasn't the photo that broke confidentiality, as it didn’t reveal his identity in any way. And it wasn't our BIG celebration that broke hearts. The public privacy setting broke confidentiality and the public words of celebration broke hearts.

Read More

Achieving Confidentiality in Foster Care

/
Achieving Confidentiality in Foster Care

Please know, I did not come to this place easily, nor did I want to arrive here. I'm a photographer, and I happened to have the two best cheeks on earth living with me. I longed to share photos, I longed to share specific prayer needs, and I also just longed to share him. I just knew that if people experienced his precious, sweet perfection, they would be less inclined to fear foster care, and more inclined to sacrifice everything to love these children...

I still believe that to be completely true, but at some point there was a shift in my thinking... As much as I believed his cuteness could convince every person in this country to look into foster parenting, this one constant thought just wouldn't stop badgering me: that is not his job. He didn't sign up for this. I did.

Read More

Confidentiality and Identity in Foster Care

/
Confidentiality and Identity in Foster Care

We had a sitter once who asked about a friend’s newly adopted child, not by the child’s name or status as a son or daughter, but by the child’s ethnicity. In that very moment, I realized that I needed to be much more confidential about the reasons our foster child was in our care. Because the reasons he came into care did not define him then, and they don’t define him now. Those obstacles are not his identity, nor is the fact that he was in foster care at all. His identity is found in Christ, and in Christ alone. Sometimes I wonder if by sharing details about our foster children, we are unknowingly allowing a large misunderstanding population to assign them a false identity that will follow them the rest of their lives, along with all the stereotypes that will jump on for the ride.

No, actually… I don’t wonder if that happens. I know that happens, because I’ve seen it happen.

Read More

That Time I Was a Christmas Villain (a series on confidentiality in foster care)

/
That Time I Was a Christmas Villain (a series on confidentiality in foster care)

If you work in the medical field, or in social work, law, education, etc... you know this:

Confidentiality matters.

It matters for very obvious reasons and for SO many reasons beyond what is completely obvious.

I'm writing about this topic from a foster parenting perspective... One that I didn't always understand or hold for myself... at least not until I became a foster parent and loved not only the child in my home, but also his mom, his brother and sister, his grandparents, his great grandparents, his cousins, his aunts and his uncles...

To be completely honest, I hadn't thought too much about any of these people beyond him and his mom, who, in my pre-foster parenting ignorance, I assumed some pretty terrible and completely false things about.

So when it came to sharing his chubby cheeks and thighs for days, what could it hurt, right? Guys, it was Christmas time. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?? How could I keep this gift to myself when all I wanted to do was tell the world what a blessing and gift I had received!?!? Sooo... naturally I did the obvious... what any proud new mom would do: I shared his cute little tush on Facebook.

Read More