Continuing with my series on abuse allegations and indicators of a highly stressed foster or adoptive family, in this post I want to address how the provider’s agency or community can exacerbate or relieve these stresses. I am continuing to draw information from Jodee Kulp’s book.



Sometimes the following negative contributions from the provider’s agency or community can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back…


• Subsidy or Medicaid payments are late and there is an immediate need for those funds.
• The family is denied access to desperately needed resources or told they are on a waiting list and won’t receive assistance for months.
• The foster parent feels biological family visits are negatively impacting the child, or the agency plan is not in the child’s best interest, or the foster family needs additional information about the biological family to address a specific need or behavior in the child.
• The foster or adoptive parent needs training on dealing with specific issues or behaviors and that training is denied or not accessible, (or perhaps not even allowed.)
• The foster or adoptive family begins to feel resentful when financial compensations don’t begin to cover the actual expenses incurred in parenting the child.
• The foster or adoptive family feels unsupported and unappreciated by their agency.
• The foster or adoptive family buckles under the weight of additional stress and trauma inflicted by neighbors, school staff and other members of the community in general.


These specific behaviors exhibited by an emotionally disturbed child are often the reasons cited for why the parents finally ask for assistance:

• The child’s behavior is dangerous to themselves or others.
• The child’s school or neighbors are complaining about the child’s behaviors.
• The child is attempting to provoke the parent into using corporal punishment, including taunting or physical assaults.
• The child exhibits no cause and effect thinking, no remorse, no internalization of family rules.
• The child’s behavior makes no sense. The behavior is bizarre, dramatic, or developmentally inappropriate.


And here is the biggie, the one we can all most relate to:


• Normal discipline is ineffective, and the foster or adoptive parent is finding the agency’s “discipline policy” to be woefully inadequate. The family is frustrated and shackled in their ability to respond to the child’s escalating behaviors, because discipline techniques that might work are not allowed or approved.


It is the last item, the inability to maintain order in our homes, that most pushes families over the edge. Nearly every family I speak to who calls me when they are in crisis is in a reactive mode rather than a proactive mode. And how could they be otherwise? They are not provided tools to effectively deal with these children or not allowed to use the tools they have. How can one maintain control when one has no means to do so? And how can we heal these children if we can’t even maintain control of our homes? How can we look powerful enough to keep them safe if we must always dance to their tune because we have no power to do otherwise?


Next up, why don’t parents ask for help?


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