Parents come to foster care from many different places in life. Some already have children by birth when they decide to foster or foster-to-adopt. Others have faced infertility and then choose to pursue foster care or adoption. Some choose then to return to fertility treatment to continue to build their family. Occasionally, a family gets involved in a kinship foster care relationship, which has its own unique challenges.
In any of these cases, parents need to think through the special issues that can arise when you combine kids by birth and foster care or adoption. Both biological and fostered/adopted children can thrive in this type of blended family. But it’s very helpful for the parents to be educated about the issues and prepared for what challenges might arise.
Creating a Family has resources to help foster parents with Blending Biological and Foster/Adopted Children. A few that we think you might find particularly helpful are here:
- Celebrating the Holidays in Foster Care: A Guest Post (article)
- Talking with Your Resident Kids About Foster or Kinship Care (article)
- The Impact of Fostering & Adoption on Kids Already in the Home (1 hr. podcast w/ guest)
- Disrupting Birth Order in Adoption and Foster Care (1 hr. podcast w/ expert)
Scroll to the bottom of the page and you can see the resources that Creating a Family offers to help you blend biological and foster/adopted children, in the form of blogs, radio shows/podcasts, tip sheets, fact sheets and expert Q & A’s.
Additional Resources
